Today's stage rolls 135 miles (217 km) from Palmdale to Big Bear Lake, and includes a metric ass-load of climbing. Seven, count them seven, KOMs. Check out the official site for specifics, but the highest KOM is 7900 feet (2408 meters). The air is rare at that elevation. Needless to say, this stage is going to hurt and have a huge impact on the performance of the GC favorites in Saturday's TT, but will probably not be definitive in and of itself.
Todays snark-a-log is going to be short since I have dinner plans in about 10 minutes (Basque food... neener, neener, neener). What? HTFU... So Palmdale is famous for pretty much nothing, except Afroman and Space Shuttle landings, in that order. And Big Bear is famous even less except that the actor who played "Bobby" in The Brady Bunch was from there (My friend told me that once. Might be true)...
Williams Wheels video of the climbs
Official profile and map and video
The Gourds singing Gin & Juice, just in case you missed it from yesterday