The Tour of California starts Sunday with a new route. Good bye San Francisco, good bye Redondo Beach. Hello Palo Alto and Pasadena. I wish I could fly out for the Prologue at Stanford. New teams; new look for other teams. I’m psyched and I’ll be watching on TV from New York. Does anyone know why so many changes in the route?
I think the route changes are primarily:
- To change it up and keep it interesting.
- To try to prevent Levi from obliterating the rest of the field.
I’m totally pumped. I’m taking a day off work so I can go watch the time trial in Solvang. Pictures forthcoming!
Thanks for the reminder
Redondo Beach was out after Year 1. Word was Redondo wanted the Tour to pick up extra police charges, so the tour packed up and went to Long Beach for year 2. Not sure why they are going to Pasadena. Bummer too, the Redondo route was less than a mile from my house.
Does anyone know why so many changes in the route? <<
They want to spread it around to other cities and Palo Alto made a big ($$$$) push to get the prologue. We’ll be going down to work the prologue but I’m kind of rather wishing I were riding that day instead. I liked walking to the prologue instead of having to get up early and drive.
We’ll be on the course for Stage 1 though. Probably riding from home out to Pt. Reyes for the sprint.
clm
My father, and brother live in Santa Barbara (i’m in VA). I have not been able to make it out the last 2 years, but am going out the 20th-27th this year. I will see the TT in Solvang, My brother and I will ride out to Ojai and watch them at the top of the climb, and we are going to head down to Pasadena for the final stage to see the circuits around the Rose Bowl. I am definatly pretty psyched, especially to see all the new TT bling.
Not to mention all the riding I will hopefully get to do in warm sunshine without all this winter crap I have to wear to ride in here. The countdown is on! VACATION!!!
“We’ll be on the course for Stage 1 though. Probably riding from home out to Pt. Reyes for the sprint.”
Hey Cathy. We are going to ride to Stanford from Livermore Sunday. John, Bret and a few others will ride from town out to the junction on Wednesday in you are interested. For the 3rd year in a row I will be at a trade show in Vegas during the week.
I will call you when we get to Palo Alto. Unfortunately John does not have any comped suite passes this year. Nothing like free beer and bike races.
Dave
I love the change. The prologue is right in the town where my shop is and goes through Stanford which is just mile from my house.
We’re building up a couple bikes for our booth on Sunday. We’ll have a very light bike, a cool aero one, a Kueen K and some other stuff. If you’re coming to watch swing by the booth and say “hi”.