It Was A Great Day At The Finish Of The Tour Of California In Santa Cruz

Today my son and I went to downtown Santa Cruz to volunteer as course Marshall’s at the Amgen Tour of California bike race.  This is my third year at the race and my first year as a volunteer.

We arrived at 8:30 a.m. for check in and received our lovely Cal Trans looking volunteer shirts and were at our assigned intersection by 10:00 a.m..  By accident, we ended up helping put up the 1 kilometer marker balloon.  Or I should say, we prevented it from blowing down the road (with my son holding on looking like the tail of a kite in flight).

We had a wait of about 4 hours before the bike racer’s flew by our position.  During our wait, it rained, the wind blew hard, it hailed a little and towards the end, we actually saw the sun.

I took a little video from our position about 1 kilometer from the finish.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0vrKMqvvqA[/youtube]

80 miles of driving, 5 hours of waiting, less than 2 minutes of actually race viewing time….Priceless!   We were cold, wet, hungry, and windblown yet we’re coming back tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Stage 3 begins in downtown San Jose and finishes up in Modesto. Check it out, it’s a blast!