The Circus has Arrived

Miles from Home - 5432.3 miles

Firsts / Highlights - First signs of the Giro

Miles Riden - 21.8 miles

Vertical Feet - 97 ft

Route - View Today's Route Here.



The Giro and all of its spectacle has arrived in Venice. I am staying in Lido di Jesolo which is on the mainland near the island of Venice. All of the teams are staying in hotels in this area too. Lance and Team Astana are about 4 blocks away. It is difficult to maintain a low profile when you pull into town with 2 busses, 6 or 8 team cars and a couple of semi rigs full of equipment all with your team's logo several dozen times displayed on each.

I am meeting up with the Experience Plus group in a few minutes to begin my 6-day tour of the first 5 stages of the Giro. I ran into one of the couples from the trip in the lobby this morning. They went out Lance-stalking this morning and found him. The team was out for a 5-hour training ride on the day before the start of the race. Just to keep the rust out, I guess. That makes it official - Lance is going to ride the Giro in spite of his broken colar bone. The paper says that he has more or less conceded the race and only plans to ride to promote his cancer cause.

When I got down to San Marco Plaza last night, I found the first sign of the pomp surrounding the Giro. Workers were setting up a big stage in the Plaza for the welcoming ceremonies. There isn't even any racing on the island of Venice, but apparently they wanted the recognizable setting for the opening ceremony and the 10 seconds of TV coverage that it will receive. I expect that the Giro is going to be like a series of one-night-stands for the Rolling Stones. The staging, rigging, sound & light systems and TV equipment is going to need to be torn down and reassembled every day for three weeks. All that in addition to the 30 teams of racers, TV crews from all over the world and millions of spectators. That isn't hyperbole, there will be millions of spectators over the course of the race. The odd thing is, in the area where all the teams and I are today, it is dead as a doornail. Until the other people from Experience Plus showed up, I felt as if I was the only person in the hotel.

Went out for a short ride today to try to shake off the effects of travel and my cold. My altimeter said that we are at an elevation of -7 feet. I don't think that is quite accurate, but the biggest climb got me up to about 0. This is as flat as flat gets. Flat will be a distant memory in about 48 hours.

I think Venice may be the place where the "point and shoot" camera got its name. You could aim the camera just about anywhere and capture something interesting. Although today was mostly about the first signs of the Giro, I have to also include a picture of the full moon rising from San Marco, and no one would believe I was in Venice without a picture of a gondola or two.