Another Venice Whirlwind in the History Books

Miles from Home - 5396.1 miles
Firsts / Highlights - First stage start, first open air market
Miles Ridden - 53.7 miles
Vertical Feet - 1,417 ft
Route - View Today's Route Here.


View Solighetto in a larger map

It seems counter-intuitive, but I would probably have more current Giro results from Kent at the switchboard in Steamboat than I have following it live in Italy. It is such an odd thing to watch an event that covers over 100 miles of open road in a day. There isn't a scoreboard you can watch to see what is happening.

The answer to yesterday's question is that Mark Cavendish wore the pink jersey for Team Columbia today. I never heard whether it was because the team selected him, or if he was the first team member to cross the line. I suppose it is the same thing. If he crossed the line first, it is because the team selected him.

We left Venice this morning and rode to Solighetto in the pre-Alps. This was my second trip to Venice in the past 3 years, and both times I have left feeling like I had not spent enough time. I think I will have one more chance when Brad comes to visit in early June.

There is no Internet access at my hotel here, so this post may be delayed for a couple of days.

This morning, our spectating was limited to watching the start of Stage 2 from Lido di Jesolo. The race didn't start until 1:30, so we had some time to gawk at the team cars, equipment and mechanics. Everyone had a very clear role to play to get the teams ready to role by race start and the trucks ready to move onto the next town. Some were prepping bikes, some were packing and securing the load and one guy was doing laundry in the washing machine and dryer they carry in the truck. It was like watching a colony of ants at work.

I saw Lance's new road bike at Astana's hotel and Ivan Basso's rig at LiquiGas. The interesting thing is that I did not see a lot of prototype parts on any of the bikes. Everything was the very best you could buy, but surprisingly, nothing jumped out as something you could not build for yourself if you felt you needed to in order to keep up with your neighbor down the street. On some of the teams, each rider's name is painted on their frame like a fighter pilot's call sign on the side of a jet. That is a pretty cool customization, but I thought there might be more.

The procession of the race departure was interesting. I watched from the 0 km marker where the race officially begins, even though it was several kms after the ceremonial spot where the riders start riding.

About 45 minutes before departure, the road had been closed for some time and a high speed parade went through with sponsor vehicles, load music and eye-candy girls in convertibles. It was moving along at about 30 miles an hour, and I assume they run the entire course in front of the race. A little while later, the caravan of 22 team busses headed out of town toward the finish line. I assume the trucks went out at a similar time, but I didn't seen them. Over the next 30 minutes, a steady flow of Giro official vehicles and police cars and motor cycles headed out on the course at high speed. The official vehicles are all brand new Skoda cars, and there must have been at least 50 of them. It appeared that VIP's who bought their way in with a "donation" were in the official vehicles ahead of the race. Who knows what kind of influence you have to yield to get in one of the team cars. The only person I know who has done that is Robin Williams.

As the start time grew closer the TV motorcycles gathered just ahead of the 0 km marker next to me. After 2 hours of waiting, things happened quickly. The first signal that things were about to happen is the TV helicopter started approaching. The grand poobah of the race in one of the Skoda cars passed under the 0k banner and waiving the starting flag. 198 riders were directly on his tail. I could hear a lot of gears shifting as everyone accelerated up to a racing pace and Lance Armstrong lead the peloton under the starting banner.

Just as the racers passed under the banner, the TV motorcycles launched out ahead of the race. Those are some skilled people on both the front and back of those motorcycles, but that will wait for another time.

The peloton accelerated and was past us in less than 30 seconds. Then came the internal combustion component of the race. About 66 team cars sped under the banner and were jockeying for position just like the racers. These are all perfectly clean, brand new vehicles covered in sponsorship logos. It looked like a car race by itself. The cars actually took longer to clear the start area than the riders, but they were gone within about 60-90 seconds. Finally, 10 ambulances followed and a few dozen more police and it was done. Before we could mount our bikes to begin our ride, crews were starting to tear down the barricades and advertising banners.
By the time the race was out of town, it was almost 2:00, and we still had 80 km (50 miles) to ride to our hotel for the night. While the mutants headed east, we headed northwest to a spot close to their finish line tomorrow.

It was a nice ride on the Venetian flats for the first 40 miles. After that, we hit the pre-Alps and very suddenly hit some abrupt climbs. After 2 1/2 days with no more than a bridge overpass to call a hill, it was a shock to the system. All day, we rode through vineyards and fields of poppies and lavender. Many miles were on roads that were not as wide as a bike path back home. On a couple of occasions, a car would pass in the other direction. Even though I was on the white line on the right side and the car was on the opposite white line, I still needed to tuck in my elbow to avoid leaving a big sweaty mark on his window. I have no idea how 2 cars would pass.

Image for the day - Having such a tight squeeze passing a car had me curious. I stopped and lay on my stomach perpendicular to the road with my belly button more-or-less in the middle. I touched my toes on one white line and reached the other white line with the palms of my hands. Based on that, I think the roads were about 8' wide.

Stage 1 - Team Time Trial

Miles from Home - 5509.5 miles

Firsts / Highlights - First pro bike race

Miles Riden - 41.7 miles

Vertical Feet - 329 ft

Route - View Today's Route Here.



My observation about professional bike racers - they ride really really fast.

Bike racing isn't as much about cheering for your home country as some other sports. All of the teams are such a mixture of nationalities that it almost doesn't matter where the team is based. Almost. That said, today was a very good day for the American teams. The 2 American teams finished 1st and 2nd. Third place went to a team from Kazakhstan that has 3 American riders - Chris Horner, Levi Liepheimer and a newcomer named Lance (see picture #1).

Today's stage was the team time trail. No one I have spoken to remembers a team time trial ever being the first stages in a professional race. The obvious question is, "who wears the pink jersey?". Everyone on the winning team has the same GC time, so who is the leader? Since I was not at the awards ceremony after the race today, I still don't know the answer to that question. If you want a refresher what a team time trail or GC is or why anyone would care about wearing a pink shirt, refer to the post I wrote before leaving called Giro d'Italia Primer.

Today's stage was held on the Lido of Venice. An island with no bridges. I'm sure the team and event organizers spent a good deal of time figuring out the logistics for this one. A great image (which I was not able to capture) was a ferry loaded up with at least 25 team cars with 8 bikes on top of each car. It is already a big effort to move all of the stuff from stage to stage, but when you introduce water crossing, it just gets a little more interesting. Our tour group had a private boat take us over. It was big enough for 100 people, but we had 8 (including the guides). My bike had plenty of legroom.

Although I am on a pre-organized trip to address a lot of the complex planning required to follow the race, a certain amount of improvisation is still needed. When we arrived on the island about 4 1/2 hours before the start of the race, the time trial course was already barricaded and there were a number of police at every intersection for the entire length of the course. Since there is only really one road on the Lido, it was important for us to be able to ride the course in order to get to any location other than the starting line. We had found a small town about half way through the course where mid-stage time splits would be measured and the racers passed by on the same road in both directions. On paper, a pretty good viewing spot. Without access to the road, however, the plan was in jeopardy. Our Italian guides spoke to a number of different policemen and kept getting different stories. Eventually, they found one that would let us on the course. All was well. We were riding along the course all dressed out for the event, passing under banners indicating the number of kilometers left to go. It all seemed to be falling into place, for about 3 kilometers. That is when another policeman stepped into the road and held out his arms saying, "it is forbidden". We left the course and rode on a sidewalk for a couple of blocks -- until we found another policeman who allowed us back on the course. This happened at least 4 times. One would say we could not be on the course, one would say we must be on the right, another on the left, and finally that we had to be on the right until 1:00, then switch to the left until another said that we could not be on the course at all again. The "official" looking blue-coated police were very authoritarian and certain of their (contradictory) information. The green-coated officials didn't seem to care much one way of the other. We eventually made it to the location we initially set out to find. We had to cancel our plans to ferry to a second island for free-riding, but at least our viewing location was secure. Apparently you can play mom off against dad until you get the answer you want with the Venice police as long as you're persistent. Police roulette - successful this time.



The entire race was only 20km today. That is very short for a pro ride. I assumed that meant an easy day for the riders, but they actually put in a lot more distance than the race numbers would indicate. Every team rode past our viewing location about 4 times in each direction before the race. They were riding faster than any fast club rides, but probably about 75-85% of race speed. I don't know if they were riding and re-riding the entire course, but they were definitely doing more that a light warm-up. Now that I think about it, perhaps because the team time trial is such a rare event, maybe they were working through their communication and team riding tactics just in time for the race.

Although there are no hills in this area, there was a small rise over a bridge that made for a short viewing distance from our crosswalk. Near the beginning of the warm-up period, I had not seen many teams go by, so I was not calibrated to their speeds. I looked both ways and almost stepping in the road. At the last moment, I thought I saw some motion coming over the rise, so I stepped back. Within about 5 seconds, Team Columbia flew by with Mark Cavendish in the lead position. For those who don't know, Cavendish is the 23 or 24 year old phenom who is considered the fastest human on a bike right now. When it comes to a sprint, he seems to be unbeatable. I think he won 4 stages in the Tour de France last year, which is particularly impressive when you consider his age. If I had stepped into the road and taken out Cavendish, I would have been like the guy Dick Cheney shot in the face and apologized to him for causing so much trouble. Fortunately for both of us, it was a non-event.

I scouted for a while to find a good location to take pictures. I wanted a spot on a curve so you could see the teams fan out and catch more than one face. Then I needed a place that was not terribly backlit. I wanted to be on the out-and-back section of the course so that I could see each team twice. Finally, I wanted to be in one of the barricaded sections to give some perspective for the curve. I found what looked like a good location, which I later confirmed was a good choice. First, I noticed that there was a photographer from the national newspaper next to me. Then, a video crew from New York showed up and dropped a video camera next to me. They were shooting a documentary on Lance that they hope will have theatrical distribution after the Tour de France. The former editor of Winning Magazine was the director of the documentary, who pointed out a guy 5 feet further down who he introduced as the "best cycling photographer in the world". I don't know cycling photographers, but I'll take his word. At any rate, I think I found a pretty decent location. If only I could have had my "real" camera and lenses here...

Although the race was only 20km, viewing it took 11 hours. Left the hotel, road 10 miles to the boat, ferried to the island, rode the time trial course before it was closed, staked out a viewing spot, watched the race, rode back to the boat, ferried back across and rode back to the hotel. Now it is 8:15pm and time for dinner.

I have found that national TV goes to live coverage of the Giro every day from 3:30 - 5:00. They schedule the start time of each stage so that the high drama of each day will fall during that time. I look forward to pulling off to the side of the road at a cafe wherever I happen to be for the next 3 weeks to watch the live coverage. Even when I am not viewing each stage, this will keep things interesting.

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.

Possible, but not Pleasant

Miles from Home - 5432.3 miles

Firsts / Highlights - Traveling by train with coupler bike

Miles Riden - 0.0 miles

Vertical Feet - 0 ft

Route - No ride.

Visualizza Lido di Jesolo in una mappa di dimensioni maggiori

There is no denying it. Travel BY bicycle is wonderful. Travel WITH a bicycle is not. The routine for getting from Riccione to Lido di Jesolo (outside Venice) started last night.

Here is the simple 27-step process to move between cities.

1) Disassemble bike
2) Pack bike (went pretty well)
3) Pack luggage
4) Load bike and lugguge into van
5) Take van from hotel to train station in Rimini
6) Unload bike and luggage
7) Carry and pull 80 pounds of bike, tools and luggage into train station
8) Lift all gear to go down stairs, under the tracks and back up stairs to the designated platform
9) Board train
10) Look for open seat while navigating a 2' wide hallway. Push the day pack, pull the bike and wear the day pack. It is not possible to turn sideways with the backpack on. It is necessary to take heal-to-toe size steps while pulling the bike because you cannot not walk beside to it - and allow other passengers to pass going the other direction.
11) In the seating compartment, hoist the backpack and day pack into the storage bin and store the bike in the hallway. Make friends as people trip over it.
12) Ride like a normal passenger for a few hours
13) Get off the train (see getting on the train)
14) Go down stairs, pass under tracks and up stairs with full floatilla in tow
15) Navigate 200 meters of sidewalk under construction to the bus station.
16) Wait 30 minutes for bus
17) Load bike and luggage into bus hold
18) Ride 85 degree bus for 1 hour
19) Exit bus
20) Unload bike and luggage
21) Wait 20 minutes to transfer to another bus
22) Load bike and luggage
23) Ride bus 15 minutes
24) Exit bus
25) Walk last 1/4 mile with all gear to hotel
26) Take bike and lugguge (via elevator, finally a break) to room.
27) Write about it

This move from city to city would not have been possible without the coupler Moots bike. I don't have any second thoughts about it being the right thing to do, but it would be a stretch to call it convenient.

Lessons learned today:
a) Get seat reservations even if they are not necessary. That limits the amount of moving around needed inside the train looking for a seat.
b) Schedule longer stays in fewer locations
c) Schedule some non-riding destinations where I can leave the bike behind, travel and return for the bike before moving on.
d) Don't get a nasty cold the day before traveling with a bike.

Now for the pay off. I'm off to catch a bus and a boat to have dinner in Venice, and hopefully catch some sunset pictures.

Last Day in Riccione

Miles from Home - 5509.5 miles

Firsts / Highlights - Urbino in le Marche region

Miles Riden - 73.4 miles

Vertical Feet - 6,316 ft

Route - View Today's Route Here.

Today's ride would make another trip to Italy worth the effort. Beautiful scenery, lots of ancient towns and I felt great on the bike all day. It wasn't without effort, however, with over 1 mile of cumulative climbing. The only downside is that only I get to see it. I was not able to take a single picture because my camera failed to startup again. I am going to order a replacement battery to see if I can solve that problem.

I don't know what made today different, but I climbed better than usual. Whenever the grade kicked up to 9% or more today, I was able to accelerate and ride off the front of the group. I got some shouts from behind. I know I got one "Allez" and a couple of "Attack"s. The rest may have been unflattering references to my parents, but in Italian, it sounds good. One of the German riders came up to me in Urbino and said, "You doping?", "I think unnatural". Later on the descent, I had dropped to near the back of the group. He rode up and asked, "Doping defect?".

Scene for the day - As we were arriving in Urbino (you'll have to live with a Wikipedia reference and a stolen image from Google since I don't have any pictures), a helicoper was flying overhead. We were riding on some of the roads that will be used on the Giro d'Italia in a couple of weeks. I theorized that the helicopter was there scouting scenic shots to be used on the internationsal feed during the race. I further theorized that they must have the cameras locked onto us as we climbed a 20% grade on cobblestones into the town. Although the road was only 10 feet from building-to-building, I suspect that their camera telephoto lens was able to track us. That's my theory. You can believe it or not.

It was only one week ago today that I was saying goodbye to everyone at the office. What a week.

Time to pack up my bike and head to the next town.

Rained Out, sort of

Miles from Home - 5509.5 miles

Firsts / Highlights - First cookie in 5 months. First pizza in Italy (prisiutto crudo).

Miles Riden - 5 miles

Vertical Feet - 0 ft

Route - Rode around town for pictures, but no GPS data to show for it.

Tuesday was scheduled to be the long 120km ride. The weather forecast was not looking good, so the guides made a 7:30 call to swap the Tuesday ride with the Wednesday rest day. It turned out that by 9:00, the weather was fine, but the decision had already been made. Fortunately, the rest of the week should be sunny. Tomorrow will be my last day of riding from Hotel Dory before I move on to Venice for the start of the Giro.

The guides for the hotel put in a lot of miles. If you figure 60 miles per day, 6 days per week, and 6 months per year, that is 8,640 miles per year. That's assuming that they don't ride a single mile on their own time. That is twice as many miles as I am likely to ride this summer, even taking 5 months off from work and doing a major tour down the Pacific Coast. When you consider that they are riding in the front of the pack all day, every day, that's a lot of effort.

The guide for my group this week has been Lucia. It is unusual to see Italian women riding bikes at all, much less as a group leader. Our group clearly has not pushed her to her limit.

The head of the guides is Richard (Riccardo) Steiner. He was the coach of the Swiss national team in the Bejing Olympics and brought back 1 gold and 3 bronze metals.

30 Miles Up, 20 Miles Down

Miles from Home - 5509.5 miles

Firsts / Highlights - San Marino

Miles Riden - 46.3 miles

Vertical Feet - 3,455 ft

Route - View Today's Route Here. If you don't think you are seeing everything on this site, post a comment here and I will post instructions.

Our rolling band grew to about 25 today with the addition of some people from England and Switzerland.

We re-traced some of the roads I rode on my first solo day, but the repetition was incidental. We stopped for a bite at Monte Grimano that I really liked on the first day.

The first pictures on today's post came at a price. For the most part, our group is so well matched that no one ever drops more than 100 meters off the back. That is remarkable considering all of the hills. When I rode past these two scenes, however, I had to make a decision. Can I call myself a photographer if I don't at least try to capture those images? I have seen a lot on these rides that I would love to stop and photograph, but there just isn't an opportunity. This time, however, I was climbing a 9% grade and decided that I had to try. I wasn't likely to be back there again. It only took about 2-3 minutes, but that was enough time for the entire group to climb out of site (you can see the last of them on the first image). To make matters worse, I saw another scene 200 meters up the road and was faced with the same decision. Once again, I stopped and shot. Great... I MIGHT have captured a usable picture, but now I had to catch up to the group on a pretty substantial climb. Fortunately, we were within 2-3k from the top, and everyone had stopped for lunch, so I didn't have to use the GPS to get me back to the hotel over the the final 30 miles.

On both of the first two days of riding, I had seen a hilltop town (actually, an independent microstate) called San Marino. It is the highest point in the area and has an old fortress on top of a craggy cliff. From the sea side, it didn't appear to be approachable, unless possibly by cable car or ropes and harness. The inland side was not vertical, but appeared formitably steep. It turns out that a sneak attack on the fortress is possible by bicycle. I wouldn't want to carry much in the way or munitions for an attack, but getting there is possible. This wikipedia article on San Marino is worth a quick view.

I stopped at the top upon arrival and was greeted by an older man. He gave some words of encouragement for making it to the top, then pointed in the other direction and whistled a downward glisando and pointed down (like the roadrunner cayote falling off a cliff). I took that to be a good sign that we had a fun descent coming up. We did.

With about 10 miles to go, I was thinking about getting back to the hotel. I forgot that today was the day to meet out at the family farm. It was a very special place. Stefano's family has had it for a number of generations and it sits high up in the hills. We are not in Tuscany, but it has the feeling of a Tuscan villa. He has all of the riders (and any non-riders) from the hotel out there every Monday. The staff puts out a food spread that is the best I have had yet in Italy. After lunch, they brought around cups of cappocino, grappa and (presumably) homemade lemoncello. Mike Lomas - the bar has been raised. You are going to have to start inviting all of the hotel guests out to your house next ski season.



Image for the day - 25 riders going 21 mile per hour on a remote country road barely wider than a bike path. A Fiat starts to pass the group, but can't get all the way around, so he joins the peleton. We were going about as fast as he could, so he wasn't upset. Another Fiat came from the other direction and both cars had to move their right wheels off the road to make room to pass (without slowing down and causing a mess). When the way was clear, our Fiat beeped once and passed to the front of the group. It wasn't a, "get off the road" kind of beep. Just a, "I'm going around now" kind of beep. It was a potentially dicey situation, but a little cooperation goes a long way.

By the way, if there is any transformational news out there, please let me know. I am completely out of touch right now. I figured out a headline in today's paper that said Lance Armstrong is predicting that Basso will win the Giro, but that is the only story I have seen since arriving. BTW - Lance might really believe that Basso is going to win, he could be pandering to the host country, or he could be playing opossum. He has done it before.