Tour of California
Oops, a day late. I’d intended to post this on Saturday morning. Then I realized it was Valentine’s day. So I did something else. Since I spent at least three minutes on the logo above, I’m going to stay with the original plan. Even if its late by a day…
So here I am in Sacramento, in the midst of a 24 day road trip away from home. When I flew in for the race Friday, I found this sculpture in the Sacramento Aeropuerto amusing and appropriate to my suitcase life this February.
A Story
(rehashed posting from a year ago, updated)
A long time ago in an orchard in Sebastopol California, Ronald Reagan was still president and a young man who had just graduated from Southwest Texas U stopped by for an extended visit while on a bike tour. He hung out for a while, helped us out, drank beer with us, but mostly impressed the Ibis crew with his acoustic and olfactory emissions. It earned him a nickname that I still use to this day but few others know. After the stint in the apple orchard, he went off to schlep fence for the Coors Classic bike race, where he quickly moved up the org chart. The Coors ended, but not his career at bike races
Fast forward a lot of years and a couple more 8-year administrations and I find myself now working for him, along with about 1000 other people here at the Amgen Tour of California. His name is Jim Birrell, he’s the race director and the behind the scenes guy that puts this whole shebang together.
Here’s how it started. A few years ago, Jim approached me asking about some local road knowledge for a new bike race he was developing. He flew out from is office near Atlanta, we opened up some maps on my dining room table, had Levi and Gavin come over to look over the routes with us, made our recommendations and Jim went on his way.
Six months after that I was working for Jim and with the (then) OLN TV crew putting on a bike race. The Tour of California was born.
Four short years later for me (and no doubt long years for Jim), the ToC has become one of the biggest races in the world, and a MUST TRY TO ATTEND race for European pro racers. It’s become so popular in the pro peloton, that many teams are turned away each year. One of the great things about this race is that the teams are made up of US domestic teams and European Pro Tour teams alike, allowing up and coming racers to compete against multiple World Champions, Olympians, and seasoned Euro pros.
Over the next 9 days, I’ll be working with the Versus TV crew again, providing local road knowledge so we can get those scenic shots of the Peloton riding through the beautiful California countryside.
Get, this, I’m road tripping for 800+ miles with Bob Roll sitting next to me. Which means I get to hear the real Bob, not the TV Bob. Yes they’re different and no I’m not going to tell you a lot of the things he says.We’re trying to keep this thing safe for work.
I also get to watch Phil Liggett charm the ladies. And watch Paul gracefully correct Phil’s occasionally errant factoids.
This year, my plan is to chronicle the organization behind the Tour of California. There’s enough rider worship out there, so I’m going to talk about the people behind the event. And some of the staggering numbers. There are 1000 of us on staff as I mentioned. Over 5000 volunteers. I’m not going to spill all the numbers today. I’ll do that through the week, as time permits.
So the message this Saturday Sunday morning is, stay tuned, tell your friends. Behind the scenes is what you’ll get.
Until later today…or maybe tomorrow.
Scot [AKA Chuck Ibis]
PS, check out my Twitter feed on the upper right of this not-a-blog’s home page. That will be more frequently updated.