Amgen Tour of California 2017 Ryer Island

#atoc tour of california break at Ryer Island.

A post shared by curtis corlew (@cccorlew) on May 14, 2017 at 12:46pm PDT

When Rich, and old friend, messaged his plan to ride out to Ryer Island in the California Delta to watch the Tour of California pass by not one, but three times, Tricia quickly replied "IN!"

On a beautiful California Day we met at Clarksburg and rode a leisurely 15 miles to the bridge he'd picked. We waited by the bridge until the cycling gods came past, ever so fast and ever so effortlessly. First the four-man break, than two minutes later, the peloton. Then another lap, then a turn to leave the island. What a blast.

Sure, standing by the roadside sounds boring, but with good company and bikes to drool on it's pretty cool. Really. I even managed to shoot video as they went by so many times.

Crossing the bridge onto Ryer Island

Leaving Ryer Island

Our leader, Rich, in the green jersey

A short clip of the second lap

Tricia shot this video of the peloton leaving the island

Tour of California prologue 2009

Tyler Hamilton of Rock Racing and a fanboy on the right.

The Tour of California prologue was cold, windy and totally amazing. Tricia and I almost took our bikes, but it looked like rain so we ended up being pedestrians. You can read all about the tour on a zillion blogs and news sites. I've been going to Versus TV, CyclingNews.com and the Fredcast.com.

But here's what it was like to be there: I've never seen so many bicycles and riders. The teams park trailers on side streets near the start. You can walk up and watch them warm up on bike stands that hold their bikes. You can oogle their equipment. I got to see that Rock Racing rides Kestrel bikes like mine, only they do it faster. Some teams hand out posters and other swag. It's amazing to be so close.

There's a large "Lifestyle Fair" near the start,which is really a lot of mostly bike-oriented booths that ether have cool stuff on display, or are selling cycling stuff. We couldn't resist the great deals at the Hincapie booth, and ended up with a jacket and some shorts.

As much fun as it is to watch cycling gods zoom past, it's impossible to know exactly what's going on. I took my daughter's iPod touch hoping to get a wi-fi signal so I could keep up, but it didn't work. So near the end we found a brew pub and watched on TV, where we could see the whole course and know what the times were.

After the race we went to a restaurant for a meetup with cycling bloggers. We got to meet many of the people whose blogs I follow. David of the Fredcast, Fritz of Cyclelicious, and Jonathan Tessler from Bicycle.net. It was very cool to find out the people I read and listen to have actual faces and drink beer.

Tour of California

What a blast. Cyclists everywhere, and bike swag galore. There were amazingly fast and cool pros. There was nifty free stuff. There was even great weather. I couldn't have asked for more that at the prologue of the Amgen Tour of California of at Stanford.
I went with Joyce. We were going to leave early, but kept saying "one more rider" until it was such a short time till Levi was up we waited for him.
Here's Levi zipping by with Joyce in the background. We had so much fun I talked Tricia — who didn't go Sunday — into joining my NorCal Bikeforums.net friends for a ride into Point Reyes Station to see stage 1.
We drove 1.5 hours, rode 10 miles, goofed off. Watched cyclists scream by for 20 seconds, rode 10 miles, drove 1.5 hours and had a great time no matter how stupid it sounds.
Here's the peleton going faster than fast. Real time. It's what we waited for, then we went home.