ToCA Stage 2, with a Taste of Irony

How badly do you know we wanted to ride stage 1? As a testament to that, as much as I hate riding the trainer, I still suffered through that exact thing last night. Here's a quick sub-three minute video that zips through all sorts of stuff that happened on the opening day, stage 1 including a glimpse of trainer time.Scope more over here.Life is good post-stage 2. Through some very impressive retooling of the race in the very last minute courtesy of the near two feet of snow that fell on Squaw Valley, the folks at the Tour of California rerouted us around Donner Pass so we could then zip back on course from Nevada City to Sacramento. Here's our highway drive around the Pass. We drove from Squaw for over an hour, nearly entirely all downhill, before we ducked below snowline.The only irony of all this snow-altered-stages one and two (besides the other irony) is that I spent nearly two weeks taking in the high altitude of Lake Tahoe. So, I now know the first 1.667 stages like the back of my hand, which is information that is now trivial since I don't need it because we didn't race those 1.667 stages. At least not in 2011. Furthermore taking in that high altitude for two weeks gave me ample acclimation... acclimation to race pace at altitude which I never had to use since we're now at sea level. Oops.So the stage unfolded in typical fashion. Attack attack attack, breakaway went, teams chased themselves and other teams down, then the break really established itself and stayed away for a good long while, I rode around Wurf, our GC hope, and Oss and Sagan. Timmy Duggan slayed the front of the race with the HTC boys so I gave him a bottle for his hard work. He looked thirsty. It was windy. Then after 2:50 of racing in a 3 hour race, it rained for 10 minutes. PERFECT for the righteously fast finale. Aaaand Sagan was 2nd. He's as fast as it was windy as it was rainy. Which is to say VERY.Massage, dinner, reading books time.