Amgen Tour of California

It’s no secret that Dave is a huge cycling fan. So it was no surprise that we would venture out to see the riders in the Amgen Tour of California when one of the race routes went through our town.

It took a lot of planning ahead and packing of baby items to get out of the house for a few hours but we did it and we had a great time - and Carter did great! He slept most of the time we were gone and ate from a bottle like a champ when it was time to eat. I think we’re getting the hang of getting out of the house with him :-)

We started the day at the race starting point and walked around hoping to see some of the more popular cyclists coming out of their team RVs. Lucky for us we were walking by the BMC vehicle just as Tejay van Garderen was coming out! At the time he was the race leader (had the best overall time) so there was a swarm of people hanging around him, but Dave was able to get a pretty good photo!

After wandering around for a bit we headed over to the start of the race to watch everyone take off.

That’s where we ran into our friends Andrew and Nicole. We hung out with them and walked around downtown where the race sponsors had tents and booths set up with various cycling equipment, souvenirs, etc. were set up.

Dave and Andrew thought it would be funny to buy giant cutouts of Peter Sagan’s head (even crazier that the team was actually selling these) and carry them around. At least they made form some funny pictures.

In case you were wondering, that head now lives in our garage. Maybe I should host a competition for the best speech bubble phrase to put next to the head on the wall…

Anyway, after checking out the festival we had lunch and then headed to the sprint point where the riders were going to be passing through town again. When the riders came by the crowd started to cheer and whistle which totally scared Carter. Poor baby! I guess we won’t be winning any parent of the year awards for bringing an infant to a loud bike race. We’ll be sure to be more sensitive about potential loud noises when we take Carter out to events. At least Dave got some great photos of the riders as they passed us.

After the race we all headed back downtown for nachos and a beer. It was a fun day and we enjoyed taking Carter to his first bike race! We are definitely looking forward to more fun outings as a family.