Amgen Bike Tour

 The sidewalk looks pretty empty, but it had filled up a bit before the bikes came by.

Lots of course marshals came through in the 5-10 minutes before the bikes.

 I did not get a picture of it, but there was a course van that came through and had speakers on top that told us the lead 4 were about half a mile from us, in a break away, and they had about a 4 minute gap on the rest of the field.  We also saw the souvenir truck go by. It was like a big trailer wrapped in Amgen logo stuff and the side rolled up to become a moving store.  He didnt' stop where we were, though. There was also a news helicopter circling above as the bikes passed.

Rock Tape drove by throwing muscle tape to the spectators (while the road was still open)

the lead 4 were in breakaway w/about a 4 minute gap on the main group

Here come the lead 4

followed closely by their team cars

the main group just crested the hill, they were wide across the road but by the time they reached us it was mostly single file

thats the last guy, it took maybe 30 seconds for all the riders to pass, there were no stragglers.

tons of cars w/bikes riding on top

that's it, the whole thing passed in maybe 1 minute?? Super fast.

It was pretty neat to see the huge wall of bikes come up over the hill in the distance. They had already climbed up and over Mt. Diablo, and Ygnacio hill when they passed us, and it's in the mid 80's today.  Pretty neat. I'm glad the community showed up to cheer, it was looking pretty lean when we first go there, but a class from the high school came out and took over a corner, and a lot of the folks from our neighborhood were out.  I'm glad the kids got to see it, but I do wish our family cyclist, Brian, could have been here to see it. I know he had been looking forward to it, but I'm very happy he had a job to be at instead! I'm uploading more pictures and video to the photo site now.