Tour of Utah

My daughter Megan had a soccer tournament in SLC that coincided with the Tour of Utah.  I volunteered my parents abode to house the entire team, (15 girls) the coach, and two mom's.  Since I also stayed there I guess that makes me the "Soccer Dad."

In an incredible stroke of luck, her games on Thursday and Friday started at 7pm. Leaving me with plenty of time to ride and observe the ToU. 

I decided to start in Morgan and head up past East Canyon Reservoir to the KOM at Big Mountain. I was hoping to get there before the pros and watch them roll over the top. 

East Canyon Reservoir

Looking up the climb.  My avg speed 5.5mph. The pros avg speed 12.6

Evidence that I made it to the top.

At the summit I found out that the peleton was still an hour behind me. I didn't want to wait that long so I bombed back down to the Reservoir and saw them hustle by.
Sorry about my fat digit occupying the left side of the frame. All the important stuff is on the right, that's Vandeveld in the Yellow and just behind, to his left is the indomitable Jens Voigt in the red and white helmet.  Jens happens to be the only pro athlete that I would like to have dinner with, love that guy.

A full minute after the group went by I had a Mean Joe Green moment when a struggling Garmin/ Sharp rider threw this at me.  I guess Garmin has Camelbak bottles to spare.

The peleton left lots of other bottles along the way, none were of this high quality.  There were 4-5 degenerates on bikes, with back packs following the procession and picking up all the cast offs.  I asked them if they were finding anything good and the response was, "free bottles for life bro."  Thumbs up to you bike riding Jeff Spicolli.


Oh yeah, the girls won the gold medal in the U-14 age group.  That was more actually more exiting than the race.