Tour of California

This past weekend Ben and his brother Ty decided they wanted to go to California to watch the Tour of California bike race. We decided to make it a family trip so we loaded up the girls and headed down to watch. We left early Friday morning so that we could see stage 6 in San Bernardino. This was the mountain stage of the race and was pretty much up hill for 136 miles. At 12:00 we got up to the spot where we wanted to watch the race, but they weren't expecting the riders to show up until between 1:30 and 2:00. The girls had a chance to play for a while until the bikers arrived. We all got burned that day but it was fun to watch.

Ady and Emma had fun playing in the sand:)

Ady racing down the hill.

Emma showing off her big smile:)

This was the first rider that we saw (I don't even know who it is) but we were excited when he finally showed up. We started seeing Highway Patrolman coming by about 30 minutes before any riders and kept thinking they were going to show up at any time.

Here is the first group of riders that came by. There were about four or five different groups that were all chasing the lead group.The number of cars that followed each group was crazy. There were so many cars loaded with bikes. One of the teams threw us a water bottle and the Jelly Belly team threw us some jelly beans.

This is one of the last riders that came past us. After the point where they passed us they still had about 40 miles to go. We drove along part of the course and it was hard for me to imagine climbing up all of those hills on a bike!

On Saturday the girls woke up bright and early. We met up with our friends Crystal and Mike and headed down to the beach. The water was soooo cold so we just played in the sand. We walked around a little bit and explored and found some little crabs and some starfish. Ady and Emma loved playing in the sand. Ben and Ty took off from the beach and headed down to LA to watch stage 7 of the race - the Time Trial.

I decided to stay and let my girls play with Crystal's family for a while. They had a great time. We went to a little league baseball game and then went back to Crystal's. She has lemon, orange, and pummelo trees in her back yard so we picked a few to eat. They were probably the best oranges (and lemon) that I have ever had. They were so juicy.

The four little girls - Ady, Abbie, Emma, Sophie

Ben and Ty went to the time trial and had fun watching all of the riders. This is the leader getting ready to go (the leader always wears a yellow jersey).

This is one of the guys along the time trial bike course.

This is Levi Leipheimer - a member of the Radio Shack team - cooling down after his ride.

On Sunday morning we went to the starting line for the final stage of the race. It was really fun to walk around and see all of the different teams getting ready for the race. They all had huge motor homes and cars parked next to them loaded with bikes.

Ady, Ty, and Ben in front of a Radio Shack team sign. We were disappointed because we were hoping to see Lance Armstrong racing but on Thursday he got in a bike accident and his team manager pulled him from the race.

Ady & Ben in front of the Radio Shack team car.

Ady posing:)

This is Michael Rogers - the guy who was leading the race at the start of stage 8 and who ended up winning the race - wearing his yellow jersey. He came out of his team bus and picked up his bike about 3 feet from us.

This is the beginning of Stage 8.

Once the race started we headed down the road to watch more of the race. The last stage was a loop that they repeated 4 times so we got to see them a lot.

We had a great weekend and the girls actually did pretty good. They did kind of drive me crazy a few times but all in all they were excellent. Ben and Ty loved watching the race and never stopped talking about it on the drive home:)