Done with the 1 stage (Dario)

It was a decent ride. A bit cold but good. I went easy (at least I think I did). It took me about 4 hrs and 17 minutes to do the 83.6 miles which implies an average speed of 19.52 mph.

The only incident to report was a flat tired 200 yards from the hand off, so I rode a bit on my rim.

This first ride was quite interesting; I was at the start line about around 8:30am, there were people but not that many, everything seemed very informal without any check in procedure. I wait there for a while until I started to get cold and decide to ride around for a few minutes. As we got closer to the start time (9:00am) people started to gather in front of the hotel main entrance. Then a girl singed the US national anthem and at 9:00am on the dot we took off, escorted by the police. Despite the fact that we had 509 miles to go the pace was quite frisky, it remained me of the team Sheeper ride when Tim said that we should start slow and warm up but everyone start hammering right from the get go so given that I have been in more than a few of those rides I imagine I was well prepare for this type of the start.
After a few miles thru the city we made a left on San Francisquito Canyon Rd. and we were finally on our way. As we climbed in the canyon the weather got a bit nastier, colder and foggy (I was glad that I had my vest with me). However the gradient of the climb was fairly mellow so I stayed in my big chain rim all the way. I keep leap frogging a few team, especially the recumbent bikes teams that go up very slow but go super fast on the flat and descents. I was supposed to meet the crew at the first summit (25 miles into the race at 3,330 ft of elevation), since I was moving a bit faster than planned I was wondering if I was going to get here before 10:15am (the crew was planning to be there not before that time), it turned out that I ended up getting around 10:30 so everything workout perfectly. I changed my bike to my tt bike and I started descending and riding with a nice tail wing for the next 25 miles. The plan after that was to meet the crew at the bottom of Windmills climb and see if I would change my bike or not to do this second mountain section. Given the gradient of the first mountain section I decided to stay in my tt bike (to save sometime) and just get some water. I met the crew one more time at the top of the hill and from there they went to pick up Jessica and I descended into Cali City. This part of the ride was fast and with tail and cross winds. Most of the relay team were close to each other so I keep seeing support vehicles everywhere, which was great because I needed to take a few turns and I was glad that I didn’t have to check the turn sheet. Finally I made my left turn into 58N and I had 14 miles of time trialing until the exchange. As I am going thru Cali City and with just 200 yards to go I roll over some rocks getting a pinch flat tire. I decided to keep going and take extra caution while turning into Neuralia where the TS1 was.
As I rolled into TS1 Jessica is there waiting and asking for the baton. It took me a while to get it out from my pocket which generated some anxiety, hopefully I got it out on time and she was in her way.
It was windy in that corner; I washed myself, changed my clothes and got into the car to follow Jessica.
It took us a while to catch up with her; she was moving and moving fast.

Dario