No racing this past weekend for me. I made the decision to save my money and basically just drive around north GA and watch some of the best bike racing you could possible watch in one weekend. On Saturday I drove to the mountains to watch stage 6 of the Tour De Georgia. The riders in the tour were sent over what are probably the two toughest climbs in the southeast! The stage started off in Athens and made a 128 mile journey to Brasstown Bald, the highest peak in Georgia. This was one of the few times that the state opens the road for anyone. Typically the road up to the peak of Brasstown is closed off, but they made an exception for the race promoters so they could torture everyone!
I arrived to the mountains and caught the riders as they were coming off the backside of Hogpen, making their way over to young-harris for the sprint points. Two guys made their way off the front by that point and the postal boys were up at the front putting down some tempo to try and rope them in. After the cops let the road open up a sea of cars headed down Ga-180 over to brasstown. To get to the base of Brass you have to head up Jaxx Gap because brass actually sits at the base of it. When I finally got over there I seriously could not believe how many people were there. Literally from the base of Jaxx up to the top and back down the other side of jaxx there was NOTHING but cars. I ended up parking about 2 miles down the backside of Jaxx and ran with a friend to the base of Brass. We met up with some friends then walked up to the spot where the road first started to steepen up a bit. After standing around for a while and being harassed by a couple cops the first pack finally came through. ALL the big name climbers were in the pack together while postal was setting the pace. Apparently Caesar attacked right out of our site because he was with the group when we saw him. The second group that was riding together was basically all the sprinters. A cop stopped and told us before they got to us to tell us that "super maaaaario is in next pack". I never thought I'd hear the day when a GSP (ga state patrol) officer would be saying "super mario".
I'm out of time right now, gotta go to my next class, when that class is finished I'll post more up later because I've got a LOT more to tell!!!!
I arrived to the mountains and caught the riders as they were coming off the backside of Hogpen, making their way over to young-harris for the sprint points. Two guys made their way off the front by that point and the postal boys were up at the front putting down some tempo to try and rope them in. After the cops let the road open up a sea of cars headed down Ga-180 over to brasstown. To get to the base of Brass you have to head up Jaxx Gap because brass actually sits at the base of it. When I finally got over there I seriously could not believe how many people were there. Literally from the base of Jaxx up to the top and back down the other side of jaxx there was NOTHING but cars. I ended up parking about 2 miles down the backside of Jaxx and ran with a friend to the base of Brass. We met up with some friends then walked up to the spot where the road first started to steepen up a bit. After standing around for a while and being harassed by a couple cops the first pack finally came through. ALL the big name climbers were in the pack together while postal was setting the pace. Apparently Caesar attacked right out of our site because he was with the group when we saw him. The second group that was riding together was basically all the sprinters. A cop stopped and told us before they got to us to tell us that "super maaaaario is in next pack". I never thought I'd hear the day when a GSP (ga state patrol) officer would be saying "super mario".
I'm out of time right now, gotta go to my next class, when that class is finished I'll post more up later because I've got a LOT more to tell!!!!
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