Tour of Missouri, stage 2

hey there everyone:
today was pretty sick. Hincapie put the wood to it and had some sort of 17 minute gap with a handful of other riders. In the end, he held on to win the stage and get into yellow.

the day started off right with a continental breakfast at the drury inn, which consisted of apple juice, yogurt, and a donut. impressive. then we had an 80 mile transfer down to Clinton for the race start. we roll out of the drury, and started kickin it down the highway, when a state trooper pulls up to the front of our caravan and offers to take us through to the race start. Our lead car accepts the offer, and the only stipulation from the trooper is that we "stay glued to his tail". No worries. The mavic caravan cranks it up to around 80 and we blow out of Kansas City on a mission. Once we are free of traffic, the trooper touches 90 and the moto's are flat-out. I'm riding moto1 and i've got about 700 more rpm's before i'm pingin the rev limiter, so i tuck in and pin it. We pick up some other troopers and race teams heading to the race, and we have ourselves a convoy. We roll through small towns, 2 lane roads, and highways to end up at our destination, some 80 miles from the hotel, in just over an hour. I guess for this trooper, his race started early. Well, mavic is not one to complain, so we give our escort a nod and head over to the start-- a good hour and a half ahead of schedule.

at anyrate, james and i start looking for something to do in this one-horse town. Then, right there on the town square, we spy a daylight donuts. boom, we're there. there is a wonderful cross section of america eating donuts, drinking coffee, and pondering just what the hell all those skinny, hairless, tanned up guys are up to anyways. we stroll to the counter and order some fresh hot donuts and chocolate milk. it's go time. james proceeds to get the girl behind the counter to trade the vintage daylight donuts t-shirt she is wearing for a mavic t-shirt he is wearing. he gets the shirt off her back, and a free t-shirt worth 30 bucks at your favorite thrift store. she gets the shirt off his back, and a piece of immortality in her small town.

you may be wondering what my deal is with donuts. well, the short of it is that i grew up in the midwest, surrounded by a plethora of local donut shops. None of this crappy punched out dough from safeway, but real handcrafted donuts that were mouthwatering and satisfying. When i moved to boulder, and realized that it was nothing but safeway donuts, and some sort of pimple-inducing garbage known as krispy-kreme, it should be easy to understand my frustration.

so, here in Clinton Missouri we have a family run establishment that is thriving, serving fresh donuts, bearclaws, pinecones, krulers, coffee, and chocolate milk. so, if i ever seemingly drop off the face of the map, check for me in some small town donut shop... bellied up to the bar next to an old sharecropper and a 30 year old woman who looks she has been alive for 68 years.

alright, so back to the bike race. that is what its all about, right? right. The race rolls out, and almost immediately a break takes off, and gets a few minutes. i'm moto1 today, though, so i hang back with the peloton. a few flats go off, and we change out wheels like the pros we are. pretty soon, the pack starts slowing down, and we end up riding like 16 miles an hour for over an hour. that's how the break got 15 minutes. it's not like they were riding that fast, its just that the peloton was riding so slow. it was rather interesting... if this was some sort of colorado amateur race, no one would ever let any break like that get away. but these guys just didn't seem to care. it was weird.

so, basically, the mid portion of the race was pretty uneventful, except for me rockin with contador on my wheel. there was some sort of crash, and he got caught behind it. yours truly pulled the psuedo-legal tow back to the main field.

the finish in springfield went off pretty smoothly, some rad finishing circuits with a ton of spectators. we gathered back up the wheels we loaned out and busted out of town to get to branson. branson is a totally wierd place. there really isn't even a town that i can see, just a string of opry-houses, souvenir-houses, and neon signage. There is some sort of Hilton hotel and promenade thing... basically imagine the only thing cool that you would want to see is exactly like Flatirons Crossing mall. So, we were rather let down, but our expectations were low to begin with, so where does that leave us?

alright, so tomorrow is the time-trial, and it is only 18 miles long. i guess this favors the non-TT types, like 'big' george hincapie. we'll see. i'll be standing out on the course under a yellow tent, watching the world go by.

over&out.