February 2009

Towards the end of February the Tour of California, a cycling stage race, came through Clovis. For anyone wondering where Clovis is, it's on the east side of Fresno, and we live three houses down from the city lines. Anyway...it was extra exciting because it was Lance Armstrong's first race in his return to professional cycling, so we being cycling fans had to go see it. Kevin used his magical people skills and found an old friend, a police officer, who was working the event and got him a good spot in the VIP section right near the finish line. I unfortunately had an appointment then had to pick up Emily just at the time the race was coming to an end in Clovis, so I missed all the cycling part. But we drove downtown anyway and got to see all the team cars, loaded up with bikes on top, driving out and we got to walk through the finish line area and feel the excitement.

This is one of several of Kevin's shots as the cyclists came zooming across the finish line. I don't know who it is...Kevin actually got Lance Armstrong in one of his photos (we can only tell because of his special yellow and black bike), but he said they were going so fast and there was so much dust from all the chalk on the ground he couldn't really see anything but a big blur of wheels and bodies!

Here we are after the fact. They had a bunch of booths set up from sponsors and stuff, so we walked around those and looked at the $15,000 bikes and what not. Kevin wants one. I told him no. [A side note: Kevin put this photo up on Facebook and someone wondered why he is holding Allison and I'm holding Emily - you'd think he'd hold the bigger child, right? Well it's just because Kevin was carrying Allison already and Emily was walking, then she didn't want to be in the picture so I had to pick her up and hold her for the photo. That's all...I really don't carry her around-she's too heavy for me!]