Sorry, sorry, sorry for the lack of audio content. The interweb is a bit sketchy her on Tybee Istland, GA, the site of the Tour de Georgia staging grounds for pre-race activity and the start line for today’s stage. I’ve been here since Friday working for the organization helping the teams get ready for the week ahead. Saturday and Sunday consisted of vehicle distribution, a managers meeting, the rider presentation in Savannah, a flat tire (already) on one of the team’s Volvo wagons. I did shoot some video for the ATT Blue room site - click here - it should be up soon. In the meantime, enjoy these pictures:

Backstage at the Team Gala Presentation.

With Race Director, Chris Aronhalt pushing the buttons.

Chris Gutowsky and Frankie Andreu at the press conference.

Former professional cyclist, Clark Sheehan, works with staging crew and rents us the course side fencing. Here he demonstrates his chopper riding school.

Half of the announcing team, Jeff Roake, studies his tech manual.

There is no mistaking a Team Maco Polo / Trek bicycle. They are here from China and got a 4th place on today’s stage.

The have some very trick carbon number plate holders.

Nice paint with matching bottle cages.

And the brains behind the operation of Marco Polo, Todd McKean and Remko Kramer.

Gate C10, Greater Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky International Airport, Delta flight to Savannah (which was just delayed).  I am on my way to the

Tour de Georgia to work as the Competition Coordinator and assistant to the . It’s really a glorified babysitting job, but great fun. I did the same last year at the Tours of Missouri and Georgia. I’ll be issuing team cars, shuttling around teams, answering questions about numbers, fines, race protocol, unlocking locked-in keys to rv’s, shepherding riders to the medical suite, helping to coordinate the awards ceremony at the end of each stage, wrangling riders for doping , press conferences, etc., and the list goes on.

One new twist this year is we are planning on a daily video report. I’ll be doing some impromptu behind-the-scenes type of stuff each morning before the stage starts and after it is over. That’s the plan anyway. You’ll be able to see the footage here on the blog, at the Tour de Georgia website, and here at the ATT Blueroom site.

If you can win the 2008 Tour de Georgia these Adidas Gazelle’s in Astana blue and yellow are yours. I’ll be there again as the Competition Coordinator (more on that later) breaking them in. I think we are about the same size. Good luck!

John

PS — I’ve got a pair of these in reserve for you know who…

This series of photos shows rider attacking me while we attempted to bridge up to a three man break. This happened about half way into a 100k race. It was fairly windy and I had already been out there a while when said attacker bridged to me. “Why did you attack me?” I asked after the race. “Because you weren’t pulling as hard as I was,” he replied. We ended up not going anywhere after I stopped working when he started attacking. I had someone up the road (who ended up winning the race). 

You can see I was confused. Ummm, you think you can go it alone? Good luck.

Anyway, here is teammate the other-other John winning. Check out those crowds!

And me suffering for a solo 2nd place.

What’s missing from this picture of the break from last weekend’s OVR race? A Huntington Bank rider. We’ll see if we can remedy that situation this weekend.