No more Mr. Nice Guy

Giro Stage # 2
Up at 7:00
Breakfast at 7:30
Suitcases ready for the truck at 9:30
Depart for race at 10:10 (70k Transfer)
Our normal operation for departing the finish area is the bus leading the way cutting a path for the team cars to follow. Unfortunately I was last in our team caravan back to the hotel, I was Mr. nice guy let a civilian car turn in front of me. I suddenly watched as my team disappeared. My only real concern here at the Giro is not so much the work load or different tasks we do here in Europe that we don’t normally do in America. But rather, it is the fear of driving by myself and having to find my way. I can do it but maybe not as efficient or quick as possible. So I want to follow as much as possible to eliminate driving alone. We have radios so we can talk between each of out team cars. I heard Geoff say (nicely) to not let cars between me and the team car in front of me. I was now passing cars with a bit of foolishness. But I wanted to get back to our cars. Next time I’m not going to let the car in front of me get ANY gap.
Giro note: Colors
There is a trend to have matching colors to represent different things. Paulo Bettini is our current Olympic Road champion and his bike has gold decals to represent his gold medal win in Athens. Also his helmet, handlebar tape and saddle are also gold in color. Daniel Diluca is the current Pro Tour points leader and that jersey is predominately white. So, he has matching white shorts.
With Paulo Bettini now in the leaders jersey, today’s theme is Pink. Since his jersey is pink (which he earned yesterday) the Quickstep team showed up with a team car with predominantly PINK (with blue) graphics as opposed to their normal silver car (with blue) graphics. They obviously had to do this in advance. So the car was prepared in advance in Milan in hopes he would get the leaders jersey. When he indeed got it, they had this special car trucked down to our city. Wow! Too cool.
Other teams at our hotel tonight: Liberty Siguros