What happened? We have not even started our car yet!!

Giro Stage 11
Up at: 7:00
Breakfast: 7:30
Depart hotel: 11:00
Race starts: 12:45
Today we started in Marostica at the base of the cool Castle that Max took us to visit last night. So it was cool to see it in day light too. Castles like this amaze me every time. We have nothing this old here in the US. But old castles (or churches or other buildings) litter the European countryside. It is one of the things that keeps me from napping in the car each day. I want to see all the Italian countryside. Don’t get me wrong. I still WANT to sleep in the car. It’s just oo pretty here to sleep through it all.
Every stage we have a narrow area were we park our cars just before the start. It is a fully fenced in area so we can do al of our last minute tasks (if needed) in peace. Without having people milling about it makes it a bit easier JUST BEFORE the start.
We have a radio in our car that is called Radio tour. It is the head official (commissar) who tells us of all that goes on in the race. If someone flats, needs food/water or just want’s to talk to their team car they put a hand up and the commissar calls up his team. Well, we had (as always each day) radio tour on and sitting near our cars. We knew the race was just about to start so we were almost ready to go/start ourselves. Geoff was listening to Radio tour and said the race just started AND there was a breakaway from the gun. Well, the breakaway rider was Benoit Joachim and that put a bit of fun in our team (cars) at the start. We have not even started our cars yet and the race had started AND we had a rider in the (Solo) breakaway. We had Benoit’s spare bike on our car already so no need to coordinate with the first car to get it from them. So we just zipped up to Benoit as fast as possible. We finally got to Benoit after flying through (race) traffic after about 6 or 8Ks.
Boy. What happened? We did not even start our cars and Benoit gets into a break? Crazy!!
Paulo Savoldelli won the stage today so a treat for the team as it really helped boost the morale of the team. We had good morale to start with but a boost for any team even if you are already happy so far. It put us in second overall in the classification so tonight a bit of champagne to celebrate. It was more of a token drink as most of the riders did not really drink it but took an honorary sip to toast Paulo’s success.
What a cool view of a lake in front of out hotel. Again we are the only team at tonight’s hotel. What a treat to NOT have to fight for simple things like water, space etc.