I’ll take the long road please
Tour de Georgia — Stage 6
Lake Lanier Islands to Stone Mountain Park
Today the transfer from hotel to hotel took teams on a narrow mountain
road. This was the route the race organizers plotted in the race bible
for all who had to go from hotel to hotel. It was basically the shortest
route. There was one shorter route but I think it was on an even more
challenging road (more twisty/mountainous). The route that they plotted
from hotel to hotel this year was almost the exact same as last year.
I had driven that route last year and I was going SLOOOOW. Not the route
I would take in a big truck. Maybe in a two seater sports car to slice
through the turns at some (reasonable of course) speed. So, I decided to
go the highway route. But it took me on a sort of big loop. But it was
almost predominately all highway. A little up and down but no real
mountains and not twisty at all. If it is the same next year, I will
take this route again. I think it was actually fairly quick. I’ll take
the long road please.
We are directly next a big mall. One of the bigger malls I’ve seen. Not
the biggest, but damm big enough. I’m curious how many Euros did some
shopping today. I know Eki did. He always does. Maybe he does not
actually buy something every time. But he goes and at least window shops
and gets information on something (electronic) that he thinks he may
need in the future (near future). We have Eki’s old Race bike from last
year with us. He brought it for the Tour of California to do some
riding/training and left it with me for this race. He rode almost
everyday during the Tour of California. But with the mall so close by I
did not even pull his bike out or ask him if he wanted to ride. I did
not even pump the tires. I just knew he was being pulled magnetically to
the mall. For sure that was going to occupy his post race — pre dinner
“time” today.
There was an extension cord that the hotel set up with a splitter. But
there were tons of teams hooked up to it. I did not dare hook up my
truck to that power source as I knew I would be the one to put it over
the edge and trip the breaker. The hotel had predicted this and got a
big generator set up in the parking lot. So I took power from that
generator. The only issue was that the generator was sort of close to
the hotel (and close to some rooms) and they could not run it overnight.
So I hope that my fridge was cold enough to make it through the night
when they shut off the generator. I always tell the soigneurs to NOT run
both the washer and dryer to prevent the possibility of tripping the
breaker. But here I though the generator was good enough to do it all.
The soigneurs were doing the last run of laundry and I was outside by
chance. So, I said that maybe it will work to do both washer and dryer.
I was a moron!! It did not even run for 1 second when it tripped the
breaker on the generator. No big deal I thought. We can just reset it
and try it again. But with only one machine going at a time again. But
for some reason it continued to trip the breaker even with the one
machine at a time regimen. Lucky there was laundry on our floor of the
hotel and it was a big machine to do all the laundry remaining and then
some. Lucky for me the hotel had laundry machines.