Day 10, Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

Day 10, Tuesday, May 17^th

Okay, we’ve had quite the day.  Paula just finished up with the ship’s log from yesterday so we posted that.  And I told her I’d take care of the ship’s log entry for today. 

We got up early and joined Sheila for breakfast in the house.  Then we did some grocery shopping and getting some food ready for tonight’s dinner.  Sheila told us we would be dining with Connie Carpenter Finney and her husband, Davis Finney.  Connie of course is an Olympic gold medalist cyclist.  Davis’ cycling history is legendary also.  You simply can go to the wiki’s and see.  I used to be a recreational bike racer in the early/mid ‘80’s and these two were hero’s of mine.  More later.

We borrowed Sheila’s BMW (convertible 325i, too cold to put the top down though) and drove up to Modesto to watch the finish of stage 3.  We found a good parking spot and then walked around a bit to get the lay of the finish area.  We spotted a great place to watch.  At 400 meters from the finish there was a square brick thing in front of the library where people can drop their books off.  It was right at the curb line.  About 4-5’ high.  We climbed up on it and sat there on our own little viewing platform.  A gal had spotted it at the same time as us so all three of us shared it.  We fended off a few others that thought they might be able to squish up with us.  Buck wasn’t too sure about it.  We spent about an hour visiting with Joyce.  I called Eric and he pulled up the Tour on the tv and told us they were 10miles out.  What a great finish.  Bunch sprint. 

We headed back to Sheila’s and the girls got dinner whipped up.  Davis and Connie arrived shortly after 7:00 pm.  Davis has Parkinson’s (check out www.davisphinneyfoundation.org ) disease and had a meeting with his doctors at Stanford.  I introduced myself and I had a hard time trying to be all cool and stuff without making a fool of myself.  We had dinner and then sat down to watch the tv coverage of today’s stage.  Their son, Taylor Phinney, rides on Och’s team.  Yesterday he got 8^th.  He’s a good sprinter (duh, with those parents) so we were figuring to see him at the line in good position.  He got 8^th again today.  Davis spotted him a bit before the end and said he was just in a bad spot and couldn’t get a good lead out.  Oh well.  He’s only 20 yrs. old.  Davis found Buck a very willing ball player and gave him a good workout fetching the tennis ball.  Connie told us about his book, The Happiness of Pursuit: A Father's Courage, a Son's Love and Life'sSteepest Climb.  It was just released.  I pulled up my laptop and bought it for my Nook right there.  This was just the secret to getting my picture with them.  I told them since he can’t autograph a e-book, would he mind taking a picture with me?  Yee Haw!  Got the shot.  They are very nice down to earth type people. 

We finished cleaning up, made our game plan for tomorrow (Och got us VIP tickets to the finish line at the top of the climb above San Jose, we’re big shots you know).  We said “good night” and headed out to our rv.  Buck fell asleep while Paula was finishing yesterday’s log entry.  Good thing, we’ve got another big day planned for tomorrow.

Thanks for reading along.  Good night.  Here’s our picture album so far: https://picasaweb.google.com/100749274751761822164/TourOfCaliforniaVacation?authkey=Gv1sRgCNjrmcD-vYHE1AE#