2011 Amgen Tour - Stage 2 Start

Good news from the Amgen Tour. The start is being moved from Tahoe to Nevada City, California, and start time moved back to 12:15. A couple of pics I borrowed from VeloNews shows why. Let's hope there's an alternative stage planned whenever there's a Tahoe stage on the agenda in the future.

Btw, VeloNews reported that 6 motorcycles went down scouting the course. I've crawled over these passes a few times trying to get to a ski resort in the thick of the storm. The stretch pictured above, right behind a snowplow spreading sand, in a truck with meaty mud and snows, and we barely made it to South Lake Tahoe.

I sure wish they'd done this stage yesterday, with a start in Sacramento, turning stage #2 into a slow, safe, epic climbing stage, ending at the top of Donner Pass. Maybe the Amgen Tour should just commit to a Sacramento start each and every year to anchor the event.

In any event, it's sunny here in Sacramento, so if the weather hold, it should be a pretty day of mostly dry weather. Kudos to the Amgen guys for finally getting ahead of things a bit. It might still be pretty windy, but this is an almost completely downhill stage, so I doubt it will matter.