About 15 seconds of the Tour of Missouri

Taylor and I got to see just a brief bit of the finish of the Tour of Missouri yesterday. I picked up Taylor after school and we rushed downtown to the Shrine Mosque to see the finish. I took us way too long to find a parking spot, so we missed the first “pack” and saw the second “pack” from about 100 yards away as a blur of color and motion. It was there and then it was gone in a moment!!? We saw a few stragglers up close and went around and saw all of the teams as they were back at the vehicles. Quite a sight indeed. They made it from Clinton, MO, about 120 miles in about 4 1/2 hours!! It takes about 2 hours to make that trip at highway speeds!! They were traveling about 40 MPH when they “blurred” past us at the finish. Here is a friend of Natalie Nance’s dad’s blog, who has some great pictures of the finish.? Take some time to read the entire post–especially the last paragraph.? Taylor and I saw some guys coming out of the medical tent all banged up–don’t know if it was the armadillo or not that caused their bandages!!

I’m glad we did it and can add it to the list of things we’ve done as a father and son. I think the Tour is coming again for the next 3 years or so, but will probably not be down here next year for sure as they are going to focus on the northern part of the state (north of I-70).? They are having the time trials in Branson today–the race will probably be won or lost today in that 18 miles experts say.