What a day - the crowds were huge yesterday all along the route and the finish was pandemonium around Lance. It looked like the crowds at Le Tour - Lance was just mobbed - everyone wonders why he has security with him, but the guy would be knocked down and crushed by the stampede of people who each feel that they are entitled to an autograph or pic with him. The crowd looks like they are running from a burning building, and people get in his face with cameras and pens and scraps of paper. They scream his name as if sheer volume will work some kind of autograph miracle for them. It's a strange kind of love, I'll tell you...I never cease to marvel about how he maintains in the midst of all this. At the Dawsonville start, some young woman went into a hysterical, screaming frenzy right outside the bus window, screaming at the top of her lungs, "Lance, you are my God". She was out-of-control crying and throwing a fit. Not a pretty sight...

I went through my 500 pics of the Alpharetta finish last night. I put them up on my smugmug.com gallery, finishing about midnight, and realized that I just fallen asleep sitting in front of my laptop, so the need for sleep took priority over this Blog. It takes me about three hours every race night to do the photos, the Blog and the two website updates, plus putting Dan Osipow's press release into HTML and uploading it to both sites.

I also went to the USPS reception yesterday evening, very nice low-key event. Lance and the guys each said a few words - they are all really nice people. I chatted a bit with Pavel - he is a great guy. Also talked with Damon - he hadn't known that I had lived in Santa Cruz a long time, too. He is a warm, friendly person. And spent some time talking with Kenny Labbe - he is just the best guy! Johan had to see all my finish pics - he really likes looking at my sequence shots. I told him that he needs me to travel with the team to take these shots for him at every race - he grinned, but I just don't think he bought that idea. Oh well, not all great ideas fly, do they?

So the team members all headed out at different times, last night and today - what a logistics challenge to arrange and transport team and staff. Some of the guys will take a bit of a recovery time in May, especially Lance and the Tour team. George and Lance are really looking forward to having some downtime with friends and family. So this Blog may have some racing downtime, too, since I will not be at any Postie races until the Wachovia Series in June. So you will see more general thoughts and comments here for a while.. Thanks for reading the Georgia Blog and I really thank you for all the great comments that I have received...