At Last

Nice weather has arrived in the Inland Valley. Forecasters promise high temps in the high-70's Friday. I'm almost verklempt...all I've got a handle on are my random thoughts in the wake of our big day chasing the AMGEN.

The weather will be doable at AT&T Park Friday evening when the SF Giants host the Cross Bay Rivals the Oakland Athletics. We've got good seats on the right field side...this should be good. After the spanking they endured in wintery Chicago, the Giants took both games from the SoCal Rivals sweeping the Dodgers in their house!

I'm looking forward to the first Formula One race of the European Swing, the Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona. The Teams have had two weeks since the Istanbul GP to install their latest, greatest new go-fast bits, and Pirelli is bringing a new tire formulation that should complicate the tire wear strategy enough to further shake things up.

Stateside motor racing fans turn their eyes Saturday to Indianapolis and Pole Day Qualifying for the Memorial Weekend's Indy 500.

May is Mt Everest time and record numbers of guided climbers are reaching the top of the world.

I love May!

So I edited the LIVE broadcast of Stage 4 Thursday night. I guess the fog/cloud deck was a problem after all. No MotoTV footage from anywhere near the top of Mt Hamilton, save for a quick stationary establishing shot of the Mt Hamilton KOM banners...maybe 4-5 seconds tops. Most of the Mt Hamilton images were helicopter long shots of the telescopes and MotoTV shots from farther down the descent. I figure the low ceiling prevented the helos from getting enough altitude to get solid signals from the MotoTV cams.

The telecast turned out to be an hour and 28 minutes total when stripped of commercials. The summit of Mt Hamilton at 2/3 of the stage distance was over at 16 minutes in, or 1/6 of the telecast in round numbers.

The bulk of the telecast was spent on the sunny hills around San Jose's Sierra Rd mountaintop finish. California's rolling hills are so telegenic in May!