Power to the people.
Today was the best day so far. This morning the hotel manager asked us if we could stop by the school he worked at and speak with the kids. We jumped at the chance. The school had around 100 students that met us in the quad between the classroom buildings. Gardie and Alex are the only ones who speak a little Spanish so the answered questions. The kids were pretty excited and asked about the race, how much the bikes cost (I am not sure the believed us), how much they bikes weighed. We even signed autographs! As Americans we are taught that Mexico is a dirty little backward country and the people are all poor beggars or something. We were all very impressed by the kids and teachers. The kids were very polite and well behaved. They were also very well dressed. Some were in uniforms and some not, but the all wore nice clean clothes and shoes. I know the kids had fun and enjoyed the visit but we were the ones who learned the most. Getting out of the border towns you get a feel for what Mexico is really like. Yes it is different and backwards to us, but the people here are great. We have been treated with nothing but respect every where we have been.
Todays stage was a killer. When you are a racer that is spectating, races fall into two catagories. Races you wish you were in and races you are kind of glad you are watching. This was a case of the latter. Lots of leg breakiers in the first 50k, temp in the high 80’s, and a headwind. Jesse again stayed with the main group with Gardie, Todd and Zulle in the next group. It was such chaos in the caravan that I was not really able to feed these guys properly today. They were all cool about it, they realize what we are working with so I felt a little better about not coming through. Tomorrow is the crit which everyone is looking forward to. After that we hit the beach and hopefully some fish tacos.
