As many of you know from following our “tweets” on Twitter, we had a marvelous start to the first ever Giretto – timed to perfection to coincide with the 100th year celebration of the biggest cycling race in Italy, and Lance Armstrong’s first ever Giro d’Italia. Between not losing any luggage, and having a beautiful day to tour Venice, we were walking on air. Here are some pics from both the day off in Venice, as well as Stage 1.

The puffy clouds of the pre-race vacation day however, gave way to the overcast sky of disappointment, when we rode our bikes to the ferry port. To our surprise, they were not permitting any bikes on the island (the Team Time Trial was set on the island of Lido off the coast of Venice) during the Giro. Despite our driver’s best arguing Italian style, and the ladies best poses for the young gate attendants, there was no getting by.

Since our B&B was relatively close to the ferry point, we rode our bikes there instead of driving, and thus we got our needed miles in for that day, but they simply weren’t the same. We so wanted to do our own TTT – but it was not to be. Chalk it up to some poor pre-race intelligence, and next time we will look further into the details underneath the details.

Serindipity smiled on us however, while we were in Lido, converting disappointment to destiny…maybe. Upon arriving in Lido, our driver wanted to walk along the course to the start of the stage, but we were drawn helplessly to music and the thump thump of high energy coming from a different direction. We headed that way and saw a huge indoor cycling class being conducted outside (just bring the stationary bikes outside and there you have it) with about 50 riders. They had a unique combination of electronic and live music pounding out from the stage where 4 instructors were leading the group. The “capitano” was taking them on a virtual time trial, and the class was SO into it. With all of us being indoor cycling instructors, it was fun to watch.

I was curious enough to get contact info from the organizers of the event – who knows where that will lead. Next on the agenda was to hook up with Liza from Cycling Made In Italy. She did a fantastic job with our Italy arrangements – all for free in support of the Giretto, so we were happy to visit with her for a while.

From there we were able to stake out some fantastic locations for super close action photos and video – some of which we tweeted, and others we will be posting later. When the stage was over, we headed back to the ferries so we could leave for Jessolo; the start of our next stage. We mistakenly got on the wrong ferry, which happened to be for team personnel only. It was bigger, less crowded, and we saw a few pros on the ride back.

But the most amazing thing happened as we were disembarking the ferry. Jennifer said “We should try and meet Liz Kreutz while we are here”. At that very moment, Liz was walking off the boat as well and said “I’m Liz!”. It was the most amazing coincidence… or was it destiny?!? She did know what the Giretto was, and we are sure that Lance has never heard of it either. So we have sent her a few direct tweets since then. Since she has this in her Twitter profile: “Sports photographer documenting Lance Armstrong’s comeback to cycling to raise cancer awareness”, we are thinking she could put some of that photography skill, and “cancer awareness” documenting to good use by having Lance do a photo op with the Giretto riders! Seems only logical right!?!

Well, it’s after 1am, and I shouldn’t have stayed up to write this, but I was excited to have an internet connection finally, and wanted to get all the non-twitter folks some news. Tomorrow will be our first 100+ miles… ready, set, GIRO!