on saturday after an early workout, eric and i drove (i drove, stupid rock/paper/scissors) to pasadena to see the end of stage 7 of the amgen tour of california. last year the same race was in shorline village and the year before that in redondo beach. the main attraction this year of course was that lance armstrong now racing for team astana is out of retirement and was racing the event.

the last part of stage 7 was a 5 lap, 10 mile loop around the rosebowl, so we watched from the 500m to the finish mark, and got to see them pass a total of 5 times. that was actually the first time that i had ever seen lance armstrong in person, and even though it was 5 times it was less than 5 seconds each time.

i brought my sony cm1 hd video camera, which the more i use, the more i fall out of love with. it’s actually pretty good for what it’s marketed as, capturing quick, short hd video that looks pretty decent. it really isn’t a replacement for a video camera though. my new main gripe with it is that it seems that instead of taking photo-photo-photo and making it a movie, that the sensor “scans” the picture. When things are moving really fast, the “scan” is different from start to finish. So my R/C helicopter’s blades look like they’re bending in flight, and these cyclists look like they’re bikes are shorter than they are. i’ll probably hang on to it because like i said, it’s great for some things… but i’ll probably end up buying another hd camcorder for higher quality stuff down the line.