Notes:  (latest notes always appear at the top)

- Our photo team will be sending pics of the ToC riders in the mountains a bit later.  They are now on their way to the finish in Clovis.

- Batman's true identity is....(drumroll)....Mark Buschini.  More fan pics to come in the next day or two.

- Batman at the Tour of California:  If you were watching the race a couple of minutes ago, you may have seen Batman running with the peloton.  We've got his photo (above) and I believe we will soon have his true identity.  Obviously this would be huge news.

- Live coverage, current situation:  Live video playing on Tour Tracker and on cycling.tv.  Live tickers on CN and VN.  Links at right.  Also, the Versus TV broadcast has begun for those with access to it.

- "The 3 Riders..." (see below) have been reporting in from the road on their way to today's finish in Clovis.  I emailed them, "Behave yourselves!" and the response was "No chance of behaving!"  Look out, Tour of California.

- A 3-woman team, friends of cyclingfans.com, is arriving at the Tour of California today and will be there through the end of the race.  They've asked to be known as "The 3 Riders of the Apocalypse featuring Christy Craig."  (Apparently the finish line announcer at the Tour of California last year kept yelling the phrase "the riders of the Apocalypse" and it was annoying enough to stick with them!)  If you're going to any of the remaining TOC stages, you might bump into them; they'll be wearing cyclingfans.com hats and will be reporting in daily with a fan perspective.

- Photo team just reported in:  They are arriving in Oak Hurst.  Sunny, big crowds are out.  They will continue on looking for snow.

- Live video now playing on the Tour Tracker.

- We recommend you open our Twitter feed in a separate window now.  If ever we have a server outage, we will update on Twitter and direct you to a live coverage page on another server.

- Today's Tour of California Stage 4 is scheduled to depart Merced at 11:00am PST (2pm U.S. Eastern, 20:00 CET).  Tour Tracker live streaming video should get underway at around that time.  Better weather is expected.  Tour of California live webcast on cycling.tv is scheduled to begin at 12:30pm PST (3:30pm U.S. Eastern, 21:30 CET).  According to the Eurosport schedule, they are bumping their Tour of California live coverage to Eurosport 2, which virtually no one has.  (Eurosport 2 would be a good place for Versus to export Professional Bull Riding (PBR) to.)

- Welcome to our live coverage guide for the 2009 Tour of California.