Today’s penultimate stage of the 2010 Giro d’Italia was highlighted by the legendary Passo di Gavia, this year’s edition’s highest point. The 20th stage packed nearly 20,000 feet of elevation gain (over five climbs) into just 110 miles of riding. While none of the stretches was particularly steep by this year’s Giro standards, that’s a lot of stomping on the pedals.

For us mere mortals, consider some comparisons:

Giro d'Italia 2010, Stage 20 profile, including the majestic Gavia Pass

The Terrible Two through the tough rolling country around Santa Rosa features 16,500 feet of climbing — but that’s over a course of 200 miles.

The Son of Death Ride near Los Angeles, billed as the “toughest one-day road ride in the U.S.,” features 17,000 feet of climbing over 138 miles.

These are as brutal as endurance races get, and they can’t touch the suffering inflicted by today’s Giro stage.

For all that, the racing was not as dramatic as yesterday’s stage. Only Cadel Evans mounted a serious attack, and it was too late (over the final climb) to matter. Through most of the course, the leaders seemed content to concede the overall victory to Ivan Basso, who rode inspiringly and convincingly to take the pink jersey yesterday.

So the 2010 Giro is pretty much over, and those of us following it day-by-day on Universal Sports via its (and Italian televison’s) live coverage have to feel a twinge of regret. In terms of pure racing drama, head-shaking unpredictability and climactic twists and turns, this year’s Giro ranks among the great Grand Tours of all time. It didn’t have Lance (who will end his career never having won a Giro) or Alberto Contador, who won it two years ago. But the other big names were there, and the action was nonpareil.

The Giro will be a tough act to follow for this year’s Tour de France, beginning July 3. Let’s hope the Giro’s challenges have put its contenders — Basso, Cadel Evans, Alexander Vinokourov, Carlos Sastre — into peak form to challenge Contador and the others in the Tour, making a real race out of another Grand Tour.

When the Euro revolution was just starting to sink in, Hoffacker’s Palo Alto Bicycles and Ric and Jon Hjertberg’s Wheelsmith a couple blocks away made Palo Alto one of the coolest places on earth. Palo Alto Bicycles had the classiest mail order catalog anywhere, helping to fuel the bike boom of the ’70s, and its posters of Tour legends and local wheel-building icon Jobst Brandt riding the Swiss Alps still hang in my basement.

Where PA Bikes and Wheelsmith really rocked was during the Tour de France. You have to remember, there was no TV coverage or even mention of the Tour on newscasts. Local newspapers ran nothing, not even results.

The only way to track Tour progress was to swing by Palo Alto Bicycles or Wheelsmith for results, usually posted on a small piece of paper tacked to a bulletin board or wall. And then we’d debate about who was going to win and fantasize what it would be like to be following the peloton through the mountains.

We asked Ric, who runs Wheel Fanatyk in Seattle these days, to refresh our memory on how Wheelsmith got the results.

“Tour results, in the early days, came from the Manchester Guardian we copped at Mac’s Smoke Shop,” Ric noted. “You needed to wait until opening because they only got 3 copies. We rushed it to our store, clipped the results, and posted them. Dozens of riders would come by over the day, or call, to learn the standings.”

By today’s standards, it sounds positively Stone Age.

“Whew,” Ric acknowledged. “Was it really that primitive? Well, actually, it was!”

We never thought we’d get live coverage of the Tour each day, or be able to chatter on our keyboards via blogs and the Internet. (Thank you, Jacques, Greg and Lance!) We were happy just for the names of the stage winners and Top 10 overalls, with respective times. Thanks to Palo Alto Bicycles for feeding the mind, inspiring the soul and supplying the kit over the years. And yes Ric, we miss those days hanging out at Wheelsmith. Computers weren’t the only great things that sprang from garage shops in Silicon Valley!