Okay, so I am. There's no way around it.
It's been a miserable January with weather that's gone a bit like so: bitter cold, snow, shovel, melt a little, more cold, ice, more snow, shovel again, cold again, a little more snow, rain, flooding, ice, more chiseling, more shoveling, more cold. Through all this, I haven't been able to get out on the bike and that makes me a bit cranky... just a bit.
On the work-front, things are moving along slowly with prep for Tour of California. We got our wheels weeks ago, but we've been waiting until today for the rubber to show up - not Michelin's fault, we completely dropped the ball. But, to make matters worse, as we're unpacking the boxes we discover that we're short by one - and that one is filled with our entire order of 700x18-23 tubes. FedEx blew that one for us. "It's probably on the truck here, somewhere, but I don't see it." Fuckers. Of course, the truck needs to roll on Wednesday, so I hope our driver manages to "see" our box of 200 tubes on Monday, preferably before he drives away this time.
All of that is really inconsequential when held under the harsh light of reality shone by a couple of other things going on in my personal life. The brightest of all (by being the darkest) was when the doctor discovered a malignant tumor in my father's right lung. Early detection is the key, here, and as the tumor was very localized in the upper lobe, they were able to remove the entire mass and he was released from the hospital yesterday. He's still (obviously) got a long road ahead of him, but the worst is over.
Now I can return my focus to spending a day on Monday, blistering my thumbs, then loading and sending the truck on its merry way across the country. I'll follow a few days later with Nate in one of the Saabs, picking up another in Milwaukee along the way.
I never believed, even for a moment, that this thought could ever pass through my mind, but I can't wait to get to Sacramento.
