Headed To Milan

The BMC Racing Team car I drove to the supermarket.
That white thing on top is a satellite dish.
Today was another "day off" from racing, but far from a lazy one.

I had a preview to write for the upcoming Vuelta a Catalunya (which I wrote on the ride from Bologna to Milan) and a few other things to catch up on. The transfer between hotels was supposed to have taken three hours, but it was more like two-and-a-half (in rain). Fortunately, I didn't have to drive, so I got some work done.

I'm trying to tether my Blackberry to my MacBook. It's been an unsuccessful task so far, but I'm still working on it. This would allow me to work remotely from my laptop when I don't have Internet (like at all those bogus hotels on this trip).

One thing that was a bit of a shock to the system took place after we arrived at our hotel here in Milan. Jeremiah Ranegar (one of the BMC Racing Team soigneurs) asked me if I could do him a favor. Well, it turned out he was asking me to go shopping for water. With no GPS and no idea where the nearest shopping center was, I set out in one of the team cars. Fortunately, St. Anthony guided me to a nearby warehouse-type place that had plenty of water, which I brought back – then made myself unavailable for future "errands."

Leftovers:
- Sorry, Julia. You won't have the room key from the hotel in Bologna. It was a high-tech one with a chip on it (like you see on credit cards here in Europe). They would have charged my own credit card an arm-and-a-leg had I not turned it in. And gosh darn, I forgot to take a picture of it for you. Next time, for sure.

- At my hotel here in Milan, the key card is also pretty high tech. It's a magnetic-type card reader. So I won't be bringing this one back, either.

- Only four riders (George Hincapie, Greg Van Avermaet, Michael Schär and Marcus Burghardt) stayed in Bologna with us. The rest of the crew will meet us in Milan.

- A couple of the riders were talking about flights out of San Remo after the race. The interesting thing is, their flight times were within about an hour of the finish. That's just crazy. I'll be driving to Nice, staying overnight, then flying to Munich and onto Chicago (and ultimately, Omaha).

- Today was the celebration of a "unified Italy" - an equivalent of sorts to our "Independence Day." But there really wasn't a whole lot of celebrating. And there were even far fewer people wearing green for St. Patrick's Day. I heard the Lady Gaga concert in Omaha was pretty good, though.