A Long Day On A Monday

Yes, that's a parking ticket.
While I was walking around outside by the team bus this afternoon, I noticed a woman with a small phone-like device. She held it up and took a picture of one of our vehicles. But then she used a pen-like device to tap on the screen. I watched her make her way to the front of the vehicle and it quickly became apparent she was a parking meter reader. Problem is, our vehicles are parked in the hotel parking lot. Or so I thought.

It turns out, we're in a public lot. And we're just eating the tickets every day. If you look at the one photo of the cars, they didn't get tickets. That's because they're parked in the driving lane of the lot. Crazy. I saw the meter reader ticket at least two more cars before she disappeared around a corner. What I don't know is how much the tickets cost because the entire text is in Flemish. And somewhere in the lot is a place to pay, but I'm not readily seeing it.

When I'm in Europe, I frequently think "globally" when it comes to what is happening. It's most evident just by watching my Facebook wall or Twitter feed.

People in California are getting ready for bed about the time I am waking up. It's not until about noon or 1 p.m., that people back in Omaha begin stirring – and showing up in my Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Things really get going about 7 or 8 p.m. and continue right through to the middle of the night. So if I want to be active on "U.S. time" it means staying up to 2 or 3 in the morning. I did this at training camp in Spain and it was a real headache. Unfortunately, I'm doing it again on this trip. It's not fun. But work has to be done.

I hope to get out and check out the city we're in - since I'll be here through Friday morning. When Freddy Viaene (BMC Racing Team soigneur) invited me to go pick up pizzas with him after the race Sunday night, I jumped at the chance. It was the first time in three days that I'd left the hotel and who knew there was a Pizza Hut right across the street from an Italian "Pizza Parlor"?

So today was crazy busy. Crazy. But I also wasted some valuable time, looking back. It wasn't all a waste, actually, but I always feel if I'm not working I'm wasting time. It's not the case, of course, because conversations and meetings can be memorable – much more memorable than the volume of work that comes with my job. Sometimes, the only thing that makes work memorable are the photos I take (like the one at right of George Hincapie and directeur sportif John Lelangue).

Today, I took time to meet with friends. Ed Beamon was the former long-time director of the Navigators Insurance team. He gave me my first job in professional cycling. You may be scratching your head at that because obviously I got my start with Toyota-United. But Ed actually offered me a job to do PR for his team in January of 2007. And I accepted. It was only part-time work and before I could even get a task list to him, Toyota-United called me up and offered me a full-time job. I jumped at the chance, but anguished over the call I had to make to Ed to tell him I'd taken another job – after I accepted his offer. UGH. I've had to do that twice in my career and those calls are not pleasant. Ed hung up on me. He knew – more than I did at the time – what he was missing.

Not more than a year later, I did get the chance to work with Ed – with Team Type 1. It was a real privilege to work with such a veteran director. He also helped nurse me through the rough patch that was 2008 and 2009. He wasn't with Team Type 1 in 2009, but I remained in contact and in 2010, he helped land me some project work with the Fly V Australia team he was directing. Today, Ed is between gigs and he's hoping to get back on the circuit. I hope so, too. I consider him and his wife to be good friends (plus, we went to mass together at the 2008 Tour de Georgia).

After meeting with him, I met up with Allen Bean, who goes back to my days with Rock Racing in 2008 and 2009. Again, we spent some time reminiscing and catching up. It was a nice break, actually, from the grind.

But then the grind began in earnest. A press release on an upcoming race, a race to cover in Spain, a press release about a U.S. race, a press release about a U.S. race series, photos to post, tweets to put out, etc. Before I knew it, it was well past midnight. So here I am, still typing away. And I haven't even written about Sunday! Nor have I posted any race pictures to Facebook.

We'll see what tomorrow holds. It's shaping up to be busier than today.

From the notebook:

- The hotel had me listed as checking out this morning. That was strange.

- I didn't eat dinner tonight. But I did raid the nutritional area of the motorcoach for a few energy bars. There's a few really, really nice tasting bars out there. Wow.

- The weather here today was pretty good. Sunny and in the low 70s. I heard it was super windy in Omaha with grass fires burning outside Lincoln.

- Tonight (or this morning) is the national basketball championship game. But it doesn't begin until 9:21 p.m. EDT. Ouch. That's 3:21 a.m. my time. Not that I would have watched it, but geez, it won't end until after midnight on the east coast.

The morning training ride left at 11 a.m.

Marcus Burghardt got new shoes the day after he crashed. Wow.