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So much for sunny Spain this week.

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So This Is Girona

Great room here at the Meliã hotel in Girona.

Girona, Spain – I've heard and read so much about Girona, Spain. It's been the hotbed of homes for many American cyclists over the years, including a seven-time Tour de France winner, George Hincapie and now BMC Racing Team's Brent Bookwalter. Team mechanic Kevin Grove also lives here, so it was nice to finally meet his family today.

It's 2:30 a.m., so this will be a short one. Basically, because the motorcoach was out of service, I went with the soigneurs and Dr. Scott Major to the feed zone, where I made a video. On the way back to the finish, I nearly threw up we tore around twisting, narrow mountain roads. Ugh.

Back at the hotel, I struggled with decreasing internet access as dozens of riders began logging on – just as I was trying to write the race report and participate in a conference call. Thank goodness for Tether!

I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

I'm not sure what the story is here. Serious wardrobe malfunction.

Proud Kevin and his two sons. (His daughter stayed home.)

Let's hope this isn't here very long.

I rode with Kevin (right) and Michael Sayers to the start.

Watching the race in the back of the caravelle at the finish.

Notice how I do my best to stay out of these shots?

Dining room of the hotel. American teams always eat before
the Brits, the Spanish, the French and the Russians.

One of the few times I've had a hot water pot in my room.

First Day Of Racing

My favorite photo so far. That's BMC Racing Team
soigneur Marc Paeme acting like he's holding the large inflatable.
Calella, Spain – First day of the race and last day here in Calella. Being near the beach in Spain reminded me a lot of the start of last year's Vuelta a España, which also started on the Mediterranean coast.

Today was a late start – 12:30 pm. – which allowed me to get caught up on a few things. I had an extensive to-do list of outside-the-race responsibilities, as well as photos to shoot, a release to get out and emails to answer. Part of my morning was spent poolside (working) which made the time fly by.

The race started and finished about 1.5 kilometers from the hotel. So with about 45 minutes to go before the finish, Trudi Rebsamen, Marc Paeme and I began the walk to the finish line. Some teams drove. It was nice to get in some much-needed exercise. Once at the finish line, I quickly figured out there were no TVs. But there was an electronics shop on the corner. I convinced the owner to let me watch the race on the bank of TVs next to wash machines, dryers and refrigerators.

The rest of my day was fairly uneventful. Dinner, the meeting and discussion about how to handle the absence of the BMC Racing team motorcoach, which broke down Sunday. This marks the second time in two years that I've gone to a race, only to have the bus break down on one of the first days of the race. Fortunately, I was able to get my Tether working (it stopped working once I got to Europe), so I should be OK when it comes to internet service.

A couple other miscellaneous items:

- Tom Danielson got fish from the dinner buffet. I asked him later how it was. "I bailed on it," he said. I would have, too. (See photo below.)

- Dozens of young teenage girls showed up at the hotel as part of a tour group tonight. Unfortunately, that brought upon the demise of the internet (until they went to sleep).

- Snow and sleet fell on the riders at some of the higher elevations during the race. The TV coverage didn't pick this up, but it was evident on their BMCs afterwards.'

- Also afterwards, lots of young cyclists made the rounds of the team buses, looking for water bottles. They cornered assistant director Rik Verbrugghe.

Tunnel of fans for Mauro Santambrogio at sign-in.

This mom made sure her kids noticed the BMCs.

There's my lunch bag. And many, many more.

This was the last time we saw the bus. It had some
problems and never made it to Stage 1 or 2.

Watching the race at the electronics store.

Uh, this was not appetizing.

But this looked terrific on my plate.

BMC Racing Team evening staff meeting in the lobby.

You see these guys on TV before each stage.

Team Sky apparently had a break-in overnight. Not good.

This Doesn't Look Good

Looks worse for me than the folks back home.

A Day Of Exploring

With no team directors yet on-site, the BMC Racing Team
mechanics called the shots for Sunday morning's training ride.
Calella, Spain – Another sunny day Sunday in Spain on the eve of the Volta a Catalunya. Sometimes I forget what country I'm in – and particularly at this hotel, everyone speaks good English.

A few highlights:

- I could not watch the Creighton University NCAA Tournament men's basketball game (nor the women's, for that matter.). It was geo-restricted. So I was left to watch the CBS "Game Tracker" feature, which was actually pretty nice. Creighton trailed pretty much the whole game, got a lot of shots blocked, shot poorly and ended up losing to North Carolina.

- Dr. Scott Major and I went on a nice evening walk after the team meeting. It was one of the few times I've had time to really get out and explore a place. The weather was nice and we saw a hospital, a church and the street vendor area by the beach.

- Dr. Major was kind enough to take my photo on the beach today. Nice for a new Facebook profile photo.

- I picked up a surprise for Veronica when Dr. Major and I were out. It turns out if you walk farther away from the beach, the lower the prices get on all the same items that all the stores carry.

- Sadly, the McDonalds restaurant by the beach was closed. A lot of places are closed until April 1, the merchants who were open told us.

- The food has been good and the hotel wifi is great when the riders aren't around. Sadly, my Tether.com is not working. I need to work on fixing that Monday.

I'll let the photos tell the story of the rest of my day.

I did a double take when I saw this ("First National Bank") shirt.

It's warm here (60s) but apparently not beach weather.

Check out the mini flat fix-it kit, featuring an Elite bottle,
Continental tire and Park tool mini-pump. Nice.

There's a nice walkway and bike path along the beach.

View of the beach-side shops. Pretty bare this time of year.

Dr. Scott Major is hurdling a temporary pop-up street
blocker. It allows the street to be automatically opened
or closed. When it's closed, the pop-up device lights up red.

How often do you see a pay phone these days – much
less two of them next to each other?

This is brilliant. Curbside recycling bins. I see them
a lot here in Europe. Like motion-activated lights in
hotel hallways, the Euros are sometimes way ahead of us.

Can you tell which hotels are open and which are not?

Back To Spain

The view from my third floor balcony.
Callela, Spain – It's not very often that you leave Omaha in mid-March for southern Spain and it ends up being cooler at the beachfront hotel. But that was the case Saturday when I arrived for the Volta a Catalunya.

To bring you up to speed, I left Omaha Friday morning after one of the most hectic pre-flight packing sessions of all time. That's because my wallet turned up missing when I was double-checking that I had everything. Re-tracing my steps, I came to the conclusion that I lost it sometime Friday afternoon, either at the bank, Arby's, Pepperjax (downtown) or at Omaha Central. To make the longest of stories extremely short, it turned up in someone else's possession and made my day stressful, hectic and downright awful.

Anyway, I arrived in Atlanta hoping to complete my Trusted Traveler application for the Global Entry program. No such luck. First, you need an appointment, which I could not secure since they were all taken. Secondly, I would have needed my driver's license, which I didn't have. I did, however, get to go through metal detector again since the GOES office is located on the other side of the airport's security screening area.

The flight from Atlanta to Barcelona was scheduled for a bit more than eight hours. For some reason, we sat on the tarmac for about a half-hour after leaving the gate about a half-hour late. So add another hour to that, plus a restless night of trying to sleep in an aisle seat and I was ready to get off the plane when we landed at 7:45 a.m.

Kevin Grove picked me up at the airport, which was nice because he's one of the BMC Racing Team's American mechanics and it's always nice catching up on him. He was at Paris-Nice last week so I got to hear some of the behind-the-scenes details. Upon our arrival at the hotel (at 9 a.m.), I was actually able to check into my room. Try doing that at a hotel in the U.S. I think they might've been a bit confused at the desk, too, since they had us down as the "BCM Racing Team" at our dinner table.

The rest of my day was spent covering Milan-San Remo, a race I attended last year. It was a bit strange watching it on TV this time. But everything went smoothly once the race came on Eurosport in my hotel room. Up until that point, I was a bit frustrated watching it buffer on my laptop – so much so that I wasn't able to discern George Hincapie from Marcus Burghardt. They are both wearing yellow/green shoes this year.

Later on TV, there was a bizarre go-cart racing thing on TV. I couldn't understand a word of it (I think it was German) but it was fun to watch. (See screenshot at right.) I also stumbled across an episode of "Knight Rider" while channel surfing.

The rest of my night was spent working on photos and this week's race preview. Fortunately, the hotel wifi is good (fingers crossed) and the partying in the streets that started around 10 p.m. didn't keep me up too long.

Check out the ice cream at dinner.

"K.I.T.T.! Get me out of here."

Bathroom photo (for Julia).

Not too shabby.

Part of the drive to the hotel was along the coast,
which reminded me of Highway 1 in California.

We even came upon a group of cyclists.

Lobby of the hotel. Nice. I'll be doing work here.

Pasta, green beans, rice and french fries (not shown).

A nice, sunny day in Atlanta for my departure.

What a ride

Julia, Olivia and Veronica enjoyed warm monster cookies on the ride to school today.

Bieber Fever ... In The Van

Julia enjoyed a Justin Bieber video on the way to school.