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.