This Is Getting Ridiculous

I am not happy it is snowing – in mid-April.

More Rain Today

Check out this radar shot. No wonder there is so much lightning.

A Sampling Of This Morning's Front Pages

Here is a look at some of the newspaper front pages detailing the Boston Marathon explosions (bombings) from Monday afternoon. From the moment I first read about it (on deadspin.com), I suspected it was an act of terrorism and not an accident of some kind.

What Is With This Weather?

It's looking – and feeling – more like February, than April.

Great Job, Lauren!

This was awfully awesome for Lauren.

My Welcome Back To Omaha

A flash and lightning and crack of thunder from this storm woke me up just after 4 a.m.

Tonight's The Night

This stand in the Atlanta airport was selling Final Four gear this afternoon.

From 64 teams (really 68) to two tonight, I am glad to be back in the United States for the NCAA men's basketball championship. The game is in Atlanta and I happened to fly through the city this afternoon after my original flight was changed. (I was supposed to go through Minneapolis.)

So how are everyone's brackets doing with everything on the line?

Veronica
Championship: Gonzaga vs. Kansas

Olivia
Championship: Ole Miss vs. Kansas

Julia
Championship: Louisville vs. Kansas 
Winner: Louisville

Lauren
Championship: Duke vs. Minnesota

Emily
Championship: Duke vs. Georgetown

Dad
Championship: Louisville vs. Kansas 
Winner: Louisville

"Zahn"
Championship: St. Louis vs. Kansas

It looks like Julia and I are the only two with a chance to win it all, since Louisville is playing Michigan for the championship (at 8:23 p.m. CDT). But we can't leave out Jon – who has Michigan winning over Louisville. (Bridget had Ohio State playing Kansas for the title). Julia told me to "make it sound like he's going down." But that's hard when he picked the two finalists correctly, Julia!

Don't forget to stay tuned in after the post-game ceremony for this year's "One Shining Moment" video. And if you can't stay awake until after 11 o'clock, check out Deadspin's "Dumb Shining Moment" video.

Paris-Roubaix: My Own Race Across The Cobbles

I raced between cobblestone sectors Sunday at Paris-Roubaix. Full report still to come.

Transfer Day

One of several rest area/restaurants where we stopped during a seven-hour drive Saturday.

We dropped Philippe Gilbert off at the airport.

This will be a quick one – much like the drive across France went. (Don't long drives always go better when you sleep through them?)

I'm writing from a Novotel hotel somewhere near Paris. We drove here last night and I recharged all my devices, wrote up the final stage of Vuelta al País Vasco and finally put out the Paris-Roubaix roster release.

The hotel where we are staying is a nice one, with a restaurant – which I did not know. I put on my stocking cap to leave for dinner, only to walk around the corner of the hallway and into the dining area.

Next stop is the rendezvous point. I am getting word that my rush to the TGV station after the race has been changed to a drive to a hotel for a meeting and dinner, then on to the hotel at Charles de Galle airport. So that will be different.

On to the pictures from Saturday.

Air dryer at one of the rest areas. Similar to the ones at Aksarben Cinema.

A Change Of Plans

Self-portrait on the back window of team car 1.

First, I must say that it's nice to not have to make my photos extremely small so I can upload them. The hotel where we are tonight (Barceló, near San Sebastian) has screaming fast internet. That means I'm up late uploading all kinds of stuff.

So my weekend schedule was turned upside my a most unusual day here at Vuelta al País Vasco. You can read all about it here, but suffice it to say that only one BMC Racing Team rider remains in the race. That means I'm headed out tomorrow before the final time trial even begins.

This also means that the post-stage drill I did after this race last year is changed up. But let's re-visit it anyway. It was one of my favorite times of the season last year.

Here is the approximate route I will drive Saturday and Sunday.

So, last year, I worked on-site for both the Volta a Catalunya and the Vuelta al País Vasco ("Tour of the Basque Country"). In between, I went back to Belgium. This year, I only arrived in Europe on the eve of the later race. País Vasco ends on Saturday (in Spain) and Paris-Roubaix, the most famous one-day race in cycling, is the next day. So for me to work both races means a lot of driving.

You can see from the map at right what lies ahead. It's approximately 670 miles (1,079 kilometers) from where I am tonight to the finish line in Roubaix, France. It is the equivalent of driving from Omaha to Dallas.

So last year, after Marco Pinotti made the podium at País Vasco for winning the sprint classification, I jumped in a team car with one of our mechanics and started driving. We reached Futuroscope around 11 o'clock that night, tried to get dinner (which was next-to-impossible at that late hour) and woke at 5 a.m. to get back on the road.

We drove as fast as possible to reach "the rendezvous point," which is a town square about 15 kilometers from the start of Paris-Roubaix. It is where all the auxiliary staffers and support people gather to ready for the 27 cobblestone stretches of the race. It was there that I hitched a ride to the finish with the team's chef. About an hour into the drive, we caught up with the BMC Racing Team motorcoach, which was going directly from the start to the finish.

One at the finish, I met up with my colleague, fellow press officer Blandine Roquelet, and we watched the race, first from the velodrome, then on the team bus, and later in the velodrome just before the riders arrived. As the race finished, she took Alessandro Ballan to the podium (he finished third in a photo finish) while I attending to Thor Hushovd and Taylor Phinney and George Hincapie. This meant coordinating interviews in the velodrome and later at the team bus (with team personnel like Jim Ochowicz and John Lelangue as well). It's a frenetic hour of absolute mayhem as riders describe the race and the press clamors to get every comment before the riders and staff bust out in separate directions.

For me, it was a nice moment when I greeted the riders at the finish. Totally exhausted and dirty from riding six or so hours on rough roads, they each broke a smile when they realized I was there. Some hadn't seen me since training camp in January. "What are you doing here?" was their first question because few knew I would be there and many hadn't seen me in months. It was a nice moment for both of us.

So the interviews are wrapping up and it's time to go. Where you say? To the train station, of course. There, we munched on McDonalds before hopping onto the TGV to make the hour-long transfer to Paris. All this time, I'm frantically writing and uploading photos and audio files, etc. The process continues at check-in at the hotel at the Charles de Galle airport, where last year my room overlooked the runway. It was crazy, working away into the late hours of the night, recalling the past 24 hours that had me in Spain, then to France, then to a race and then preparing to head back to the U.S. It will be the same this year and I'm really looking forward to it.

I neglected to mention earlier this week that I am taking all kinds of photos. You can see five days of them here. The harder it rained, though, the fewer I snapped. So Friday's count was way down.

On to the pictures because it's getting late.

This was actually at dinner. Very, very good. I ate all of it.

Here's a look at the daily pastries on offer at the hotel we checked out of today.

Our team chef made this huge omelet. I only had half of it.

Here's the other half of the offerings at breakfast.

Check out that egg sandwich. (I didn't have dinner last night.)

Huge bed. With printing on the top sheet, no less. And a room service menu in the corner.

Nice chair and desk set up as well. Pretty well lit, too.

That mural is on the sliding door of a huge closet.

A few nice amenities and a hair dryer I won't be using.

I didn't immediately notice the stool until I was reviewing this photo.

No separate shower but there's a foot washer!

Nice little light and mini bar set-up on the desk. There is a refrigerator below it.

I have a nice balcony. But it was raining nearly the entire time tonight.

And being that I have a corner room, the balcony extended around the corner.

It's a four-star hotel, but feels more like a five-star.

Ah yes, I will be bringing these back. They're the 2013 versions, which I did not have.

That is snow on the ground. Yes, it was snowing during our evening team meeting.

Another Long Day

More rain ... lots of it on Thurday.

Look how happy these kids are with their Elite bottles.

Thursday morning seems so long ago that I can hardly remember it.

What I do recall is that the sign-in was very close to where the bus was parked, which is always nice. And that I led Philippe Gilbert and Tejay van Garderen there through the crowds.

The rest is a bit of a blur. I must have been tired because I ended up going to bed before 8:30 p.m. It was that kind of day. I think the rain and cold is getting to me.

This morning (Friday), it was pouring again at the start. Well, that's not entirely true. I woke up to the sound of the pouring rain, but by the time we were leaving the hotel, the sun was shining and it was warming up. It stayed dry for awhile, which was good because I rode nearly the entire 2 km to the sign-in. About the time I was making the final climb up to the staging area for the caravan, it started raining. And it didn't look like it was going to stop anytime soon.

So the riders are in for a long day: 10 categorized climbs and cold, wet conditions. Ouch.

One more thing before I close the book on this hotel (where we have stayed since the race began). It sure was nice. Maybe one of the nicest – in terms of space, cleanliness, convenience, etc. But it lacked good internet and the meals were horrific. I didn't eat dinner the last two nights.

Unusual Day

Assistant Director Yvon Ledanois was behind the wheel of our new motor home.

I got up earlier than normal to leave the hotel by 7:30 a.m. It's a good thing I took everything with me I needed for the race because I didn't immediately realize we weren't returning to the hotel until after the finish.

It turned out I was a backup driver for the pick-up of a mobile home to serve as back-up for the bus, which turned out to be ready from repairs. We arrived there after an hour's drive, waited another hour for them to open and still showed up at the race nearly two hours before any other team. It was a nice, relaxing start to the morning.

The rest of the day was spent managing email, monitoring two races and performing other miscellaneous tasks related to this race and another one I am working Sunday, Paris-Roubaix.

The best thing about today: it didn't rain. The worse thing about today: I didn't have time for dinner. But maybe that's not a bad thing. I went to weigh in this morning and the scale was not in the doctor's office. So

I was browsing through the TV tonight before bedtime and found some very strange program that showed people being blown up (in playful form), shot, maimed, etc., plus "sexy" things and all kinds of other craziness. It was actually in English, but voiced over in Spanish. Hmm. I wonder if it's on Spike or something. It was just plain weird and gross.

Funny moment of the day: asking one of the housekeeping people for shampoo. She looked at me, then looked at my head, then shook her head and handed over two bottles. (I use them to do laundry.)

The game show on TV was a strange one. The guy on the left was almost like a character in a "Saturday Night Live" skit.

Here's the motor home place.

And the inside of the motor home.

This is what the parking lot looked like when we arrived – three hours before the race start.

Here is what it looked like 45 minutes before the start.

Maybe Lauren or Emily can tell me what this sign says.

A peek inside my lunch bag.

Here's the title pag

I'm still not getting what is "sexy" about this.