What I'm Not Doing Now

It's been busy around here.

Lately I've been managing a volume of family business, the details of which for discretion's sake do not belong on a public blog. It's been fascinating and mostly not unpleasant.

I've also been going at it at the regular workplace, spending time largely on a couple of projects which may or may not come to fruition, but for the same reasons shouldn't really be posted in a public forum.

It's not that there haven't been breaks. For one thing, the garage door broke. Got that fixed, which took the better part of a day. Also had new windows installed. Took many pictures of that, and one day I'll decide it's worth adding to the canon of Western culture, and I'll post all of the excruciating detail here for further rumination.

What I haven't been doing lately is getting in much riding. My brother has used the opportunity of interesting weather to get up on his iron steed and go, and my hat's off to him, though his hat's pulled down snugly around his ears.

Me, I'm still calling it approximately the off season, so I'm not pushing too hard. Weather's been mostly good (rain yesterday notwithstanding), but my weekends have been largely spent on other projects (see above). A few rides are coming up on the calendar, though, and I hope to take part. We'll see what time allows. If I go, I'll bring back pictures.

But in the short term, I'm at least spending 2.5 minutes a day reading the latest news on one of the most exciting sporting events to hit California in the past few years: the Tour of California. Being slightly nutty about these things, I dearly wish I had time to watch. This year's field is if anything even better than last year's incredible inaugural crowd.

Sunday Levi Leipheimer took the gold jersey on the prologue for the second year in a row with a ride up Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower even more stunning than last year's. He seems to own that summit. I was 30 miles south, digging through boxes, thinking I really ought to be out in the fresh air watching.

Yesterday Dave Zabriskie weeded out with a nasty crash 70 miles into the dash up the Marin coast. He's fine, it turns out. It hurts to see a U.S. favorite drop so early, but that's part of the unpredictability that keeps the race a thrill a minute. (Well, a thrill an hour. My brother and I have conversations about how much of the Tour de France can be fast-forwarded every year, getting to the good spots where something happens.) Knowing as I do that the backdrops are as gorgeous as the race is exciting, I really wish I had time to spare, to see the messy details. Right now, though, I'll keep slogging away in the trenches.

This weekend, though, the boys in Lycra are headed to Long Beach for the final stage, a lap race around the flat roads of our waterfront parks, and I do intend to take some time to watch them finish. Last year I drove to Ventura County to watch a stage; this year they're bringing it to me. I wish them all well.