my, what a nice heap of bike parts you have

Tonight was packing night, so we disassembled our bikes, pretzled them up a bit, added a healthy dose of bubble wrap, and shoehorned them into boxes that were entirely too small. Actually, since my bike is still new, I kept my original box, and the whole process really wasn't that bad. And there's room in the boxes for things like shoes, gloves, pants, helmet, and all the drugs we're smuggling. Here's a picture of Brent during the breakdown packing of my bike in his garage.

Brent's got a Fuji box for his bike. Told me the story of some guy that worked for Qwest for 30 years and as his parting retirement gift received like Fuji's bottom o the barrell mountain bike. The box, however, is outstanding, and will conceal the fact that he has a killer cool bike in there. Too bad thieves read blogs.

Also, I need to thank the CSU cycling club, and Airn in particular, for getting me set up with a CSU jersey for this ride. I learned during this whole transaction with Airn that real cyclists (as in, those who have logged more than 150 miles total) call this jersey stuff "kit." Apparently the team is between sponsors so the new kit isn't available yet, and the old kit is long since sold out. But Airn found one for me to borrow and shipped it pronto-like, so I'll look all cool sportin' the Ram pride. This was especially needed since Brent got one of his pieces of paper from CU and will be wearing some buffalo chip kit on one of the Tour days. All I know is two things: 1) I'm thankful to the CSU club, and 2) I'm going to say "hey dude, that's some sweet kit" as often as possible.

Time to pack...tomorrow we fly! In closing, here's a quick pic of Brent's wife Sonia and their daughter Sophie. Soph is two and will be joining us on the flying portion of the trip, staying with grandma and grandpa while Brent and I pedal through the countryside and reflect on how horrible CU is.

cheers!