Viruses...

It appears that the fiancé has the noro virus. Yep, she's sick as a dog (which if you knew our dog, Beatrice, is technically not very sick, because that little dog is fit as a fiddle, and full of what we like to call "energy", but that is the old saying and you knew what I meant anyway). I had to bring her over to the student health clinic this morning, which to their credit, took her right in and saw her. I feel bad for her, because damn, it just straight up sucks to feel that bad. On the other hand, I am hoping and crossing the old fingers that I don't get it from her. On that note though, I gave my boss a head's up letting her know that the fiancé is sick, and that there might be a good chance that I'll come down with something before the end of the week. Now I'm not normally one who likes getting sick, and this is no exception, but if I could hit me; could it be Friday? I have a customer coming in that day, and don't feel like sitting through a crazy long boring meeting. Again, that is, if I HAVE to get sick, let's let it happen on Friday, or maybe like Thursday evening. That would be sweet right there. But then again, considering how she was feeling this morning, I'm thinking I don't want to be sick at all. So again, I'll be hoping and crossing the fingers. Not to mention scrubbing down with hand sanitizer killing all germs in my wake. I do hate being sick, you can bet on that one. As I'm sure most normal people would agree.

Last night, whilst lazing on the couch post ride, and after dinner, I was watching the replay from this year's Milan - San Remo bike race. The 3 time world champion, Oscar Freire took out the sprint win on the Via Roma in San Remo, but not before there was a lot of fireworks going on out on the roads of Italy. After the Cipressa, a group of 2 went up the road, which was shortly 3 people as former U23 world champion, Yaroslav Popvych bridged a pretty gap, in a short amount of time, and made it up to the 2 breakaway guys. As Popovych made contact, he rolled right past the 2 breakaway guys, and got on the front, and started yanking it. It was some good racing. Shortly after joining the 2, one of the dudes, from Gerolsteiner, crashed into a damn lightpost out on the road. For some reason, he failed to negotiate a corner somewhere on the course. Eventually, that breakaway got reeled in, and then another went up the road with Rico Ricardo (I think that was his name, from Saunier Duval), and one Phillippe Gilbert (sounds French, but is really Belgian), and those guys ALMOST made it to the line together, but no. Current world champion, Paolo Bettini, in order to get his team leader (Tom Boonen) into position for a possible win went to front of the race, and pulled like a small little Italian madman, which is kind of what he's like. Small. Italian. Madman. What made that effort even more amazing is that before the Cipressa, he got caught behind a crash, and spent part of that climb riding through the pack fill getting spit out the back of the race, and the team cars, and basically bridged back up to the peloton on his own, and then went on the attack to pull back the breakaway. He's the man, and also remember, he did this with a broken rib suffered last week.

At the end, Freire had the right wheel, Boonen's, and Milram was leading out Pettachi like the pro leadout train that they are. It appears that old Ale-Jet may have lost a few steps here and there with his sprint. At about 50 meters to go, he pretty much just stopped pedaling, only to be passed by his last leadout man, Zabel, who ended up finishing ahead of him. What maybe should have happened was you perch Zabel at the back of the leadout train (as he has some experience in winning this race), and let him go for it. Being the consummate professional he is though, when asked about the end of the race situation, and how he felt about leading out Pettachi who stopped sprinting early, he says something along the lines of, "Ah, it's in my contract to do leadouts, so I did my job." That guy is pure class. Looking at the tape at the end, 2nd place was pretty close between Boonen, Davis (of Discovery), and Robbie McWhiner, oops, I mean McEwen. Allan Davis ended up second with Boonen taking the 3rd step, and Robbie back in 4th. For Discovery, that was a damn good finish, and he wasn't that far off from winning. Considering that they need to get a new sponsor for next year, Disco is having some damn fine results. Tour of California, Paris-Nice, 2nd and Milan - San Remo, some stage wins here and there. Good stuff.

Anyway, back to the grind for me. I'm cranking this out at work while I'm at lunch, so now it's time to actually go back and do that work thing (I hate it when that happens).