I shot this pic of Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwin at the Bulldog Cafe in Solvang the morning of the Amgen Tour of California Stage 5 Time Trial. Paul was really full of P&V that morning. The little coffeshop was just packed with people - the line was out the door with people waiting for their morning jolt. They were incredibly busy.

But Paul wanted to go behind the counter and have me take his picture there. The staff behind the counter was just going nuts with all the orders, so it could have complicated things quite a bit. Phil said, “Wait just a minute - what’s that you want to do, Paul?” Paul told him that he wanted to go behind the counter for a picture. “Nonsense,” said Phil with a laugh, and that squelched the idea right there. Paul has the greatest sense of humor and can be really funny. We bantered back and forth about being “wicked”, and I’ll leave the story at that... Phil and I commiserated about not making a damn dime off from the Tour de France for Dummies book. He told me it’s always like that.

So George is recovering from his wrist surgery - I’m still amazed at his hundred mile ride on a broken wrist. He wins my Hero of the Amgen Tour of California Award.

I’m starting the usual meetings with the planning for two races: the 17th Annual Sea Otter Classic, and the 33rd Annual SugarCRM Cat’s Hill Classic. The Sea Otter this year is from April 12-15, 2007, and the Cat’s Hill Crit is moving a week back to May 5, 2007. The Cat’s Hill, the Grand Dame of California crits, has traditionally been held on the Saturday before Mother’s Day, but this year we are switching back to one week earlier, Saturday, May 5th. It takes a humongous amount of work by a lot of dedicated people to get these two events up and running. So here we go....