The Madonna Inn

One of the few highlights (at least for me) of the Tour of California is my 10-hour stay at the Madonna Inn. In case you didn't read last year's ATOC blog, Madonna Inn is a Motel-6 quality hotel in San Luis Obispo which has transformed itself into a tourist attraction by decorating every single room in a different theme, most of which look like they were rigged out by Liberace or Elvis in 1965. It's a hoot.

Last night my room was #151 "Sugar And Spice", and it looked like it was decorated by a teenage Marcia Brady. Pink walls, baby-blue bathroom tile, and a brown velour couch. And of course, the room next door was "Everything Nice". Gawd knows what the hell THAT one looks like.

http://www.madonnainn.com/tour/151.asp

Actually you can see precisely what "Everything Nice" looks like right here:

http://www.madonnainn.com/tour/152.asp

Yesterday it was supposed to be raining, but the finish in San Jose was brilliantly sunny and gorgeous. Today we're in SLO, and the weather is supposed to suck. I wore my Spyder soft shell ski gear, which is totally waterproof, yet breatheable. Warm enough to wear on the slopes, but breathable enough to wear on a plane. Great stuff, I recommend it.

http://www.spyder.com/productdetail.new.asp?productid=138808

Tomorrow is the Time Trial in Solvang, so the TV show is very dependent on me. Timing graphics are everything in a TT. Our timing graphics during the Prologue in Stanford were 100% spot-on. If I can do that again tomorrow, there will be a lot of smiles around here.

The satellite guys here are trying to rig up an experiment; they're going to try to extend our VPN out to the mid-way time check (about 10 km away) via satellite so that I can do live timing graphics from the INT as well as from the finish. These satellite guys (Strategic Television) are very, very bright and technically adept, so I think they just might pull that off, and it will be way cool if they do.