Late Thursday afternoon, Ted and I will board a plane to Santa Barbara, California. We are joining about a half-dozen others involved with the Tour of Utah road bicycle race. We’re going to watch the final segments of the Tour of California race. We are gathering intelligence. My husband Ted is executive director of the Tour of Utah bike race, scheduled to take place in Utah during the last week of June.

Oh, don’t worry. It isn’t a junket. The Tour of Utah is paying our way, fully.

Mostly, I am going to soak up the sun, taste the wine made famous in the film “Sideways” and support the man I love. We’ll start in Santa Barbara and Solvang and end up somewhere near Long Beach. I’m a good soldier. I’m just going to do what they tell me. I’ll yell and cheer a lot for the bike racers (though sadly, our native son Dave Zabriskie dropped out after getting hurt during a course pile-up crash two days ago), but I’m truly going because I want to chill with my best friend/husband and to support him. I hope I can send some mojo Ted’s way to help all go well for the Tour of Utah. Getting it going and supported here in Utah is a considerable challenge.

This is how it works when you truly love someone. We give to each other and we get in return. See, I didn’t have much of this in previous marriage/relationships. Perhaps I was too proud to give up a piece of myself — didn’t want to look weak and insignificant, you know. Well no more. Ted and I support each other; we give where needed and revel in that, really. I’m old enough, wise enough to know that offering up my best self to another really matters. If four days in California comes with that sacrifice, well who am I to argue?!

I’ll probably file some blog entries from California. I’m taking my laptop. I’ll try to log some photos, too. Please check the blog. I won’t give up if you don’t.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 7:06 pm and is filed under All, Sports, Community, Family, Big Utah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.