Mama Mia, it’s Mother’s Day

To me dear old Mum,

This Blog was originally intended for you. Actually, it was intended to keep the cost of International calls down by posting my messages for you at my leisure. Somehow it blossomed.
Nevertheless, here is your Mother’s Day Blog even though it sounds a bit ridiculous.

And for the other 200 of you that average reading this thing each day, bear with us.

We have had some unique times together; there was the flying shoe incident, the night together in jail in Rome, dragging you from St. Peter’s after you got in the fight with the priest (where did I go wrong?), surviving the curse of the zingara, and countless others that we will not go into.

One of the truly memorable moments was just last fall, in Italy, in my last bike race. There atop the Madonna di Ghissalo in the Giro di Lombardia I was hanging onto the back of the lead group for everything I was worth, we rolled over the top and there was mum, screaming for me to, “Get the f*@k up there would ya!!!!”.

You have made me laugh hysterically, I have wanted to kill you numerous times, I have faked static on the mobile phone as an excuse to hang up, I use caller ID, and I moved to the other side of the planet. But don’t think I did any of these because of you. This all makes sense within the context of being Italian. Admitedly, I am writing this to you while still in my cycling clothes, I kind of, uh, temporarily delayed getting this off so I rushed right home to post. Thankfully there is a 9 hour time difference that works in my favor.