Even though the snow still covers my windows, the freakin' bear still sleeps in my shed, not a single bud has yet to appear on any living green thing - In fact there are no green things! - and the sun barely peeps above the horizon here in the frozen tundra of Central Florida, USA, I guess that the biking season has officially begun. Never mind that I'm still putting on the kilos of fat Nature and God have designed to keep me warm during the winter months, Tommy Boonen, Levi Leipheimer and others of their kind have already shed the half pound of "fat" (really?-ed.) they put on during their three day off season, and they are ready to do business. No, they are already doing business and doing quite well. So it seems, that despite the incredibly short off season, the 2012 bike racing smorgasboard is back back on the stove, ready to be served.

Since the season has actually already begun, though not yet in full force, we have gleaned some important trends already, among them is that the teams are prepared to travel to the ends of the earth to establish an early advantage. The Tour Down Under has never loomed very large in the sport, but Patty's globalisation efforts, heavy handed as they may be, seem to be paying dividends.

Yes, Beijing was a horrible race, run through a smoggy Hell and reluctantly witnessed by the victims of the largest holocaust of the twentieth century, but it's not going to go away for a few years anyway as they witness the birth of the Tour Down Under and calculate how its cultural and fiscal benefits can translate into Mandarin. I mean, does "barbie" translate into Chinese? Hey, barbequed chicken-on-a-stick is on the menu at the Tilted Pagoda, so it must. To deny the TDU's recent success as it has emerged into a real first class World Tour event is to deny reality. Maybe they had to pay Lance for a few years to get the crowds on the street, but it was money well-spent. Now with Lance long gone, the crowds stayed; and though the TV networks in America have decided that bike racing without an American star won't play well in Peoria, they still showed the race daily in an abbreviated form.

Discounting the business aspect, speaking like the bike-racing nutbag that I am, the Tour Down Under was a successful race because it was entertaining: It caught and held my attention though I had made up my mind before anyone spun a pedal that the race was going to be not good, crummy, a crap race. It has never been good, and it will never be good my closed little mind told me. No race, I mean no race that far from Belgium, France, Italy, or Spain can possibly be any good (except maybe, sometimes, on occassion, and by accident, an American or Canadian race could be, maybe). I am such a confused old geezer, I am. Yet, despite my overwhelming prejudice, the race WAS good.

Maybe it was Greipel's renewed presence: He positively stomped his name into the books, and he wasn't cherry picking because along side him were the world's best sprinters minus only the Cut-Tail Cat, the Missile from Manx, Peta's Squeeze, the World Champion Marc "Caveman" Cavendish! Hahahaha! A big ommission without a doubt was Marc, but Gorilla Boy was bad, baaaad! Ah, but what was new? A sprinter has always dominated the race, so what was new? Well, the organizers finally listened and added that little mountain-top experience, and the character of the race changed: Now the skinny boys had a chance. And the skinny boys came, especially the defiant Alley-Han-Dro flippin' Val-Vair-Day. I like em'. Did he transfuse? Don't know and don't care anymore. Everybody done it, but only some got caught; we need to let it go and start over. And Al - Are the "Green Bullet" days mercifully over? - responded with a great stage win, a typical power blast up the grade, a beautiful piece of work. The day before, Oscar Freire showed his stuff, another cool piece.

In the end, Greenedge got the win they wanted, and Gerrans took the overall: One of the negative features of stage racing is that the winner doesn't have to win anything, and that doesn't settle well, but I get it.

The other official announcement that the season is on took place in another God forsaken end of the earth, Argentina. Argentina is also in the middle of summer right now, so it's hot'n Hell there right now. The only thing hotter than the weather is the Quickstep team who chose the Tour of San Luis to debut their new format for the year. In light of their limited (cough) success in the classics and one-day racing in general, they decided to branch (or revisit) stage racing.

At first I must admit that I was leery: Tour of San Luis? However, QS was not the only team to show. SaxoBank brought Alberto Contador, and the race was on. Though AC won two mountain stages, Levi was right on his tail and out-TT'd him to take the overall. Chicchi and Boonen scored three impressive wins to shut down the Haedo brothers, and LeakyGas's Viviani scored himself a sprint win, impressive for the youngster.

So, though I didn't mean this to be a race report, I did mean it to reel you in and to try to impart some of the excitement I feel about the start of the season. No, the season no longer starts in my favorite places. No, darnit, the Het Volk, Tirreno-Adriatico, and Paris-Nice do not begin the year, and haven't for years, actually. But do they finally actually have worthy successors? Tough question. Personally, I can't imagine any better racing than racing on the cow dung and sheep manure slicked cobbles of Belgium in the spring. However, sunny Australia and blazing Argentina have both thrown some major antes into the pots, and the pots are boiling.