10 INTERMINABLE DAYS AWAY:

Mets equipment truck hits the highway (Peter Zellen, 2/05/07, MLB.com)

Moving is never fun -- packing everything you own, lugging box after box onto a truck, and then doing it all over in reverse when you get to your final destination.

Now imagine doing it on the coldest day of the season, with temperatures dropping below 10 degrees and the wind chill factor making it feel well below zero.

Yet as a New York Mets crew of about eight spent much of Monday doing just that at Shea Stadium, there were at least warm thoughts in the back of their minds. After all, this was the truck sending equipment, clothes and just about anything else you could think of down to Port St. Lucie, Fla., as the Mets prepare for Spring Training.

"It gets the season going, it means it's here. You get yourself going," said Matt Herbert, 23, starting his second season as a Mets clubhouse attendant. "Everything that you could think of that they need is going down -- socks to uniforms to everything."

Everything is right. A quick glance inside the Atlas Van Lines big-wheeled behemoth showed weights, exercise equipment, carts full of bats and boxes labeled "helmets," "jerseys" and "golf shirts."