Loaded Phillies truck leaves for Fla.

Snow might be arriving overnight, but spring can't be far away, judging from the flurry of activity this morning at Citizens Bank Park.

Birds fly south before winter, but Phillies clubhouse gear - everything from bats and balls to exercise bikes to sunflower seeds - gets hauled south before spring training.

In South Philly this morning, workers finished loading a truck to make the annual trek to Florida, and it left almost exactly at high noon.

Pitchers and catchers report in just 10 days, on Feb. 14. Valentine's Day ain't bad timing for fans' continuing love affair with a team that won the 2008 World Series and sold out every game last year.

Single-game tickets, by the way, go on sale Feb. 17.

The packing at the park took about a month, a somewhat random process of boxing, bagging and stacking stuff on pallets, said equipment manager Dan O'Rourke.

The inventory was daunting: 15,000 baseballs . . . 10,000 12-ounce cups . . . 2,000 T-shirts . . . 1,200 bats . . . 600 hats and 600 pairs of pants . . . 350 helmets . . . 250 batting practice tops . . . 150 pairs of batting gloves . . . 20 coolers (and a half pallet of Powerade mix) . . . 15 cases of gum (regular and sugarless) . . . and 12 cases of sunflower seeds.

"It's like picking up our clubhouse and moving the clubhouse down there," O'Rourke said. "It's the same stuff, it's just a different state."

Of course, some supplies get purchased in the Clearwater area. An advance team arrived on Monday at Bright House Field to start stocking such things as toothpaste, deodorant and body wash, he said.

How much the haul weighs O'Rourke didn't know.

The heaviest item might be a vibrating exercise device called a Power Plate, because several men were needed to just to lift that pallet.

Shortstop Jimmy Rollins had about a dozen bags to ship - notable mostly because he hardly sent anything in previous years, O'Rourke said.

But it all got packed on the 53-foot truck that was began to roll right at noon.

The unloading should take only a couple of hours on Sunday morning, said O'Rourke, who'll be flying down.

After doing some unpacking, the crew will call a halt so they can join the rest of the nation in watching the Super Bowl.

O'Rourke's pick seems fitting.

"I'm rooting for the Packers," he said.