So, my frame was indeed waiting for me in Missouri, but a problem remained. How to get it back to California?
Sure, I could have just bought the damn thing from a bike shop here in Cali, but I wanted to support my old LBS, those guys are frickin' awesome.
Because of the sheer size of the boxed frame, shipping was going to be a nightmare. UPS, FedEx and DHL would have charged "oversize III" charges (the box is about 66" x 22" x 12") and it would have cost about $120.
I would have been able to take it back to Cali on the airline for $80 extra if only the plane would have been a 757 or bigger. (I had a connector flight on a regional jet) If you ship a "regular" sized bicycle you may not have to pay the $80.
So at Karl's (the shop owners) recommendation I looked into shipping via Greyhound. It allegedly takes 7-10 business days to ship Greyhound, and that's pretty good. Normal UPS ground takes about that long in my area. But by far the best thing about it is the price. It only cost about $58 to ship by Greyhound.
Oh, and in the rest of the build, I won't be covering headset installation because I had my LBS do that part for me. Since I don't install that many headsets it's a lot more economical for me to pay them to do it than to buy my own tools ($175ish for the park press/crown race tools)