Friday, June 25, 2010
June 18 Recap
Ahhh, it's Friday night on a hot summer night in Bloomington, Indiana. We've accomplished a lot in the past 3 days and nights. Fifty riders have come through this time station 39 as evidenced by our world famous leader board. We added color coding for each day of arrival here at time station 39. The Old Aussie crew asked us, "Where are we?" I told them, "Your team hasn't come through yet!". I put them on the board to quiet them down!
The highlight of Friday was in the wee hours of the morning. Team Kalyra came through around 4am. I might have been seeing double, but it sure looked like they had 4 RV's and 4 vans for this 4 gal team. I made a comment about the huge contingent, and a crew member or rider retorted with sarcasm, "Yeah, our horse and pony show!" Good thing they arrived at night. There was plenty of parking at 4am.
About an hour later my Italian belladonna, Sabrina Bianchi, came through and stopped for a bit at our time station. I was honored. She looked to be in good spirits and was riding well. Later in the race she passed Michelle Santilhano to take 2nd place solo women at the end. The girls did well in 2010.Thursday, June 17, 2010
June 17 Recap
A busy day was upon us. All types of teams and more solo's came through. And then there was the glass recycling troop that camped out for 8 hours in front of our view of the oncoming racers.
It was good that I went home to get about 3 hours of sleep and shower. Well, in RAAM terms it was great that I got 2 REM cycles of sleep. I got back to the TS at 3pm and our view was much better as the recyclers left for Oxford,OH. Sandy Earl stopped by for quite a long time. She was definitely the bad luck girl of RAAM, as she encountered every type of bad weather one could imagine. She finally DNF'd in Kansas, but she's enjoying her stay here in Indiana as they are camping tonight at Brown County State Park. They are still going to Annapolis and cheer on all the RAAM participants.
Solo's have started to drop out. We started out with 30 solo's, and now have 17 still pedaling. Three of the five women are still alive. Michelle Santilhano just came through looking quite good. Talk about a vast improvement from her DNF in 2009.
I'm waiting for the Italian belladonna Sabrina Bianchi to come through in the wee hours of Friday, June 18.
My Own Little Sleep Deprivation
It's 5am on Thursday and the last time I was sleeping in a bed was 25 hours ago. It's RAAM time at the local time station 39 in B-Town. I got up at 4am on Wednesday to drive over to the CVS parking lot and put back up the 5 tents that we hastily had to shuck the canopies as the first of the 3 waves of thunderstorms hit on Tuesday. Jen and Jim arrived shortly afterwards and the time station was all ready to roll by 6am. While we were waiting for the arrival of race leader Jure' Robic, I decided to go back home to get all cleaned up for work. Boy, it would have been great to get back in bed for a 3 hour nap, but instead into the shower to prepare for a 14 hour shift as yours truly pharmacist from Ohio. I was able to get back to the tents and greet Robic in tied attire and he was gracious enough to pass by before the 8am pharmacy opening.
Jure' looked tired, but Gerhard Gulewicz looked exhausted 4 hours later. So exhausted that he was about to take a snooze in the middle of a lane of the city's busiest street at 12 noon. I plugged away behind the counter and occasionally went out to the time station to twek it into as pristine condition as it could get. Jim and Klaus did an excellent job manning RAAM control with laptops, 3G, wi-fi, camera's, etc.
I also called the Coke distributor to ask about the Coke product we were to get for the time station for the third year in a row. The rep called back a few hours later and apologized to me and said they've cut their freebie programs. Bet if I mentioned some kind of IU affiliation, it would have been different. So, I kind of feel like John Belushi at the Chicago grill, "Cheeburger,Cheeburger,Cheeburger, Pepsi, no Coke!"
Yeah, I bought $51 worth of Pepsi product, and might never drink a Coke again!
As my a** was dragging and my eye's drooping I perused over the local Herald-Tribune, and again no article about the actual Race Across America. Press releases were sent 3 weeks prior and full cooperation to a reporter that promised to write an "in touch" article on one of the racers. Instead, I get to read a half page article about Girls, Inc and a Santa Barbara 4 woman team doing the race probably totally funded by Girls, Inc. How hard can that be? The real story is about the solo rider that spends his entire life savings and borrows money from fellow cycling buddies and talks them into spending their 2 week summer vacation working their tail off enabling him to acheive his life long dream: to say that he was a RAAM finisher in 2010.
So, I finally finish my 14 hour shift, and now I get interviewed by a nice duo from the RAAM video crew. Finally, my chance for U-tube stardom!
Cheering the participants about one per hour through the night was all worth it. Conversation with French and Swiss teams iced it, and just a minute ago at daw , Kevin Kaiser, my Georgian brother pharmacist, passed by, while I tooted my new Swiss Ricola horn and clanged my cow bell, and he gave me a thumbs up. I'm in heaven in the bicycling paradise of Indiana!
Oh yeah, I called the local paper and gave them a piece of my op-ed!
Jure' looked tired, but Gerhard Gulewicz looked exhausted 4 hours later. So exhausted that he was about to take a snooze in the middle of a lane of the city's busiest street at 12 noon. I plugged away behind the counter and occasionally went out to the time station to twek it into as pristine condition as it could get. Jim and Klaus did an excellent job manning RAAM control with laptops, 3G, wi-fi, camera's, etc.
I also called the Coke distributor to ask about the Coke product we were to get for the time station for the third year in a row. The rep called back a few hours later and apologized to me and said they've cut their freebie programs. Bet if I mentioned some kind of IU affiliation, it would have been different. So, I kind of feel like John Belushi at the Chicago grill, "Cheeburger,Cheeburger,Cheeburger, Pepsi, no Coke!"
Yeah, I bought $51 worth of Pepsi product, and might never drink a Coke again!
As my a** was dragging and my eye's drooping I perused over the local Herald-Tribune, and again no article about the actual Race Across America. Press releases were sent 3 weeks prior and full cooperation to a reporter that promised to write an "in touch" article on one of the racers. Instead, I get to read a half page article about Girls, Inc and a Santa Barbara 4 woman team doing the race probably totally funded by Girls, Inc. How hard can that be? The real story is about the solo rider that spends his entire life savings and borrows money from fellow cycling buddies and talks them into spending their 2 week summer vacation working their tail off enabling him to acheive his life long dream: to say that he was a RAAM finisher in 2010.
So, I finally finish my 14 hour shift, and now I get interviewed by a nice duo from the RAAM video crew. Finally, my chance for U-tube stardom!
Cheering the participants about one per hour through the night was all worth it. Conversation with French and Swiss teams iced it, and just a minute ago at daw , Kevin Kaiser, my Georgian brother pharmacist, passed by, while I tooted my new Swiss Ricola horn and clanged my cow bell, and he gave me a thumbs up. I'm in heaven in the bicycling paradise of Indiana!
Oh yeah, I called the local paper and gave them a piece of my op-ed!
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