The Legend of Wolf Creek

The Cameron Trading Post  

Having just completed our second shift, we pulled into the Cameron Trading Post on the banks of the Little Colorado River just this side of Tuba City, Arizona.  Time to eat, shower and begin the drive to Pagosa Springs, Colorado for the next day's battle up Wolf Creek and the Continental Divide.

  

As you read, your mind's voice speaks electronically generated words via dozens of (or up to twenty) neurons that make up your entire brain.  Kindly overclock your Texas Instrument and read the next paragraph as if it were narrated by Wilford Brimly (Yes, the overweight diabetic who shilled carb-loaded oatmeal to unsuspecting old people who trusted him just because he talked all folksy-syle) or Gabby Hays (I'm not explaining this kook).  You pick the voice, totally democratic.

"In Nineteen Hunderd and Eleven, the Cameron Trading Post opened its doors at the foot of the historic suspension bridge which spans the nearby gorge of the Little Colorado River.  Today, travelers can stay at the rustic lodge, buy authentic-ish Navajo rugs or simply navigate through the quaint gift shop in a filthy racing kit straight to the water closet and drop a deuce...without buying anything."

Since we DID actually buy gas, Wilford (you're not still doing it are you?), we availed ourselves to the rights and privileges which accrue to the class of paying customers.  Step aside,  you sea of window shoppers, browsers, and looky-loos what, with your opened mouths and closed wallets.

Outdoor Showers

As a member of the tiny subset of people who actually spent money at this place by buying fuel,  Toro felt justifiably entitled to fire up the METAL1 portable shower because there's nothing like public showers in the middle of a big parking lot.  Our "shower" is essentially a bag with a hose which we place on the roof of METAL1 while we race.  It is designed to capture solar energy and yield hot showers immediately after our shift.

Solar Bag?  Hmmm.  Due to a serious design defect, our shower only gathered the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation which spans the cosmos as faint echos from the Big Bang.  Note: while this did accomplish the laudable task of creating all METAL13.8 billion years ago it is wholly worthless for heating water today.  We again need some sciencific facts, so we'll take a MET-angent to explore the nerd-crafted wonder of a Dickie Radiometer.

Why the Big Bang Fails to Heat Water Good Enough: Four Nerd's and a Dickie Radiometer

In the 1950's some eggheads hanging around Johns Hopkins built these giant "antennas" that look like mechanical ears from Wallace and Gromit.  Naturally, the guy named Dickie decided to name it after himself when another guy (whose name did not evoke genitalia) named Peter Roll was standing right there.  Whatever.  So these lonely clowns are working like 80 hours a week, to the consternation of their imaginary wives and girlfriends, when they get scooped by Penzias and Wilson.


Even though Penzias and Wilson sounds like a fancy Broadway songwriting duo, its actually a separate pair of nerds who worked for Bell Labs and nabbed the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics because (get this):

1. they found what the other guys were looking for;
2. which was something they were not looking for, and;
3. did even realize what it was when they found it.

No matter what direction they pointed their monster giant Dickie Radiometer they picked up noise.

This background noise was a bigger mystery to these isolated clipboards than talking to girls.  Totally stumped, they actually climbed inside the Dickie and cleaned off bird shit just to make sure avian fecal attenuation was not 'fowling' the signal (three separate laughs in that sentence, underlined to account for inattentive readers).

Turns out that "noise" is uniform throughout the entire universe and this marks the discovery of what is now known as Cosmic Background Radiation, the major direct evidence cited as proof of the Big Bang Theory.  As before, this CBR is the only energy which our misnamed "solar" shower collected.

You might mutter under your breath, 'that is a long, convoluted and fruitless road to travel for me, as a careful reader, to discover your shower was cold.'  Incorrect.  Keep in mind what the Chinese never said: a pointless journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single misstep.

Zack jumps into METAL1

Toro took his zero Kelvin shower in the Parking Lot which produced an unceremonious puddle of Superfund Water to contaminate local aquifers and burden future generations.  Dinner was served from tailgate of METAL1, which continued to earn Michelin Stars from riders and crew. The drive to Pagosa Springs was on the dessert menu.  Then we'd face our third consecutive day of climbing and cross the Continental Divide over Wolf Creek Pass.

Joining us for this leg of our journey was Zack who is, hands down, the most intentionally hilarious guy on the team.  Zack was all for the team, he is a young gregarious, avuncular guy, full of energy, bullcrap stories and endurance.  He is unflappable, doggedly determined and committed to having fun during the race.

As we buzzed around the Trading Post eating, being disgusting and getting ready to scramble off to Colorado, Zack asked if he could do anything to help.  I promptly handed him a clump of wet race ejecta to ferry 25 feet to the trash can.  We simultaneously realized how uncool that was and shared an incredulous laugh.  Let's hit the road.

Pagosa Bound

Ed is awesome in the details.  He studies maps, sequences, contingencies and does anything he can put METAL1 in the right place, on time, every time.   We were immensely proud to have him wearing the Captain's Hat and infinitely gratefully he respectfully declined the matching Captain's Speedo.  In the process of being dead on, Ed does this elaborate thinking that exhaustively considers all conceivable possibilities, out loud, like a homeless guy keeping it real with his shopping cart.  Its both remarkably thorough and extraordinarily funny listening to this meandering dither when you are punch drunk from racing and happily digesting a few thousand calories.  I came to call this his "Piglet Routine" where the guy worries himself to death even though for two years all he did was nail it.  Its like Jordan staying up all night wondering if he could dunk.

Zack jumped into the copilots' seat, closed the door on the rational world and the hilarity began.  Ed immediately launched into a rocking Piglet soliloquy about all things which might, but surely would not, happen.  Among, the first words Zack ever spoke to Ed were: "Does someone need a hug?"  Perfectly timing, off the wall and deadpan.  After a nice little pause, the car erupted into laughter and Zack was immediately in the wolf pack.



Our drive to Pagosa Springs was easily a highlight of RAAM 2010.  We'd sunk our teeth into the race with two solid days of racing and it was now apparent METAL1 was riding faster than TT1, every time.  Wow. The post-ride atmosphere was different that evening, more euphoria, more of a sense that we were doing this thing and each rider and crew was ready to throw down.  The sun was setting as we drove past the silent rock sentinels of Monument Valley.  For us, it was radical liberation to be warm, dry, full of food and not presently at war.



Intermittent rain fell with the last rays of light, DH1 was sticking it to 4Mil and adding to our lead.  We drove past 4Mil and started a stopwatch to measure the time gap up to DH1 so we could give those guys some real time intel.  The gap was about six minutes according to all the math dorks in the car who ciphered the lead accounting for relative speeds of the two cyclists and our truck.  That's one small step for geeky engineers and one giant whoosh for METAL who avoids math.


Here is Ryan sporting tiny woman's socks that appear to have little cotton balls on the back


Zack broke out his bag of riffs and entertained us for hours.  It is not possible to recreate that magic but I am not exaggerating when I assure you everybody shed tears of laughter.  Zack has mini-comedy routines about being a country boy, making his wife do heavy manual labor, how Verizon sucks, and a pleasing mix of canned jokes and improv skits that come flying at you in a peripatetic storm.

Stanley

The big showstopper though was Stanley, the Team ViaSat 2010 Mascott.  You may recall Ron had regaled us the night before with a seemingly unlimited stream of facts and unique experiences.  Well Ron may be living in it but this is Stanley's world.  Stanley is Ron's pet Macaw but that is a criminal understatement tantamount to saying the Beatles were four guys from Liverpool.  You see Stanley is a superhero walking around in a bird's feather suit.


                         "Bring it!"

I started to lift the veil and get Zack hip to the whole Stanley situation.

Not a lot of people realize that Stanley is 900 grams but don't call him fat...he's just flabby.  Yep, he's just a little off form.  Turns out, this is Ron's fault because, if Stanley just did like 20 minutes of bird flavored pect blasting everyday he'd be ripped and would even regain the ability to fly which he lost 17 years ago in a bloody fight.  17 years ago Ron took on a three year old injured Macaw named Stanley.  In reality, Stanley, the world famous, puzzle solving, chick-magnet, dog-mauling super bird took on a valet named Ron to serve him and record his METAL bird odyssey.  Zack was hitting the roof, more questions than answers, how could any of this be?





Stanley making his head extra fluffy for the ladies and thinking of ways to ditch Ron

So there we were: Ed, Toro, METAL and Zack reviewing the race and marveling at Stanley the BADASS and how on earth I could have possibly obtained this level of detail about a bird I'd never seen.  There is no recreating the uproar but here are a few highlights:

Macawsacre

Zack: "He did WHAT?  The bird mauled a dog?  You have to tell me that one."
(its now pitch black outside the truck and I let this one breathe a good 10 seconds before slowing speaking)

METAL: "...there was a trail of blood."
(Insert: four guys in stitches with 30 seconds of incredulous screaming guffaws)


     Stanley: slapping humans around for 17 years

Turns out Stanley is a bird thug.  The trail of blood led to a full-sized dog that required 80 stitches to repair his snout.  The dog wanted a "two pound chicken dinner" and instead got served up a Costco Sized Can of Beak Flavored Whoop Ass.  Stanley ended up with a broken wing and lost the ability to fly, that's how Stanley got his valet, Ron.  Isolated incident?  Nope.  Stanley hangs out in his front yard tree which he does not care to share local felines.  He shells any cat looking for a chicken dinner.  Stanley shears off branches with his beak, then launches them with his bird head.  He nails cats with his vicious avian arboreal assaults.  Sometimes he holds onto the stick, prison-yard style, and fends off attackers with what I call his "bird shiv."

This is just the beginning, Stanley is adored by women and sought out by celebrities.  There is literally too much to say.  After I had Zack in a fevered state of disbelief regarding how much Stanley lore I was sitting on, I dropped the bomb on him.  "Say Zack, here is a photo of Stanley on my laptop."  THAT was a barn burner.  Ron had given me his SD card after day one to grab his race photos which included a Stanley portrait.  Zack was floored.


      "That's two for me and ZERO for Ron!"

Stanley became our mascot and a central conceit of the team.  We discovered him on the road, developed his character and resorted to his tales (both real and embellished) as a refuge from the pain, darkness and isolation that riding RAAM can be.  Best of all it was organic, spontaneous, unexpected and a riotous team-builder for us to share during that brief adventure.

At that point, only Zack and us three were indoctrinated into Stanley folklore.  I had no idea it would ever become anything more than a riot that night.  It did, as in magnitudes more hilarious, when I start getting texts like this from Kevin Hunter during the race:

Kevin:"Give 'em hell tonight.  Do it for Stanley.  He's 900 grams you know"
METAL: "Oh man, that's funny."
Kevin: "Not fat...just flabby"
METAL: "Holy shit you have the whole VH1 Stanley story!"
Kevin: "Zack was killing us last night with Stanley stories"

So obviously, the magic element is the rotating crew that disseminates news and bird legends across the vehicles as they rotate at the end of every shift.  Hard to measure how much this little dynamic added to our fun on the road.  So we laughed like hell and got to our hotel in Pagosa Springs hotel in good repair.

Offload at Pagosa Springs Hotel

Typical METAL1, we grabbed two luggage carts and had both hotel rooms dialed in within 10 minutes.  Try it sometime, it takes practice.  I got some pretty good sleep and headed to breakfast only to find Toro, the Eagle Scout, was already digesting food and data.



He's that guy you go camping with that you unzip your tent flap in the morning to discover he's already made a fire, caught lake trout for breakfast and took photos of bears he chased away during the night a few miles up the road which he sensed because blue spotted tree squirrels only face east when black bears are about to attack.  We had a big satisfying breakfast and learned 4Mil was not reporting any times after Durango.  We found out later they had crashed out because one of their crew fell asleep at the wheel while driving an RV but at that point we did not know this.  Ultimately, 4Mil's disaster just made the entire team appreciate our crew who worked long hours, kicked ass and made us as fast as we could be with no hitches.

Toro Bike Stand

Necessity is the mother of invention...who got knifed by Toro who is now the daddy of Macgyvering Innovation.  Here, he labors in the Room Shop over the now-famous improvised bike stand.  Pretty clever, huh?  Trash cans became ice chests, rags were acquired from hotel staff and our bikes were always race ready when we left the hotel.  Big deal Toro, I know how to whistle.

Third Consecutive Climbing Day

It was a chilly morning and we'd be starting in the morning twilight.  Our parcours this day was pretty exciting and very simple.  Climb from 6300 to 10800 feet elevation.  We'd start in a chilly ravine east of Durango and have the distinct honor of hitting the highest elevation on RAAM as we crossed the Continental Divide at the top of  Wolf Creek Pass.  Jeremy and I were both feeling good and I knew we were going to have a big day.

There would be about 60 miles of mostly up with some drops which inflates the total climbing versus raw elevation gain.  This ride most closely approximates what Jeremy and I do nearly every Saturday.  I was more relaxed for this ride than I ever have been for any RAAM stage, it felt like a home field advantage.  An average Saturday training ride for us is 80 miles with 8000 feet of climbing.  There's a tradition of mauling these rides just after the sun comes up at a pace just shy of death.  In other words, this stage is how we train, why we ride bikes and we take much pride in executing this particular type of riding.  With no disrespect to our competition, there was approximately zero chance anybody in RAAM could climb like us.  Time to cash the lottery ticket we picked up hanging out in the pain cave every week. 

Navigation from Memory

We had to backtrack toward Durango to track down Tynee and the Gorilla.  As we Drove along in the dark, Toro decides we missed a turn.  GPS, map review, driver, crew all bested by Toro's memory as he scanned the terrain and decided this was not the road he had traveled in previous races.  He was right, we fixed it and METAL1's on-time-all-the-record was safe.

The Gorilla, Toro and the introduction of Bike Ninja

Jeremy got the first pull of the day once the Gorilla gnashed his bike to the exchange.

Temps were in the 40's and we'd be climbing out of the gate.  I had to wear cold weather gear, not to avoid pain (impossible in RAAM anyway), but rather to avoid involuntary slowing that travels with being frozen.  Freeze biking is like those Galapagos Iguanas that get all lethargic after dining on seaweed in the frigid equatorial ocean.  No frozen lizards, we got some shredding to do.  Some people call that thing a balaclava.

Au contraire Robespierre, that's my Executioner's Hood.

METAL-Ed

The sun was warming things up as we gained elevation, this was some brutal and fairly relentless climbing.  We had a healthy warm up heading for Pagosa Springs when Ed decided to get in on the fun.  He backed METAL1 up in some tall grass that was hiding a bent metal snow measuring stick which impaled the rear bumper and then broke off like a bee stinger or something.

No racing allowed until Ed got a photo with his METAL

It was a funny accident but the really hilarious thing was how much Ed was digging getting in on the whole rampage, destruction and brutality vibe.  He wouldn't give up his rusty javelin and was pacing around saying: "this is METAL"  and insists on being photographed with the thing.  Awesome.  Ask me how I would expect him to act and I'd have said he'd fill out insurance forms in triplicate and start getting estimates while we slept that night.  Nope.  He was Ed the Impaler and the mellow, cautious guy that lives in San Diego apparently stayed there.  Ed's enthusiasm was infectious and Chuck (crew chief who was riding along with us for a while) was having a blast too.  Epic Day, under way.

Wolf Creek: Making the Angels Cry

Zack was driving the follow vehicle and that meant Izzy was navigating.  This was their day to shine.  Those guys were right there all day and they accomplished the nearly impossible by causing me to ride even faster than I would have merely driven by my own depravity. Just like Ed had transformed into a brutal minion, Izzy became our Satanic DJ and the soundtrack for METAL1's finest hour.

              You play Highway To Hell while Toro's cranking out 500 watts...the arm's going up

A few hours into our shift the main event was center stage.  Wolf Creek Pass is a fun climb because it glowers and towers above you as you make your puny-human way up the valley leading up to the summit.  As the grade increased the follow car transmuted into METAL2, everybody grew horns and channeled Ronnie James Dio.  Toro and I normally trade 5-7 mile pulls, outside Pagosa, Toro called for decreasing pulls as the road tilted up: 3miles, 2miles, 1mile and for the summit 1/2 mile pulls.

Toro telling me: "that sucked, five miles of climbing. You are taking about 9 miles here, its mostly down then we are switching to three's"

Shorter Pulls based on Hilly Terrain

This is how we became one unit.  Shorter pulls puts more pressure on the drivers and crew but it also gets them all fired up.  You see them more and the bikes are maxing at 15MPH, they have to find places for exchanges, they throw bikes faster, they run to the bike rack and are even more critical to putting time into rivals.  Everybody was on FIRE assuming their assigned job with precision and speed.

Hitting the teeth of the climb, Izzy and Zack start blasting Metal Tunes.  Dark clouds above, temps are in the 30's and there is snow up the to the edge of the roads.  Riders and crew started screaming and hollering because we all sensed this was a once in a lifetime moment.  All seven of us stayed line-of-sight up to the summit.

                  I am actually laughing here from Izzy's METAL narration and song choice

As I rode up toward some dead animal in the road Izzy gets on the METAL2 P.A. and scratches out a sinister "feast on his flesh!"  I nearly fell off my bike laughing and immediately redirected that energy to my pedals.

With the summit in site Toro calls for half mile pulls.  METAL1 and METAL2 are spitting gravel, snow, blood and guts and those guys nailed every exchange.  It was a RAAM clinic, Toro and I were throwing everything we had onto the road.  You ride, jump in, barely pass the other rider, jump out of the truck and onto the bike and hit the gas a few seconds later. 

Above 9000 feet elevation, its real now.  Were getting some wind and then an icy rain starts trying to cool the METAL.  No chance.  Izzy again, "You guys are killing this mountain so bad...its making the Angels cry."  Oh my.  The heat of humor and passion of battle burned my core.  Izzy literally stopped the rain, I did not feel it anymore.  Did he just ad lib that?  Do I need to pull over and shake his hand?  No, he's ViaSat Crew just throwing in his unique contribution.  Each rider and crew brings gives it his all which has the cumulative effect to transform a mere trip into an Epic Journey.

This was our optimized assault, time station data confirmed: Team ViaSat was the fastest team up the mountain.  Our story is more than facts because the experience was transcendent.  The script and cast I can only relate to you here in shadow form.  As such, it will likely fail to convey what we left on that mountain. We improvised, fought like hell and worked together.   There was a powerful willingness to sacrifice the self for the team, the technically perfect execution of rapid rider exchanges at altitude, in weather and under the pressure of high expectations.  All this was done with riotous humor, frequent war cries and METAL music to rouse the dead.  For those there that day, we found our seven individual contributions became one, this is the one Legend of Wolf Creek.

Toro took the summit prize on his roady and I took over shortly thereafter for the long descent down to South Fork Colorado, or as Denner calls it SoFoCo.  We switched to TT bikes for the rest of the day.  Time to tear down this hill and stomp some flat 'ground and pound' before calling it a day.  We were getting calls about Tobias being sick and that DH1 might be late.

Beavers Don't Speak Sign Language

It was pretty odd to switch from 1/2mile pulls uphill to one that was over 15 miles straight down.  I was regularly touching 50MPH coming down the backside of the Continental Divide.  I saw an animal (a Red Beaver, as Zack later clued me in) sort of pacing in the road.  I thought about bunny hopping the beaver at 50MPH on a TT bike but...that's just stupid.  So do I go right? Left? Hit the brakes?  No.  The best way to communicate with a semi-aquatic rodent is to waive your arm around.  Now I'm bike racing AND removing the communication barriers between man and beast.  Well, some beavers aren't cut out to be Koko the Gorilla so I gave up and just dodged his furry meanderings.  Zack was kind enough to narrate the tale by yelling out the window "beavers don't speak sign language."  Texans.

I zipped through the bottom of the climb and saw our media truck in a gas station.  They had stayed the night in South Fork meaning they were only 15 miles from us when we climbed.  While there was no way to know this in advance, ViaSat media should post up on this big climb in the future.  There is plenty to see as the crew is executing frequent exchanges, the bikes are moving slower and the scenery is breathtaking.  I suppose the same thing goes for RAAM media which was also absent.  They missed one hell of a show.

Rain, Heart failure and Heartbreak

We hit some flat terrain with a cross to tail wind, it was raining intermittently but not enough to soak through to the socks (my standard for too wet).  I was suddenly stricken with nausea, cold sweats and chest pressure.  Great, diaphoresis and a heart attack?  I was able to spin up to 32 miles per hour due to the tail wind and then I backed off to ascertain whether I needed to stop racing.  I felt the same resting as working, ignore it.  While this was an alarming experience that has never happened before or since I decided it was merely the result of these three days of violent effort.  I was simply on my limit of exhaustion which is comforting in that I had left nothing on the road.  I could still ride fast, barely.

This episode also represented a fork in the road, RAAM had started taking its toll and the remainder of the race is marked by physical decline.  Hard racing, lack of sleep and rushes of adrenalin corrode your well being and become more disabling as the race progresses.  You never feel great again, its managing the decline which is one definition RAAM success.

Now we start hearing Tobias is sick, dehydrated and DH1 might be late.  While they subjected us to chaos the day before, they actually did take over at the appointed time.  Today that was not going to happen.  Cussing ensued.  Not due to anger at DH1 but more the feeling that we had spilled guts for the team with the assumption we'd let fresher legs take over as planned.  Its RAAM and you deal with it.  DH1 had been hanging out at some hospital and they even had our media with them to cover Tobias' trip to the ER.

So we resigned ourselves to riding until they arrived which was about 15 minutes late.  We had ridden past our planned stop for gas and showers, no chance we would back track.  Tobias was set up to take the first pull.  We found this astounding.  The sick guy is riding first?  Anyway, the awesome part is that our getting off the road got all screwed up and Toro had to ride in DH1 after the exchange with Tobias.  Cussing ensued.  Ryan's got the first-hand dish on this chapter but my understanding is, he gets in the car, blurts out a little explicative-laden tirade and then calmly turns around to Denner and says "Oh, hey Ryan."  Classic.

Just to keep the screwed up theme going, we got Toro back and the follow vehicle had taken off with Izzy (our crew member to pick up) and we ended up waiting, chasing, and finally meeting up to pick up Izzy.  Then, cumulative cussing ensued.

Izzy jumps on and we head to Ulysses Kansas

As ever, we'll leave off in a parking lot.  Our adventure will resume on the Great American Plains as we ride in Kansas. 100% time trial bikes and one of my favorite days of RAAM.  Izzy is the coolest guy out there and brings the super-low-key humor to a new level.

The Legend of Wolf Creek Video

Click here to watch

We were fighting so hard that day I am amazed we took any pictures.   In fact, we have no video.  I slapped this "movie" together from the photos as they appeared, in raw form and in sequence coming off the camera.  Rather than just point you to a gallery with 250 pics, I've tried this approach to make it more interesting and a faster read.  Obviously, we were too busy to contemplate taking the best or most dramatic photos.  We were racing.  Still, I am pleased we have at least some of the last section of the climb.  A big thanks to Chuck for squeezing off a bunch of good shots.  Please enjoy and make allowances for our inability to get better media and my laziness in not making a more polished production.  Think of it as a Backstage RAAM Pass you were unable to scalp for anything of value.

Operation METAL Storm

Followers of this blog, both of you, have lodged complaints that updates are too infrequent. Oh yeah, well there is this TV show called "24" that I've never seen that took like six seasons to cover 24 hours. You know what else? There is some other show, I also never saw, called "Lost" and, apparently, the whole thing happened in purgatory or some crap like that. TV sucks anyway, so just get over it.

Our story resumes in a hotel parking lot and just keeps getting fancier as we follow our intrepid racers to the end of their second day of racing and end up in another, even nicer, parking lot at the Cameron Trading Post.

Note: this tome is peppered with equal parts intentional misspellings, unintentional misspellings and unintelligible prose, please laugh and pity your writer at the appropriate times.

Docking Metal1

Around midnight we arrived at the Comfort Inn at Ponderosa Pines in Prescott, Arizona (pictured below). Captain Ron piloted METAL1 in his inimitable, fully-engaged, driving style: hunched forward, face pressed against the windshield, hands squeezing the sawdust out of the wheel and under diligent observation of the posted speed limit. Man.



In defense of the following section detailing the overly-elaborate task of parking: METAL1 is a long beast at 18.5 feet before you add the enormous Thule 4-banger bike rack. You can't see out the back window past all the baggage and bike wheels. Also, this particular parking lot was, as they say in the real estate euphemism department, "quaint." Non-real estate people, who don't get paid to convince folks that living next to a pig farm produces a "charming bucolic aroma that beckons one back the simpler time of knights and kings," would simply call the lot "tiny." What fun is that?

Below is a secret aerial drone reconnaissance image of the hotel parking lot. The yellow line represents the 2500 centimeter backing up odyssey we completed in far less time than it would have taken to build a truck from the surrounding pine cones and rocks.




We inadvertently sent Ron down that dead end in the hotel parking lot. Obviously, there was no room to attempt a 3-thousand-point turn. Back up alert! All hands on deck. In time, Ron found that stick that causes reverse to happen but was stricken with equivocation and paralyzed in the face of the nefarious forces potentially to be unleashed by moving, uh, not forward. Who are we to judge?

Ron was surely thinking, 'if we were in Europe, with their superior public transportation and lavish social services, none of this would be happening!' It was. In the freezing mountain air, Jeremy and I posted up like those airport flashlight guys behind METAL1. Ed was literally co-piloting, seriously, with actual obligations and responsibilities. As you know, the co-pilot in CARS is a strictly symbolic and ceremonial designation bestowed in a bloodless coup (but much ill-will) upon the first asshole that yells "shotgun" like five hours before a beer run.

So that was the scene, four people fully engaged in...backing a truck up...80 feet...in a straight line...with no traffic...in a well lighted area. Against all odds, drama mounted. Just another classic case of: park, park exceedingly slow or send Ron to find ice while we park. High stakes.

I was on the driver's side, in mirror view, and started flashing the universal signals for "back it up." I tossed in some verbal assurances to prompt Ron, who was now popping his head out. Soon his torso was emerging like some kind of Parking Cobra with no fangs but armed to the teeth with an opinion on everything.

Nothing.

I hear cows can't go down stairs though apparently going up presents no problems, something about their legs. Driving a car in reverse is Ron's Stair Descent or Waterloo, depending on whether you see him as more Bovine or Bonaparte. I moved closer and closer to Ron until the absurdity reached its crescendo.

Ron graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Louis Agassiz School of Glacial Backing Up. No longer off the rear bumper, I ended up standing right next to the driver's door, face to face with Ron...close enough to reach in and grab the steering wheel. "Go backwards...now...no, you are not going to hit anything...seriously...step on the gas pedal and release the brake." I walked along side METAL1 relishing my new role as the Tony Robbins of backing up. Jeremy and Ed both cracked weary grins.

Once again, Ron took a routine activity and replaced it with a mysterious ornate rococo performance art masterpiece, paradoxically painted with but a single stroke of genius and eccentricity. Regrettably, while Ron would join us again in Ohio, this little parking Magnum Opus marked the last time he EVER sat in the driver's seat. Sleep well Ron, that was a hell of a show packed into one day.

Hotels

As you know, the hospitality industry is improbably staffed by the inhospitable. City folk are hardly shocked with indifferent service grudgingly meted out with an eyedropper by put-upon miserble's. I actually anticipate inflexible adherence to rules, "no you cannot check in early, no you can't have food early/late." Small town USA does better.

A polite young man briskly checked us in and invited the preternaturally efficient Toro to grab any of the food he was already foraging from the darkened and quite-closed adjacent dining room. In a flash, Toro snapped up two arms full of sundries and durable foodstuffs to sustain his incessant eating. Basically, just a guy throwing coal into a locomotive furnace.

Each hotel politely bore witness to four bikes, a bunch of baggage and four dirt bags whizzing by in the first 120 seconds. They accommodated our odd requests for rags and food at inconceivable hours. While still made of stone, my jaded heart warmed to all the helpful folks who eased our journey with patience and consideration. Now let's get back to my dissertation exploring petty annoying things normal folks utterly fail to complain excessively about.

A few words about Snoring and why Darwin was a bearded unreliable turd/troll

Our hotel room was neat and decent with a staid ambiance of green accents, flamboyant floral flourishes and tastefully muted cat barf hued carpets. Its that post-rummage-sale decor that defies an accurate description without sounding mean. Shit.



I took a few photos of my road rash and posted them to assure my mates METAL was just getting warmed up. Its not blood...its molten LAVA!!!




As ever, Ed managed to get to sleep before me in order to start his daily Snore Affrontery. SnoreMagnums always doze off before evolved bi-pedal humans. During this trip, I divined Ed is some kind of Mullah or religious leader of the proto-hominid species known as the Head Rumbling Ogres. Once all snugly and asleep (with his head facing East) this Muezzin blasts out the clarion Call to Snore to the diaspora of worldwide HRO's. I declare a Fatwa.

How do HRO's sleep faster? Do they have thicker craniums which shield their tiny brain stems from life's complications? Eventually, Mother Nature should step in any of a thousand ways to rectify this harmonic dissonance. She doesn't.

First, the aggrieved victims of these quasi-anthropomorphic sleep-robbers should eventually become too exhausted and actually sleep FIRST. Never happens. Second, archeologists and science-ific peer-revenued type-written papers have recently unearthed the ancient practice of preventing the "head rumbling ogres of tribal insomnia" from taking wives and making more little offensive baby HRO's.

Though this was Hammurabi's Law carved in cuneiform on ancient Formica tablets, all the Village People (even the cop) were too tired to enforce the edict and the sneaky HRO's, being all fresh as a daisy (from yet another great night's sleep) ended up looking, by contrast, all charming and engaging and, in so doing, easily impressed all the furry exhausted proto-womankind who were wearily smitten (each edition will feature a run on sentence of some magnitude, I'm not always gonna mark it like this). Natural History then records the grave misfortune that HRO's are, in fact, prolific breeders. This all happened before anybody even heard of Bin Laden.

Oh, before you start questioning me by bellyaching and dancing around like a baboon with a new Polly Pockets Easy Bake Oven, as you are so prone to do, you should know that "oven" is just a light-bulb and METAL went to great lengths to fall asleep first.

I always rushed to eat, shower, organize and park it on my 50 thread count sheets before the HRO. I wore seal-out headphones with an audio book playing AND drugged myself with Ambien. Even the exhaustion from the five-hour bike drubbing did not deliver sleep to me in due time as each night Ed (sn)roared across the finish line. This room now had the dubious hotel amenity of "en suite roaring cave bear."

Scholarly Abstract of this Section: snoring beasts rob sleep with blissful impunity and reveal the inherent fallacy of Natural Selection which utterly fails operate when the entire flora and fauna are too tired prevent propagation of the mutantly flawed genomic snoring noise imposition nuisance phenomes.

We Woke up in Third Place!

Ed sets like three staggered alarms to replace his snoring noise with 'wake up now' noise. This sets the room in motion to get online race updates, make phone calls to the follow and team cars. Once you locate the live racers and calculate their distance and pace, you have an idea of how much fur needs to fly. It could be anything ranging from two peaceful hours to that lightning bolt of "uh oh" that an hour ago was too late. This morning, we could easily track the guys down as they crossed Prescott Valley. The hotel location was perfect. We'd have time for a leisurely breakfast on the hotel sun porch and a chance to double check equipment with tranquility BUT our first look at the standings was a shocker.

4Mil had passed ViaSat during the night. What? I turned into George Bush senior, "this aggression shall not stand." Brad and Tynee reported 4mil had some "skinny" climbers who flew up the hills. 4Mil had built a lead of about 8 minutes. The mission was to avenge this offense and vault ViaSat up in the standings. We'd seek our prize under a glorious sunny sky and in the impossibly beautiful environs from Prescott, through Jerome, Sedona and Flagstaff. Game on.

Our shift was to begin at 11AM. Riding first rotation is perfect in its balanced demands. Even though the vast majority of the rough climbing fell on us, we don't race at strange hours the first few days of the race. This is different that any other rotation, I'll give you a few examples.

Second Rotation: Day One, they woke up by mid morning, went to the Oceanside parade start, drove out to Borrego, raced 8PM to 1AM, drove to a hotel and got to sleep around 6AM I'd guess. Welcome to RAAM, you just stayed up nearly 24 hours, now sleep for 5 hours and get back out there.

Forth Rotation: Day One, up in the morning, Time Trial for 11 miles starting around 2PM, drive a million miles into Arizona (sleep?) and race 14 hours later...or something...honestly, I don't even know.

So what did we do? Day One, rode from 3-8PM. Five hour ride on Saturday, yeah that's pretty much what we do. Day Two, get up around 9AM to ride in the sun from 11AM until 4PM. Tough riding, normal time of day. No ride at 3AM with restive sleep at noon, for us, that would come later.

METAL1 transformed like Optimus Prime (if you even know what that is: with this plastic light saber I hereby dub thee, Knight of the Lonely Table) into race mode for our second shift. METAL1 growled East across the wide expanse of the Prescott Valley and the day's first climb was readily apparent as the wall of mountains blocking our path. Yeah!

We wanted to jump on road bikes and steal the climb from Tynee and Brad even if that meant starting a few minutes early. They would not mind. In fact, an in-car interview during this exact time period has Tyner hoping for as much. Hell, we wanted ALL the climbs, everybody wins.

The Four Nations of ViaSat RAAM: Frat House

Each of the four ViaSat race units (two riders and their driver) is a mini nation with its own culture and social mores. That unique culture encompasses the things you'd encounter in any weird foreign nation that was unfortunately compressed into a truck populated by only dudes. By now, you know the bylaws of the METAL1 nation: Max effort, brutality, efficiency, healthy food, high tech gadgets and anything else to ride fastest. The rotating crew validated these tendencies of METAL1 but they also reported to us what was going on in the other cars. The variance between vehicles is hard to over state.

We drove past Brad "throttling" his bike and looking like a raging bear hunting down 4Mil. As planned, we set up a few minutes early so our flatlanders would not have to drag their heavy carcasses up another big hill. I raced at 142 pounds and Jeremy was 172 which means we added up to about 315 pounds, or one super-fat guy. Before we peek inside the bizarre world of Rotation Four, I'll say a word about the Gorilla.

The Gorilla does not really "ride" his bike. It looks more like attempted murder as he strangles and mangles his frame, waiting for it to stop breathing as life slips away. Gorilla kills things, animals, bikes and possibly humans (I don't ask). He's a Marine which, as I understand it, is permanent. Inquire about his knife and this sword looking thing is instantly brandished, blade down, ready to strike (I don't ask, anymore). On a bike, he's so huge his limbs have to angle back in as he kills it, this is quite distinctive, even from a great distance. The choke is delivered by both arms and both legs, either of which is sufficiently fatal as the guy has actually fractured three frames. It was inspiring to see Brad's four-pronged frame-mashing and Tynee's pasty pallor as evidence these guys were throwing down. They rode tough not pretty.

Time to Race

My turn to ride first, Ed pulled my roadie and I monitored race radio for any chatter. I knew Tynee was on the road so I peered around a bend in the road and waited.

"Ed do you hear that?" Over the radio, there was some kind of bizarre, high-pitched screaming and blathering in some unintelligible dialect. Had somebody gotten drunk, forgotten to pass out and instead got on a ham radio? Was this a child calling for help or were we eavesdropping on some nearby trailer and their creepy version of domestic tranquility? "Seriously, Ed, what the hell IS that?" Reality was better than my guesses.

Apparently, Brad jumps off his bike, grabs a radio and taunts, cajoles and screams like a baby at John while he rides. Incredibly, John leaves his radio on. This was my introduction to Rotation Four's truck operations which Michele aptly compared to a rolling "frat house" with incessant verbal abuse, trash talking, flatulence and spontaneous irrational explicative-laden tirades. The fireworks were not just a few moments a day, they blasted all day and all night. Here is a dialogue sample delivered to me from the crew. Note: the actual exchange was far longer.

Brad: John, Fuck you
John: Oh yeah? Fuck you Brad
Brad: Fuck you
John: Fuck you
Brad: Fuck you
John: Fuck you
Brad: Matt, fuck you
Matt: What did I do? ...and fuck you John

These guys ate pizza and yelled at each other for 3000 miles. Shift changes were a hoot. We seemed like silent assassins by comparison taking over from a rumbling hoard of stone tossers. Another persistent source of hollering matches was Brad's constant assertion that he was faster than John despite weighing much more. Interestingly, Tynee conceded the speed and nobody disputed the weight. Gorilla, wins?



Levity before 5-hours of gravity: The Gorilla telling the world why, how and when he is better than Tynee moments before my first pull of our second shift.

So Tynee came roaring up the hill looking all pasty and nauseous. I fired out of the blocks but the first pull is never fun, no warm up and you've got some junk in your legs from the previous day. You also have the sensation of being slow and always, in the back of your mind, there is the notion that you might have a bad day or the body is not going to respond to the brain's demand to floor it. Fortunately, we both ended up having big power that day. We'd need it.

We shredded up the first hill which topped out at about 7000 feet elevation.



First Pull: Heart Rate 180BPM, motivation 200%

Toro got a HUGE descent of about 11 miles which dropped through Jerome and plummeted from 7000 to 3500 feet elevation. Jerome is a tiny city perched on the side of a mountain not unlike the little hamlets the Giro 'd Italia traverses in the Alpine region of the Northern Italy. Toro's breakneck descent stood in sharp relief to the creeping sloth-like gaggles of septuagenarians gathering piles of knickknacks their heirs would have to throw away in like a year. As they say, I'm going to hell but so are you for laughing.

While Jerome and Jeremy hardly noticed each other, I felt fortunate to see and mock America on these terms, racing a bike with a great team, at full throttle. I'd surely never be taking the antique-ing route.

He was flying down the hill and passing cars which raises the real possibility that we would not beat him to the bottom. Jeremy and I make a point of harming ourselves on descents which often surprises folks who seem to assume going downhill is break time, its not. For once, Ed's race radio worked and he successfully requested our ViaSat Media to pull off so we'd have one less vehicle to pass. We got in front and either bravely or foolishly stopped for photos as he whizzed by.



This caused an avoidable adrenalin rush as we piled back in and were forced to overtake the Bull-et a second time but having a few images from our journey is worth the worry. We raced across the valley floor through Cottonwood towards Sedona with a second set of mountains dead in our path.


Arizona Valley between Climbs: Toro's headed this way, generally sooner than you'd think.




Rider Exchange in Sedona: care to guess who has overcooked himself and who is tapping out 500 Watts and making sure his little Garmin705 data is accurate?

With Red Rock cliffs and towering buttes Sedona is surely endowed with natural beauty but in contrast to the sparse moonscape of Monument Valley the place is loaded with Ponderosa Pines and lush vegetation.

You might reasonably expect one or the other, to have both in spades just gave us more inspiration and an embarrassingly gorgeous backdrop for our day at the office. It felt like we were stealing all the RAAM treasure. The next evening we would drive into a headwind across a dreary, flat, nondescript stretch of the earth that leads to Kim, Colorado. While Kevin and Larry soldiered that section we had nabbed yet another day of a scenic, hilly, violent riding with the added charm of hand-to-hand combat with another team, 4Mil.


Like Zoolander, Sedona is ridiculously good looking.



Past Sedona, Jeremy and I were trading off pulls in this rider's paradise of long hills and radical switchbacks.



Oak Creek Canyon: breathtaking, even when Breathkilling in RAAM



I tried to drop this bus just to give Ron a coronary

No way 4Mil's eight minute lead was gonna hold up against a Murder Train hill assault. It was not clear I would hold up against this Murder Train hill assault but that is the reward that accrues from training and racing with Toro. I'm pushed to my limit and by some combination of stubbornness and luck, I soar to new heights. I'm just a renter but I like it up here.

Before passing a team's active rider, you see their crew and support vehicles leapfrogging around. 4Mil had their Randy Macho Man Savage Pickup parked on the climb. Seemed like one of their crew was sleeping in the truck. No idea about their tactics or sleep schedules but this truck passed us a little later and I was certain 4Mil got word: we were hunting them down.

While I ride a bike nearly everyday, I'll truly never forget this ride. Once Jeremy blasted out of Sedona we were treated to stunning vistas across verdant valleys and twisting grades up inspirational switchbacks. We were in a cycling cathedral on a perfect day with a mission: Operation Metal Storm. I've never had more fun mashing up hills. It was transcendent, Toro is an animal, Ed is nails, the crew was dialed in, it just leaves no room for me to tank it...my bike was jumping up hills, not sure I exercised any volition in the process. It was mostly a culmination of forces that were meant to be that day. We were meant to be there, doing exactly that.

We shortened up our pulls through some steeper sections and started seeing 4Mil regularly. Again, Toro was calling the shots and he was right on. One thing I admire about Toro is his realism and fast calculations. He digests road conditions and divides them up instantly for max speed. No ego, no BS, no concern about looking weak. Ed and I leaned on his leadership not just because he's done four RAAM's, not just because he'll rip the legs off almost anybody but because he's smart and proposes, first draft, the fastest way to get from A to B. I never wondered what Toro was thinking, or if I was doing my share, it was all an unspoken agreement: kill yourself, throw in what you can and we'll be the fastest. This gave me legs I may never see again. We tore up those hills, as brothers, with not a care in the world.

4Mil was caught...We had them. Jeremy navigated some funky two-lane slower roads as we entered Flagstaff and I eagerly awaited our chance to decisively dump them.

I should point out that while we were out to obliterate 4Mil and TT1 on the road, this quest was truly done in a sporting fashion. All three teams exchanged shouts of encouragement and there was a sense of a shared experience out on the road. We hunted with the belief no team could ride as fast as our riders and no crew was as precise, meticulous and nails under pressure as ours. Team ViaSat raced with that mindset, ready tip our hats if and when somebody dumped us. We made sure today would not be that day.

I took over in Flagstaff proper which has big, open six lane roads with a generous shoulder. I could see 4Mil just ahead, the kill would be mine. I missed a big stoplight and saw 4Mil take off over a rise in the road, pretty frustrating but missing lights is part of RAAM. In that same section I made a few big lights by nanoseconds resorting to full gas sprints. I laughed knowing the follow vehicle missed the light. Yep, that's Ron driving who had specifically mentioned before the race how the riders should not "gas it" when lights were changing...hehe. Day time rules so I did not actually require a direct follow vehicle.

Making that last big stoplight was my springboard to reel in 4Mil. They missed the next light so I immediately shut down the max-power to begin a mini-recovery. The 4Mil guy was clicked out and I gave a courtesy waive to his follow as I track-standed and got ready to seal the deal.

Light turns green and with the power of our entire ViaSat team and crew I flew off the line. I was sitting between 30 and 35MPH and it was my clear intention to send a message to the 4Mil rider: you are NOT going to hang with ViaSat. Its a mental game both with me managing my impending collapse (which must be hidden from rivals) but also the intent to lower that rival's expectations. I want him to recalibrate his ambitions and realize he cannot hold my pace and must accept some lower sustainable effort.

No idea if my mental daggers found flesh but 4Mil never saw a ViaSat wheel for the rest of RAAM. Jeremy and I broke out the TT bikes and spent the rest of our shift distancing ourselves from 4Mil, highly motivated and dead-set determined to dump them: permanently this time.

San Francisco Peaks Climb

Outside Flagstaff there is a sneaky long hill which traverses a pass near San Fransisco Peaks that I ended up pounding out on a TT bike. It was no joke, 400 feet of climbing in about 1.5 miles, and we were in ground and pound mode so I felt like I was going backwards. This is where a heart rate monitor is priceless. I put my HR up around 180BPM and tried to ignore my frustrating ground speed. Race experience helped here and Toro took over at the top. More good news, DH1 had showed up and started taking photos. We had reached the last hour of riding and our relief was in the area. Now we simply had to keep up the pace and straddle the line between top performance and flaming out. We would mash it out to the end at this pace but not before we weathered a couple surprises.




Violent Cross Wind

Jeremy put the SF Peaks in the mirror and started pounding the rolling flats that would finish our last hour. I got word from Ed that Toro was using his TT bike but switched to a low-profile regular road wheel. He said "Andrew can keep riding his TT wheels if he doesn't mind getting killed." There was a stiff cross wind that was easily gusting over 40MPH. TT bikes are like sails from the side, add that to severe cross winds and 35MPH forward speed and it gets dicey. It is entirely possible to have your wheels swept from beneath you and lighter riders are more susceptible. Toro is neither chatty nor prone to hyperbole so any mention of fatality has my undivided attention.



Note the low profile front wheel which saves lives in 40MPH cross winds

Unfortunately, I did not have time to switch wheels before my next harrowing pull but, as usual, Toro was right. I utilized a wide-grip modified TT position to keep up my speed and avoid diving onto the pavement at speeds that often topped 40MPH. The gusts were grabbing onto to my wheels and frame and pushing the whole rig wildly toward the ditch off the road. It was Mr. Toad's Wild Ride without the assurance of a peaceful ending. After the exchange, I immediately changed front wheels. No way I was gonna repeat that.

4Mil was exacerbating the hazards with some overly obtrusive rider exchanges. Even though the shoulder was huge, they were setting up just inside the white line which meant to go past their stationary rider and team car I had to bunny hop the rumble strip and expose myself to freeway speed traffic. Once past, I was forced to bunny hop a second time to get back onto the shoulder. Just doing bunny hops in a cross wind on a TT bike at 142 pounds for no good reason. 4Mil seemed like good people but their failure to pull over and let us keep rocking on the safe side of the rumble strip exposed our riders to an avoidable risk. As a rookie team, I'm pretty convinced it was unintentional but they might also have wondered what the hell the ViaSat guy was screaming about.

Last Minute Surprise

DH1 reported they would take over a few minutes early so I promptly ignited the remaining fumes in the tank and finished my last pull. Toro got the last pull so I jumped into the front passenger seat to get some rare race footage and yell meaningless stuff out the window. Toro was RIPPING down the road, no need to hold anything back and we wanted to finish strong. Empty the clip, were done!



So I'm recording some video, reviewing the days adventure when I spot DH1...hey that's a little early...uhhhhh...why are they having a yard sale? ...they have a flat...I'm riding again.

I won't recreate the dialogue from the next few minutes because this is a family blog... you know, that's not really true. Anyway, use your imagination. You've been told to give it all you got, you did, and then you are told to give some more. Its typical RAAM but we got faked out by the fact that those guys had been hanging around for more than an hour. Even in the case of a flat we were expecting them to put somebody, anybody, out there and take over at the spot they had called in. They did not, cussing ensued. Oh well, time to dig deeper.

My cold, wet and slimy socks and helmet were grudgingly foisted upon my empty shell. Where would I get the energy to even throw my leg over the frame, much less race? Well, I've had the misfortune to attend a "Spin Class" at the Gym where the "teacher" plays dance music and helps attendees win the "Tour Day France" by yelling helpful tips and shaming people into working harder. In furtherance of this superfluous externally-provided motivation, these ass clowns instruct spinners (Who are often men, haha) to 'go all out for 30 seconds' and when that time is up they gleefully add 15 seconds. Wrong. I'm not so good with math but utilizing "All" of something leaves a remainder of approximately zero. I will conjure the energy to raise a middle finger but pedaling is not in the cards. My wife has stopped inviting me to the gym.

So I decided DH1 was a truck full of Spin Teachers in Richard Simmons shorts which made me laugh and paved the way for the combination of training, anger, pride and competitive desire that somehow dragged my withering self through that last pull.

After all that,The Jazzersizers in DH1 took over at precisely 4PM. Just like we planned it, right? Spin teachers!

Mission Accomplished

We pulled into The Cameron Trading Post parking lot about 25 miles this side of Tuba City and welcomed Zack onto METAL1 as our rotating crew. Zack was coming off five hours of navigating and getting his skull jarred by riding "dead center on the rumble strip" in the follow vehicle which, as you know, had been piloted by Ron.

Time Station Data showed us both leaving 4MIL behind and again we were faster than TT1. We earned the right to eat tons of food and reflect on a job well done. Not sure exactly why Ed was eating like a racer but grab a plate big fella, you earned it!

The four of us would drive to Pagosa Springs Colorado and prepare for the next battle in the Rockies and across the Continental Divide. During the drive to Pagosa we exchanged stories and shed actual tears of laughter as the Legend of Ron Grayson began to cast its shadow across a continent.

T Minus 15 Hours

Brawl then Brawley

"People are strange and I'm even stranger;
Man I look Ugly, just got into a fight" METALson

Jim Morrison would turn in his grave but since he's buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery outside of Paris which is notable as the final resting place for such luminaries as Proust but more famously for hippies, ubiquitous graffiti and that somebody actually stole the bust of Morrison right off his tomb, his tripping soul must have larger concerns than my painful riff. Our first hour 'off shift' would be a Soft Parade encounter of the eccentric and other worldliness as we shut down racing only to begin our sojourn to light it up again in 15 short hours.




A couple photos moments after riding, deeply grimy but pleased with doing what we set out to do. It took extra time to get organized due to first-day chaos and dealing with my wounds.

In a flash of time the race leaves you. The crushing five-hour burden shifts onto the back's of the next rotation. Our race-long misery legatees, Ryan, Tobias and Dave, would self-ignite and torch themselves off into the inky black desert night while METAL1 would shift into our transfer mode operations. Their departure was marked by flashing follow car lights had we bothered to look, we did not.

We drove a bit up the road and ended up in a strange night scene at TS2 in Brawley.



We pulled METAL1 into the Desert Motel parking lot on the right side of this photo. It was a moonless night, opposite of 2009. A quiet swarm of support vehicles, men and machines levitated in this odd space. It was an ephemeral, wheezing, type of life emanating from the creeping procession, the decidedly oddball parade, which traipsed down the main street of a one-story town on a night in June.

I was the freak of the freak show, filthy as a coal miner, shredded from my crash and not inclined to wear much clothes. Add to this, outdoor public showering, making up some dinner and taking a whiz in a fully lit parking lot while the gentlefolk of Brawley took their evening constitutionals. Since the town has a vibrant baseline freak factor, we seemed to reasonably fit in, if just for the hour or so. We just looked like meth-dealing, vigilante outlaws which drew little objection from actual thing.

The ambiance really was like a Doors song, kinda trippy and gritty but not too creepy, no sense any harm would come to you. The extreme garish incandescent lights in the town repelled the boundless darkness of the desert horizons which pushed in from all sides. In this peculiarly lit set, a population of transitory migrant bikers mingled with migratory laborers, nothing in this moment or place was it meant to last.

Return the next night and you would not know the place. I've been to Brawley, but the one I know was a temporary planet. You can visit, but only in this space. So we set up shop here in this artificially illuminated community, a carnival with no rides and a drive-in with no movie. Just eccentric characters executing random parts for no reason in particular. I should mention, riding for five hours as a flaming comet produces enough dopamine and endorphins to shoot the riders into a nature-drug induced trip beyond explanation. Now, Morrison is pissed. So your writer sees Brawley through a drug induced haze, I suppose you reckoned as much by now.

The little frontage road between the Motel lot and the main road was crammed with giant RV's, puttering mini vans and a pack of cyclists on recumbent bikes or "bents" who essentially clogged up the road. They were meandering, confused, old, bearded, sporting ample mirrors on both bikes and helmets and in no hurry to get anywhere. In other words, bent riders race RAAM the same way they ride every other day.

They were classic oblivious obstructions, made extra delicious for the racing numbers and matching kits which stood, mockingly, as a contrast to their somnambulistic lethargy, languished cadence and a passionate demeanor equal to a hibernating sloth...that died a few years back...and got dipped in some of that Jabbah the Hut Carbonite business...and then read this blog. Just like in the regular world, the bent guys were getting honked and yelled at. Oh, I do love this race and the oblivious.

While we breathe easy knowing we'll not be asked to destroy ourselves for a little while, the clock marches forward from the moment we hand the baton to DH1 (Ryan,Tobias and Dave's vehicle/team name, I'll soon explain). I could negotiate with my broken body but the clock was having none of my overtures.

The list of things to accomplish before racing again is pretty long but we've all done this race before, no surprises. Speed and efficiency in checking off requisites translates into rest, sleep, and time to properly tend to crucial details, like bike maintenance. All of this begets speed on the road. While everybody fancies and blusters they can race with no sleep, no rest and bad food the truth is, they can, just slower. So our lot is the selfish business of eating, resting and making sure the riders and crew are recovered and ready to battle when the bell rings.

Here is a partial list of things to be done between shifts:

1. Drive 330 miles up the course and find a hotel close to the anticipated exchange point, this takes five to seven hours. Big chunk
2. Fuel up METAL1, perhaps twice, once to get to hotel and once again before racing. Obviously you cannot get gas while racing without risking some inefficient time losses.
   
3. Arrive at hotel and haul bikes and gear into the room
   
4. Eat, a lot.
5. Clean bike clothes and pack ride bag for next day to include electronics such as lights, radio and Garmin, charging and maintaining all these devices as well.
   
6. Rest, even when not sleeping.
7. Sleep, the more the better. I suppose I averaged 5.5 hours per off period.
   
8. Wake up two hours before riding, find the guys and determine whether its a chase down or a backtrack scenario and how far off are we?
   
9. Take over from Brad and Tynee. Ed nailed this 7/7 times this year which is no improvement on his 7/7 from 2009, pathetic.
   

As you can see, driving and logistics eat up much of the "off" time.

Stop riding and start working

Jeremy saw a lady watering roses and ended up with her hose, shower time. It was the first of many chilly showers for Toro and he seemed to take pleasure in freezing. Predictably, he would clean himself and his skinsuit in one motion. I joined him this night in freezing because my crash left me with an extra coating of road grit that had to go. Later in the race, I would opt for baby wipe baths which are not freezing and perfectly adequate for getting to the hotel. Toro always rocked the shower, no matter the temperature. METAL1 traveled with a 5 gallon solar shower to be found on the roof. The idea was to have hot water after each stage but RAAM 2010 was too cold for this to materialize. I used the thing once or twice. Once we were decent, it was time to eat.

The first order of business is to drink Endurox which is a recovery drink. We had a tub labeled "METAL MIX" which was just that, a concoction for the race. Later, Ill show you photos of the "dinner table" and give more detail about METAL1's food capabilities. I give you the short version for now.

Dinner for me was, Whole Grain Baguette with chicken breast, Swiss cheese and roasted red bell peppers, 32oz of cappuccino/chocolate protein powder (110 grams), baby carrots, celery, raisins, nuts (macadamia, almonds, cashews, pistachio) and two extra chicken breasts. I made a peanut butter sandwich for hours later when hunger arrives again. Toro ate much of the same but downed about one pound of a pasta salad too.

Ron had joined us, he came out of the follow vehicle having finished his five hours in the navigation seat. We always get a crew to hang with us, it is their 15 hours off. We fed Ron but he brought his own bread (Lembas, hehe I'm a giant nerd) which has like 50 ingredients and was really tasty. We always feed crew because, truth is, we are not inclined to let them waste time by going to a restaurant. If anything, crew is always welcome to take the truck out once we are in the hotel, proposals for other stops are not even entertained.

So we got clean, made food (much of which is to be consumed after the drive begins), set up the power and electronics to drive the computers and machines for the drive, tripped out on the scene and hit the road to our first hotel in Prescott Arizona. We would drive the actual course (not always the case) so you can see first hand what your mates are in for.

The Drive From Brawley to Prescott

You met Ron earlier when he saved the day fixing my bike near Ranchita. He had also earned his stripes navigating for five hours and we were glad to welcome him aboard. Everybody on the team likes Ron and would defend him as a brother. He is an interesting guy with vast experience, a self-effacing sense of humor and his path has rarely been easy or conventional. He has sought out adventure and has the courage to formulate his own opinions, even when those views carry the high price of a lost career or standing alone among a crowd. These are the things you must know about Ron and my regard for him. It is required to know these things before I try to convey the things should know that happened during RAAM. This, before I begin the difficult and delicate task of recounting the tales of how he ended up becoming a 2010 legend and drove much of the good-natured humor that made our journey so unique and remarkable. OK, so here goes.

Ron jumped into METAL1 and launched an unabated five-hour verbal assault that was remarkable in scope, breadth and utter throat/breathing endurance. Major subjects included: the superiority of Europe (specifically and generally), municipal revenue generation, global cycling, bread making, wound salve manufacture, the mental inferiority of monkeys, mental superiority of macaws, Stanley, pectoral exercises for macaws, taxes, bus fares, progressive lenses, tool usage among birds, power lifting, crew, lacrosse, Ivy League education...yeah...I think that covers the first 30 minutes.

We were shelled and Ron was digging deep to verbal-bury us. Uncle. If the guy was bullshitting or not smart it would have been a bore. Ron kicked our asses for five hours straight, even TT1 can't touch this thug. METAL1 had weathered TT1 and withered before Ron. We got caught out as Ron obliterated the peleton. Ron beat some ass for 3000 miles across four team cars and the follow vehicle, so METAL1 would not hang our heads in shame.

Ron offered to drive, Ed was pretty gassed and gratefully accepted. So we pull off about an hour from the hotel, fueled up (making us race ready for the morning) and put Ron in the driver seat. For the next ten minutes, Ron was introduced to the world of cars manufactured after 1971.

It was like putting Abe Lincoln behind the wheel (more about Abe later), a world of wonder and discovery for Ron and sit-up-straight trepidation for the rest of us. Yep, that's the electronic mirror control (yes Ron, manual ones are way better), OK the display for Drive is right there (like every other car on earth, even in Mongolia, though apparently novel to you), light control...there...seat controls (no hand cranks brother)...there...cabin lights...right there...

So this was totally badass funny EXCEPT we were about to drive up the Yarnell Grade which is a long twisty, unlit, hill. Ron barely figured out how to pilot this beast (even METAL1 got nervous) and launched it down the highway...at EXACTLY the speed limit. "Oy Vey!"

The best part is, Ron starts going on and on about how he would not buy a truck like this. Really? There should be a law against Ron driving this vehicle...and we were breaking it. Also, it was funny at the time. Not just later, then, it was funny. Ron managed to cook the all corners, over-steer and scare the shit out of all three of us. Our eyes were like saucers as we all imagined rolling off a cliff at 13MPH which would be the least METAL way ever to die.

The next best part, while Ron had his hands full driving, this had no impact whatsoever on his ability to dominate us verbally, Ed tried to sleep but Ron sawed his left ear off which can make it a bother to nod off. Freaking awesome.

I'm crying while typing, so this tale has to end for now, I promise to return when my giggling is not causing so many typos. There is more, believe it.

Keeping an eye on the race

You monitor the guys that ride immediately after you. This is because most of their ride time is our drive time. Their struggle which, somewhere, was first-person grunting, digging and burning with chains whizzing, lights flashing, radio chatter, iPods blaring and souls confronting self-truths, was none of this for us, at the moment. No, all the tumults that live racing entails, were now a safe and distant abstraction, to be imagined, if one even bothered. During the drive, Ryan became a tiny little icon on my phone inching across the map.

We used this program called Google Lattitude and the guys with GPS smart phones could be tracked on a map, in real time. Each user picks a photo to represent his position on the map. Brad was a gorilla, I chose a shot of me on a TT bike, Kevin didn't figure out how to give himself a photo was a blank square which I loved way too much. Kevin was like one of those generic beers that are sold under the brand name...Beer. Since everybody else actually had photos, Kevin stood out, in a really special way, that made you want to pat him on the head and make sure his AOL modem was still loading Netscape.

Ryan's photo originally had him facing to the left, meaning he would travel 3000 miles backwards across the country, ass first, if you please. Where I had left Kevin's fail "icon" untrammeled, I totally impeded my own vacuous enjoyment and tipped Ryan before the race, he fixed it. RAAM is a cruel mistress and I count this among my largest regrets. I should have contacted his girlfriend and found a way to give Ryan the icon he deserved (pictured below).



This photo is remarkably important to our present tale. While its horrible on dozens of levels, take special note of the contraption under the seat which could hold a spare tire but more likely is a carbon fiber dildo holster.

Obviously, Ryan gets way too much grief about the Try-Athlete gear but he's always a good sport and he has climbed the long hill to earn our respect as legitimate cyclist. In fact, we ignore all that running and swimming crap, same as I would if you admitted to all that sewing, cat collecting and those commemorative plate parties you throw. I'll just focus on the parts of you that don't make me sad. Everybody wins.

Well, Denner and I exchanged a pretty good number of texts the first night, while he was racing. "great ride out there bro" to which I responded "Dig deep brothers, let's grind this thing out...and thanks. I'm shelled" Later, "METAL1 will keep ripping" and so it went, back and forth. Denner and I are both pretty into getting fired up for competition so the exchange was productive battle speak.

Then a flash of brilliance reached down and illuminated my retarded heart. Our team was METAL1, Brad proposed some 'HeavyMachinery4' idea that never caught on for his truck. Kevin and Larry were store brand plain label and I would not see those guys until Annapolis...what to name Denner's crew? It came to me like a vision of Satan on a Tortilla.

I sent the historic text at 12:35AM Jun 13, 2010: "Great Ride DildoHolster 1"

Yep, that was it. In an instant, DH1 was their handle and part of 2010 RAAM. Needless to say, METAL1 was howling (out loud) that same instant. The most robust laughs and the best times always happen on the drive to the hotel. Full belly, post ride buzz, no pressure, winding down, new crew member dropped into the front passenger seat, its just good times. DH1.

As the race progressed, folks would just drop a DH1 reference into a sentence, like "DH1 is having trouble because Tobias is throwing up." Totally more funny because I had never mentioned the name to these people. I'm not certain they even knew what DH1 stood for.

It had made the rounds, on its own. Ultimately, DH1 referred to THEMSELVES as DH1. Fantastic. Nobody got a short circuit in their sex toys and everybody got a laugh. Obviously, the key is Denner's personality which allows him to enjoy all manner of experience: transcendent, painful or (as here) simply absurd without taking it too seriously. He actually gets fired up from any kind of trash talk.

Abraham Lincoln

I ate, checked e-mails, rested, called my family, listened to Ron, got occasional texts from Ryan, listened to Ron and collected facts...from Ron. The messages from Ryan were like telegrams from the Civil War battlefields. Abe Lincoln, not on our team, used to hang out in the Washington DC telegram office at all hours of the night and was famous for showing up in this comical sleeping dress and sprawling himself all over the tiny office populated by low level clerks. I mention Lincoln because he is famous and shows up again as a giant marble statue, a motel advert and a bazooka wielding bobble head firing wieners to a hungry public, versatility. That's what people say about our 16th president. There is some talk on the internet that Toro looks like a young Abraham Lincoln, I'll let you decide but Cathy from Ozark Lakes, Missouri has already started a fan page on Twitter with 317,000 followers who by and large agree Toro is Lincoln. A few folks are boycotting the site until Toro grows a beard to which he has responded, "what?"

Lincoln "did" RAAM and appeared in various forms. He ran the full spectrum from staid marble monument to pink-flamingo kitsch motel sign and a giant bobble head armed with bazooka firing hot dogs into the upper deck at a ballgame.

Here I am at the Lincoln Memorial, a notable trek as I went 12 hours without eating, walked about 15 miles (even though ample was parking available...its 2AM!!!) and slept about 90 minutes since leaving West Virginia. Yeah, we stopped racing a while ago, pointless suffering.





Lincoln, is a hotelier of some note in Indiana. Guests rest easy with assurances their stay won't be sullied by un-American owners who might disrespect our reverence for sacred institutions such as former American Presidents.

This rare historic photo from the National Archives shows Lincoln getting his ass handed to him by TR and a couple founding fathers. Zack, Izzy and I sat in reverence at National's Park while this patriotic spectacle reminded us why we fight after 9/11.

Signing off for now

So, I'll leave you to lick your wounds and recover from the blunt trauma inflicted by my incessant bloviation (Ron inspired me).

We drove to a decent hotel in Prescott, it was freezing which is not cool. We awoke the next morning to learn first place had turned to THIRD. 4Mil had taken over second place and that would not stand. I'll pick it up here next time as we get ready to begin a wonderful day of climbing through Sedona and Flagstaff Arizona. With Ed snoring like a thousand bears, T minus 15 had whittled to T minus 7, time to sleep a little so we could soon ride a lot.

Beleaguered reader, do get a massage, eat some food and get ready for our second day on the road, it was epic and you will need all your powers.