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RAAM (Race Across America) 2002 JOURNAL TEAM SAN DIEGO
All riders and crews assembled in the parking lot of the airport Holiday Inn in Portland at about 9 am to prepare for departure at noon. The "Beach Boys" were blasting in the TEAM SAN DIEGO'S RV tape deck but there was neither sun nor surf in sight. Adam and Shawn were observed to be entirely too optimistic while the riders were frowning at the weather conditions. It had started raining the day before and was doing likewise today. Another crew meeting had been scheduled but was cancelled on the premise that we were fast learners. Besides, we had to put away all that food and take pictures. While packing the RV, we turned the bathroom into a luggage closet since we had no intention of using it as a bathroom. Anyway, there was no place else to put all the luggage. The bike riders decided who would start the first four-hour shift in the rain John picked the short straw which meant his partner, Jeff, did too (I presume the selection was more scientific than that but knowing this fun-loving group, you never know. J) At 11:30, all teams went to the staging area to be introduced. (About 15 solo riders had left two days earlier. They would be riding about 22 hours a day and sleeping the rest of the day. Wow.) A surfing reference for TEAM SAN DIEGO was not overlooked by the announcer who made sure to mention that the nearest beach was 70 miles away. (A close look at the emblem of our biker's shirts will reveal a cartoon-like surfer dude.) After much applause and picture-taking, the riders were finally on their way. "Break a leg!" was not the best send-off. All riders were to bike fifteen miles together to the suburbs where the race would officially begin. Our turbo-charged crew sprinted to their respective vans and trailed the riders: Heather and Adam (driver/navigator) were in one van and Thuy and Guy in the other. In the RV were Herb, Ken, Shawn, Lois, and Marta. Ken, who drove the RV on the first shift, presumably because he was the only one who knew how, brushed his teeth in the driver's seat and swallowed the toothpaste. Hmmm. Marta and I were on the noon to 4 pm sleep shift but couldn't just because the schedule said so. You can immediately see how things were nicely falling into place. Having completed our three-minute apiece RV driving lessons in the parking lot, we departed. Our first stop was K-mart, about five miles away from the Holiday Inn where we stopped to pick up an extra atlas. This was also where our CB antenna fell off the RV hood because the magnetic base of the antenna would not stick to it. Without an antenna, communicating with the other vehicles had been seriously compromised to put it mildly.  The RV drove about
85 miles east to a town called Shanico where all the RVs were to wait
for their riders. We brilliantly deduced that we were out of the city
when we started hitting towns named Antelope, Fossil, Spray, Fox,
and Prairie City. Shanico was also the scene of TEAM SD's first break-down
in the rotation schedule which is quite an impressive debut in the
almost non-existent field of RAAM crewing especially since we were
only about four hours into a week-long race. Unfortunately, I don't
remember the reason for the schedule break-down and neither does anyone
else I asked. All I remember was that everyone was running around
trying to decide who would drive which vehicle and since our crew
chief was out jogging, we couldn't make the decision. The other crews
heard our raucous discussion and thought we were arguing. Imagine
that. TEAM SD was rapidly adding to its reputation -- underfunded,
laid back and now fractious. 6. Vale, OR 64.2 395.6 late morning While other people were home fretting about the degree of perfection in their lives such as getting eight hours sleep per day, having regular meals, taking showers and changing their clothes on a daily basis, the RAAM crew felt like they had joined the Army. On awakening from our first overnight on the road, we discovered that no one gets a straight eight-hours sleep. Forget that right away. Not with four hour shifts. A typical morning routine would be like this. You get up from your sleep shift but you don't have to get dressed because you already are. Shower? Forget it. Privacy? Pfffft. Then, if you were going on a van shift, you make something to eat from our limited supply of gourmet camp food. You comb your hair with your fingers and brush your teeth at the first available stop and spit on and pee in the landscape. Classy, huh? At this early stage, Larry, in one of the vans on a rider shift, apparently still thinking he was in La Jolla where he does not spit on and pee in the landscape, CBed with the suggestion that we stop at a motel for showers. Silly guy. And who exactly did he think was awake to take a shower? No one. I know. I was driving the RV which you may recall I said I'd never do and I was the only one awake but just barely. Everyone else was out cold including Adam who had just been driving and had now become a hazard to himself as well as to everyone else. As people started to awaken, we kept an eye out for a motel just to keep our spirits up and pretend we were still normal. Now don't get the idea that there are motels every five miles in these parts. What we found was wildlife indigenous to the area -- bovine beauties, turtles, armadilloes and such -- trees and boulders, but motels? Nnnnnno. We were in a botanical paradise, a backdrop for a dinosaur movie teeming with things that creep, crawl, and go scrunch, chirp and gribbit in the night. Show me the electricity! Our RAAM route book did say there was a motel in or near Auburn, Idaho (we had just crossed the Idaho state line at about 11:30 a.m., the land of potato ice cream which we never got to sample, thank God) but the RAAM route book did not claim to be 100% accurate. The motel was out of business so we drove another 12 miles to an RV park which had showers. Since this was also a time station, we learned that the Brits were 3 1/2 hours ahead of the RV (which meant about 4 1/2 miles ahead of our riders who hadn't caught up to us yet) and the Swiss 1 1/2 hours ahead. As far as the showers were concerned, there was good new, bad news and really bad news. The good news was that the office (and showers) opened at noon and we in the RV had arrived at 11:59 a.m. The bad news was the lady running the place was twenty minutes late. (When we arrived, we estimated that we had the luxury of about a two-hour layover before having to hit the road again. Time was ticking away.) The really bad news was that the pump that operated the water for showers and toilets was not working. Luckily, the pump man soon arrived and fixed everything leaving us with about half an hour to shower, get back in the RV and charge off down the road with Ken's bathing trunks hanging over the RV mirror and my tennis shoes hanging out the window. (Still the best $2 I ever spent.) How did we acquire that instant Beverly Hillbillies look after just one day? For me, it was easy. The spray in my shower at the campground shot across the stall and proceeded to fill my tennis shoes with an inch of water. Since these were the only shoes I had brought and since tennis shoes are not known to dry quickly, what was a girl to do? 77. Givens Hot Spring, ID 58.0 453.6 around noon Tuesday. DAY 2 - starts at noon. Wed., June 19, 2002
Today was a big screw-up day where several of us had the chance to backslide (and this was only Day 2!) and add to our growing knowledge of the true character of our riders whom many of us had never met before this event. (!!!!) Each rider had his unique riding persona, presumed to be the sum total of his genetic inheritance mixed with a large dollop of stress. (And no one turned out to be an ax murderer.) This is what I observed: Dr. Dave was labelled as the quiet one who was the least likely but the first to lose his inhibitions. ("Don't look!" Drop. Or sometimes he would just Drop without any warning whatsoever.) He was also the one who loved to climb hills (a rumor started by his partner, Larry, which Dave promptly denied) and who needed constant reassurances that the van was behind him by occasional chatter into his earpiece. Some of us (me) sadistically tormented him: "There's a nice jacuzzi waiting for you at the end of this shift." "Think of a nice cold drink, a shower, clean clothes." He nearly went insane. Uncle Jeff was the eternal optimist. Each time we would ask him how his riding shift went, his reply would be, "Excellent." As time went on, "Excellent" was reduced to a whisper. Later, we would stare into his glazed eyes with his lips stubbornly forming the shape of that word but nothing coming out of his mouth. Within several days, he was crawling into the RV on his hands and knees with a five o'clock shadow, glassy stare, goofy grin and his lips still moving. A Manchurian Candidate is born. Larry called his shift going to the office complete with occasional oversleeping and coffee breaks resulting in a few Keystone Cops rider exchanges. It also came complete with observations on the landscape (cows were 'nice props'); thinking he had seen a dead body in a ditch (hallucination or the real thing?); and screaming at the sight of scorpions. ("I wasn't raised in the country.") John set aside his happy-go-lucky personality for being the serious rider (he actually had his heart set on winning this race even though everyone else was satisfied just to finish) therefore he was tested often to help him toughen up. Maybe that was why he got all the up-hills on I-80 and Jeff got all the down-hills (we were not allowed to switch riders except at an off-ramp.) Plus, if you recall, he got the first shift in the rain at the beginning of the race (do you suppose he actually volunteered?), the handlebar padding came off his cutting-edge bicycle, he broke his high tech light and other character-building incidents too numerous to mention. The screw-ups for the day went as follows, not necessarily in the order given because the days and the time of day were no longer distinguishable. (We were starting to drop like flies.) Incident 1: John's handlebar light came off. He tried to hold it while he was riding but he hit a bump and it fell and broke. After that, Dave had to lend him his. This was just one more thing to worry about during the frenetic rider exchanges. Incident 2: Heather drove a van 20 miles before she realized she had the parking brakes on (was it the smell of burning rubber that tipped her off?) Incident 3: The tan van lost its reflector triangle. Vans were not supposed to ride without this safety feature, risking a penalty if caught. The question is, however, once it's lost, how do you get a new one while on the road? Marta was looking around the landscape trying to figure out how to acquire one, possibly stealing one off a tractor. There were many around leading us to believe that there must be an orange triangle store somewhere nearby. We even thought of rigging one up from orange plastic bits we saw laying around in the fields. We arrived at a time station and I believe it was Adam who boldly asked the Swiss crew who was parked there if they knew how to get an extra triangle. As it turned out, they had an extra one on their RV that they didn't need and had actually covered up. They gave it to us, proving the theory that it never hurts to ask even the competition. Incident 4: It is said that when I started my first van shift that evening that I ran over Dave's canvas bag on take-off. Thuy: "Dave, your bag is foaming!" His shaving cream thingy had burst. Well, it was dark. And for my next act …. Incident 5: Ken (driver) and I (navigator) thought we had missed a turn. When we reached our bike rider, Jeff, we threw him and his bike into the van ("Excellent") and returned to the point about three miles back where we thought we had deviated, discovered that we hadn't and then found out that we were only about 1/4 mile from the time station (around a small bend) all along. Incident 6: Thuy, her navigator, Heather, and their biker, John, were waiting for Ken, Jeff and me at the gas station/mini mart for the rider exchange. Guess who wasn't ready? Well, it sure wasn't John. Thuy was inside the mini-mart ordering some burritos for John who, when he saw us approach, took off in the semi darkness. Thuy did one of those Keystone Cops routines, twirled around, shouted, jumped, screamed, asked us to pick up the burritos and drop them off on our next rider exchange whereupon she jumped in the van and took off after John. (During the daytime hours, we were not required to pace the rider at all times but at night, it was mandatory as they had to ride in our headlights. This resulted in the need for very precise shift changes when it was dark. It also led to some differences of opinion as to when it was really dark.) Incident 7: This was the first of two consecutive van shifts that Ken and I had had that night. The second came waaay after midnight. At this time, I was driving and Ken was navigating. The riders had lots of climbing and it was very cold. We further noticed that the more we drove or rode, the more the lights that we saw in the distance seemed to recede. It could have been hallucinations. We preferred to think that it was science at work. Since I am not generally at my best at three a.m., while parked alongside the road waiting for Dave to show up on his bike for the rider switch with Larry, I leaned my head on the steering wheel and instantly fell asleep. I was told that Larry asked me if I was okay ("Of course I'm not okay. I'm tired!") and Ken walked me around the vehicle and dumped me in the passenger seat. Ken and Larry then substituted as co-navigators. (Falling asleep on the job would occur with increasing regularity as the days passed. Ken and Larry were just not used to it yet.) Larry made a slightly better show of faking his sleep deprivation than I did but he finally gave himself away in the following incident. With Ken now driving again and I pretending to be lucid, Larry, who was waiting to take over for Dave, charged off downhill on his bike at a very serious speed. Unfortunately Dave hadn't showed up yet to do the rider exchange. Wondering what that was all about, Ken and I chased Larry in the van with double flashing lights, horn beeping and screaming and Dave chasing us on his bike wondering when the rules had changed. Brilliantly sensing that something was wrong, Larry finally stopped, the exchange was made and we threw the frisky but hallucinating biker into the van. Incident 8: Since it was very cold, Larry took a coffee break and missed a rider exchange so we had to throw him and his Espresso back in the van (his bike, too) tear ahead a few miles and redo it. (Missing rider exchanges, in view of the hundreds that were done in the course of the week, were well within the statistical norm, whatever the statistical norm was.) But Larry did get to meet up with his son who lives in Salt Lake City. DAY 3 - starts at noon. Thurs., June 20, 2002 I woke up in Ogden, Utah although I'm not sure of the time of day. Waking up somewhere doesn't necessarily mean that it's morning. In fact, we didn't know which part of the day we were headed towards, night or day. You will notice that we went from Utah to Wyoming and back to Utah again. This is not a mistake. Utah and Wyoming overlap each other and we cut across the outer edges of both states.
It was only the third day and a new trend was emerging. More navigators were falling asleep on the job on a regular basis and the driver was forced to memorize the route with the help of the biker when he wasn't riding. In an ideal world, we would have had a chauffeur and drugs but this was far from an ideal world except maybe to a naturalist. (I now know the solution to not being able to sleep sitting up in an airplane on a red-eye or long flight. Stay up for the previous 48 hours.) More Motrin Moments were on the horizon. While still in the west passing over lots of mountains, we lost partial CB communication in one of the vans. They could send but couldn't receive. This resulted in a new form of communication. 'Blink your lights if you heard me' or sometimes it would be 'blink once for yes, twice for no.' (Our cell phones had stopped working long ago.) We had lost touch with civilization as verified by Motrin Moment # 2. On Thuy's and my late night/early middle-of-the-night shift, at a higher elevation, we came upon an extremely nasty sight and Dave, our van's bike rider, brought it to our attention, thank-you-very-much. He had removed his bike from the van preparing to take over for Larry when he arrived and in his bicycle lights, he noticed red things all over the ground. He tapped on our van window to point it out to us. "Scorpions! Look!" "Yuk," I shrieked, rolling up the window. Dr. Dave was right. There were scorpions up the wazoo. There must have been a mile of them. "And don't even think about getting back in this van any time soon." Undeterred, Dr. Dave shared this perverse news with Larry when he showed up for the rider exchange. We could hear Larry scream over the noise of the heater. Then Larry went and blabbed about it to his van crew and Heather who was supposed to change drivers with Herb refused to get out of the van, instead climbing over him. The inclement nights in the mountains were tough for the riders with temps as low as 29 degrees. The midnight to four a.m. shift was frigid but the four to eight a.m. shift seemed even colder. The riders would be shivering from the cold, come into the van and try to warm up while their partner was riding, then go back out into that freezing cold again. This makes men out of boys and crazy people out of normal ones. Guy's observation about RAAM in general: "There is no other activity where a bunch of men respected in their fields (our bicycle riders) would let a bunch of 19 and 20 year olds tell them what to do." We started taking personal hygiene to a new low but I am only speaking for myself. While attempting to eat while driving a van, I repeatedly spilled food all over myself. Naturally, I slept in those clothes, too. (The up side is that it keeps you cemented to the rack while sleeping in the rocky RV.) A warm and fuzzy moment: At a highway turnoff in Utah, Jeff (the rider) saw a goat with his horns stuck in a barbed wire fence and asked his van navigator, Ken , to run down and get him unstuck. Around dinnertime (dinnertime for normal people, that is), the RV came upon another opportunity to take showers at a KOA (Kampground of America). On returning from the men's shower, Dave asked me if I wasn't going to take a shower while I had the chance. I said, "Why? I took one yesterday." Just kidding. Our motto was take a shower when you can. Just ask Heather who had to go about four days before getting her first one. (And Heather had the nerve to complain about the fragrance in the RV.) DAY 4 - starts at noon. Friday, June 21, 2002
This day seemed to have the biggest and most climbs. We passed over the Continental Divide (Tennessee Summit) just before Leadville, Colorado at an elevation of 10,424 feet. This was also the day in which we noticed that it was starting to take four people to do the thinking of one. We noticed that the benefits of sleep deprivation (there are some) had sinister implications. We were acquiring the ability to sleep in any position. This could be sitting, standing, slumping, half on a bed and half off (Adam was seen sleeping with the lower half of his anatomy suspended in mid-air), sleeping on someone's arm (I slept on Shawn's arm for half an hour and neither he nor I felt it), frequently sleeping with someone's feet in one's face and not noticing, ad nauseum. Plus we were falling asleep in the middle of a conversation. ("Am I that boring?") Marta, to Herb at a rest stop: "I went to sleep next to you and woke up next to someone else." For this remark, she received a startled look from a man standing a few feet away. CB talk was starting to deteriorate: "Shut up, Tan Van." We also started to speak in tongues, stutter, experience difficulty forming words, forget easily and frequently, and generally talk nonsense. Early in the race, "How do you feel?" was answered "Like a million bucks." The answer turned into "Like a buck two fifty." Huh? Details started going down the drain. We were supposed to keep the triangle on the back of the van covered unless we were following racer. We did that one time, maybe two. Dr. Dave started to forget names. He called Heather 'Helen' and Larry 'Jeff' which prompted Larry to reply: "My friends call me Larry" and Lois to say: "I don't think I'm going to ever want you operating on my knees." 'Helen' and Lois pairing on a van shift required five minutes to add two numbers of the two-digit variety however we did think of suggesting to the riders that the next race they do should start in Alaska and end in Miami. Portland to Pensacola is just too whimpy. NOT. On my driving shift, with Guy navigating and Larry the biker in our van, we got lost in Salida, Colorado. Fortunately it was daytime and only due to extreme good karma did we manage not to miss the rider exchange completely. We were lucky because Dave agreed to take a long riding shift -- 15 miles. When we reached the proper mile marker for the time station to appear (this was where we were supposed to meet for the rider exchange), guess what? It wasn't there. We determined that we had missed the 291 turn-off into Salida. Getting back on track when you don't know where you are, don't have the right kind of maps and you just so happen to be participating in a race is a challenge you don't want to experience often. We asked a pedestrian where the Phillips 66 Gas Station was on Highway 291. "Don't know. Ask at Long's Drugs." We burned rubber to Long's Drugs wondering why we were going there and stopped short. Did a uuueeee, charged back to another Phillips Station we had passed, ran in, found out that their downtown station was the location of the Checkpoint Charley, got directions through some residential streets to it about a mile away, smoked over, emerged from a side street, saw the RV, dumped Larry and his bike to prepare for the rider exchange, tried to find out which way to go since we had gotten off track and didn't know, made an effort to prompt Larry as to the turns he had to make to get out of town whereupon he screamed, "Holy shit, here he comes" at the sight of his partner approaching prompting Guy and me to charge back to the van and head off behind Larry. Thank heavens for daylight. Larry was able to see the RAAM arrows painted on the streets to help direct him out of town while we were stuck in traffic. A close call. Laundry opportunities were unexpected so the rule about having all your laundry in a 'laundry bag' (ha ha ha ha ha) was a joke. The definition of laundry was a joke. After a few days, everything was laundry including what we were wearing. Also, we all were given identical TEAM SAN DIEGO T-shirts which considering our mental states, was not a good idea even though we labelled them with our names and presumably could read. Too much trouble when you're sleep deprived. Riddle: How can you tell sweatshirts apart if they are all the same design? By the stains. When we finally found a laundry, we grabbed all clothes hanging from cupboard handles and flung around the RV and threw them in the washing machines. What a luxury clean clothes are even if they're someone else's. We speculated on why the Brits were so far ahead. They were younger, better and longer trained and better funded. It was rumored that they spent about $100 K on their team which included the cost of getting everyone from England to Oregon. We envied the crew's perks. They had about five more crew than we did, probably had an additional vehicle to accommodate them, most likely wore uniforms, got to brush their teeth and sing "God Save the Queen" three times a day, sleep more hours, and I'll bet they didn't have to sleep with anyone's feet in their faces. DAY 5 - starts at noon. Saturday, June 22, 2002
Today, my work day (a 12-hour shift) started at 4 p.m. which meant I'd be driving and navigating till the middle of the night. What worried me was that I was spending more time sleeping during daylight hours and being awake during nighttime hours. I was definitely not in sync with the Earth's rotation around the sun. The lower elevations started bringing us warmer weather. The midnight to 8 a.m. shift was not so cold anymore and the bike riders were actually able to ride without parkas. The daytime temperatures were hovering around 100 degrees. We were in Oklahoma, the home of farm subsidies and oil wells. You could look around for 360 degrees and see nothing which made the term Rush Hour an oxymoron. Signs saying "Windy Cross Roads" were permanent. Despite all the signs pointing to cemeteries, there were lots of wide open spaces but little indication of the people they put in the cemeteries. Thinking was becoming harder; clear thinking impossible. The mind and the mouth were no longer working together. Long term memory was the first to go followed by short term memory followed by forgetting what we were saying in the middle of saying it. We were unable to retain a thought longer than one nanosecond. We couldn't remember directions past two seconds. More than one direction at a time was information overload. The drivers kept asking their navigators the same question over and over because they couldn't remember the answer. The wordy sign -- "45th Infantry Memorial Highway" - threw me into a mental tailspin. That day, while navigating a van, I made an attempt at intelligent conversation with my driver, Guy. "What if there were two towns next to one another and they were in a different time zone? If they were in the middle of nowhere, I suppose one town could decide to stay in the same time zone as their neighbor even if the rest of the state was different." Guy: "I think they would deal with it would say a.m. or p.m. like if they had an appointment or something." We were not having the same conversation. Incident: We overlapped with one of the German solo riders today before finally passing him. This presented some confusion as Dave (Frick) thought his partner, Larry (Frack), was the German rider and was applauding as he approached. Nice gesture. Larry: "It's me! Your partner!" Oops. Dave threw his bike back in the van, jumped in, the van drove up ahead another few miles and they attempted the rider exchange once again. Meanwhile, Heather was desperately conniving a way to get a shower. She was the only one who missed both shower stops. She said she was getting greasy. Now I know why she kept sliding out of her seat. We finally found a truck stop with free showers. Such a deal! To give you an idea of a true-to-life shift change, here is one that took place at about 3:30 am somewhere in Oklahoma: I was driving the RV and I missed the scheduled gas station stop because it was dark and all the lights were out. Have you ever tried to make a U-turn in an RV on a narrow country road? It's very exciting. Trust me. We returned to the gas station and parked. All around us were homes and we concluded that we were in a town with real people in it. We guestimated the time of arrival of the van with the non-biking rider in it to be about ten minutes. We guestimated because we couldn't call them on a cell phone or the CB. The CB had a one-two mile range and the cell phones weren't working. Once the van arrived, the other van pacing the bike rider would not be far behind, maybe 20 minutes on average. Everyone in the RV was running around preparing for the next shift. Some crew would remain in the RV to sleep. On shift changes, some crew always slept through the racket while others felt they had to stay awake to socialize. Of course, they paid for this folly later when they could no longer stay awake during their driving shift. I staggered out of the RV driver's seat looking for a place to lay my weary bones. I had just come off a 12 hour shift and had to get rid of some heavy-duty luggage under my eyes. Heather told me that the kitchen table cum third bed was the best place in the RV to sleep. It seemed to me to be the worst place to sleep. There's no accounting for opinion. Not that the location of the bed mattered. By this time, we were able to sleep standing up. "Better get your food ready," yelled someone. Herb started making food to take on his van shift. Heather: "You don't have time for food. They'll be here in 25 minutes. Better count on 15." Herb insistently kept on preparing his food: "You got to eat." The bustling went on. The RV has the tiniest kitchen known to man (and woman) and also happened to be located right in the middle of the RV. Six or more people continued struggling around, over and through it kicking floor stuff out of the way and stepping on the rest. The two riders who were to go on the next shift were making a show of waking up. They looked terrific like the rest of us who had also been sleeping in our clothes. The riders began packing, dressing, and doing whatever they needed to do to prepare for their shift. Heather scolded the riders for not eating right. Was there a nutrition plan? Seems to me there had been. Once. That went out the window around Day 2. Everyone was busy and ate the food that was the quickest to prepare which meant the meat / cheese and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were the first to go. We only resorted to cooking when we had to. The riders also had to be sure to drink enough fluids which I presume accounted for all that gurgling noise I kept hearing in my sleep. If they didn't remember, the crew had to remind them. If the crew didn't remember …. Welll…. The first van finally arrived. Larry (biker) emerged looking like a homeless person, and so did the crew for that matter. The new crew and rider took over. The new rider had to be on his bike for the rider exchange when the current rider arrived. Larry: "Dave will be here in about 25 minutes. I'm going to bed." He found a vacant spot in the RV next to whomever and was snoring in less than two seconds. The incoming crew annoyingly started rattling plastic bags and cooking in our showcase kitchen, then they scarfed down their gourmet concoctions. The crockery of choice was paper cups. (Martha Stewart wasn't there.) All the rules of healthy living were flagrantly violated. (Dean Ornish wasn't there either.) We routinely ate a jumbo meal right before bedtime. (Jumbo the Elephant with cardiac occlusion would soon be there.) Sometimes last minute changes in the driving or navigating schedule became necessary because crew members did not always cooperate and sleep during their sleep shift which meant they couldn't drive during their driving shift. This caused constant challenges for our crew chief and anxiety for the rest of us. Ken: "Where's Marta? Can you drive for Shawn? He's tired. Who went in the van?" Is this scientific or what? Biker Dave finally arrived followed by his van. He did his bike exchange thingy with the new rider who took off with his van and crew behind him. The second van kept the same driver and navigator for the next four hour shift. The new rider put his bike and luggage in that van and in about ten minutes, they took off. They had to drive about ten miles up the road to get ahead of the current biker for the next rider exchange. Adam, hair messed up, twelve-o'clock shadow and looking like a terrorist was standing outside the RV cheering off the new rider. Lois: "Adam, shut up. There are houses everywhere. It's four o'clock in the morning." Dave threw his luggage into the RV. Since 4 am is not necessarily the best time or temperature for a marine shower, the riders more often than not went to bed smelly. Today was no exception. ("Dave, wrap yourself up real good in that sleeping bag."). Suddenly we heard a loud clamor from the cows and dogs outside. Dave had gone outside the RV to change his clothes and moon the livestock. We took another fifteen minutes to square ourselves away in our luxury townhouse on wheels, then the next driver took over and we buzzed up the road apiece another 40 or so miles to wait for the vans to arrive and to decide what to do next. = = = = = More typical conversation: Larry to Thuy. "That's a nice shirt." He stares at her chest. "What's that?" It's a greasy food blob. Nice. New shift conversation: Thuy. "Good morning, where are we?" Lois: "Good morning, I don't know." Scientific talk at a rider exchange. Lois: oh no, my [camera] battery is dead Thuy: What kind do you need? Lois: A teeny one. Ken's wardrobe is deteriorating. He is wearing running shorts, a T-shirt, has major stubble, is barefoot and wearing a serape (a blanket with a hole cut in the middle). He gets the nickname JC. We await miracles. None forthcoming. We are near Tulsa and the humidity couldn't be worse. Dave asks me, upon my awakening from my sleep shift if my hair is naturally curly. Just because my 'do' looks like Don King's? Good guess. As the days progress, crewing takes some new twists. New tasks arise, old tasks escalate geometrically. Laundry piles up; fewer things are being put away; water and food need replenishing and our mental abilities slip further. Simple subtraction is no longer simple. We used to be able to mentally subtract two single digit numbers in our head. Now it takes a committee. (Kinda like the U.S. Congress.) No one in the vans remembers anymore if the other van or the RV has passed and furthermore, no one cares. CB vocabulary becomes even less formal than before ("Shut up, tan van."). The Blue van and Tan van were exchanging rider / pacing duties. The Blue van had just finished pacing and the Tan van was now taking over. Blue van to Tan van now following the rider: "Duh, you need your flashing lights on." The Tan van turns on their flashing lights. As the Blue van and rider zip on ahead to the next exchange point, they pass the Tan van who notices that the Blue van forgot to turn off their blinkers. TAN VAN: "And who's got their blinker on? Duh." BLUE VAN: "Cancel last sarcastic remark." Not too infrequently our CB picks up truckers talking to one another. One of our crew refers to a trucker as a toothless redneck. Larry: "Do you want to get us killed?" Riders start taking off without their water bottles or sunglasses and need to have them handed off by the navigator. We're kinda tired. DAY 6 - Starts at noon. Sunday, June 23
The Tan van acquired a spike in the right front tire. Herb and Heather first noticed it on their van shift. When Adam and Shawn took over, they had to get air in the tire. They also prayed that it wouldn't go flat. The Blue and Tan vans went into a new choreographic routine with the Blue van pacing the Tan van's rider so the Tan van could scout out a garage to remove the spike and plug the tire. Fortunately it was daylight. Unfortunately, it was Sunday and everything was closed. One gas station we passed opened at one (we got there at 10:50 a.m.) but we had no assurance they would be able to fix the tire so the van didn't wait and the two vans reverted to the routine pattern. Handling the mental work for this kind of situation while the race was going on taxed our already strained capabilities. Larry, Thuy & Lois, in a van, discussed varied race strategies that could elevate our standing. We decided that one edge the Swiss and Brits had on our team was their age. The second was the fact that they had been training far more extensively than TEAM SURFER DUDES. The third could have been their willingness to let go on the downhills. Larry: "The Swiss probably think they're skiing. We're interested in safety first." Larry also mentioned that serious teams would be recruited from available talent, not based on friendship. Like ours. The ambiance of the RV was in a serious state of decline. Larry (on ending a shift and entering the RV): "Glad to be back at the old shack and I do mean shack." We saw constant reminders of the part of the country we were passing through: A sign: Welcome Steer Ropers. A marquis in front of the First Freewill Baptist Church in McAlester, Oklahoma: 'Jesus is coming and boy is he mad.' Highway signs: Carl Albert Parkway; Indian Nation Turnpike. And lots of open space. Saddle sores were kicking in for Jeff. (pardon the pun.) New level of CB talk from Adam who was by now delirious: "Love you guys." Thuy & Lois had two consecutive van shifts, then a third in the RV. Ten minutes later, neither of these college graduates could remember who had just driven. Thuy acquired another reputation besides Stewardess of the SS Cruisamerica. She became known as Queen of the Junk Food. Her favorites were gummy worm, gummy bears, caramel toffee popcorn, cheese puffs, animal cookies, tortilla chips, gum, fried chicken, Reeses pieces, cookie ice cream bar, to name just a few. Collectively, they have the food value of a volley ball and the same molecular structure with a few more calories. Rider exchanges are getting weirder. On the midnight to 4 am shift, John whizzed by the RV ready for the exchange but Larry wasn't quite ready. Everyone in the RV was so busy getting themselves ready, we forgot to wake Larry until the last minute. To compound the problem, both vans (the one with the rider in it and the one pacing the other rider) arrived very close together. So, John, who was expecting to come off his shift had to keep going. The van crew scurried around to get out on the road and we shuttled Larry quite a distance ahead because John got a lot of downhill (darn.) The other van had to drive off and leave Larry's partner, Dave, at the RV to pick up John who was now in the middle of nowhere by himself and bring him back to the RV, then pick up Dave and get ahead of Larry for the next rider exchange. Are you following all this? The fire drill wasn't over yet. At the second rider switch, we drove on ahead to prepare to call in the time check at a market which was the official time station only at 1 am, it was dark and we drove right past it. We scrambled around, figured out where we were and returned. About three minutes later, Dave rode past, Shawn made the call, then we tore off to try to get ahead of Dave for the next rider exchange. This was not easy as we were driving through a town that had such conventional things as traffic lights, stop signs, double yellow lines and lots of twists and turns in the road. But we made it. When we arrived at the RV at the end of the four-hour shift, I (driver) trying to make conversation with Larry (rider) said: "I hope you had fun." (referring to his ride). Larry: "I did. The scariest part was the driving." Lois: "Just call me Lois Andretti." The mosquito and dog population increased as we glided through Arkansas. Jeff almost fell off his bike on his shift. While riding over a bridge, he caught his tire in the indentation between two cement slabs. He said that it definitely jolted him awake. There are supposed to be shooting stars aplenty away from city lights. Instead, we had the butt of a bicycle rider and the white line of a road in our sights. Shawn: "If I was following four girls on bikes with nice legs and butts it might not be such a bad gig." Throughout the deep south, a place so foreign you needed a visa, everyone had a heavy accent. Apparently few northerners relocate here. Scooba, Mississippi is a place I will not soon forget. We arrived at the time station (a convenience store at a major crossroads) on my sleep shift and through my personal fog, I became aware of the presence of porcelain which I preferred to bushes. I staggered out of the rack with my toothbrush into the convenience store restroom. Finished with my ablutions, I exited the store and stared dumb-founded in every direction at the absence of vehicles in the parking lot. All I could see was a big rig. ALL THE OTHER VEHICLES WERE GONE. THEY LEFT ME BEHIND. I would have started bawling if I thought it would have helped but I quickly abandoned that notion in favor of Plan B. Panic. Me, to 3 clerks in a whisper/hiss: "I can't believe it. My friends drove off and left me. I don't even know where I am. Where am I?" "Scooba, Mississippi." "How late are you open?" (This is very important because late at night, you want a place to hang out even if it's between the chips and the chocolate bars.) "We're open 24 hours." "I can't believe they left me. (Repeat four or five times for authenticity.) I have no money, no ID, I don't know which direction they're headed, I don't know where I came from. All I have is a toothbrush." By now, the clerks were starting to back away. Lois, getting closer. "I've got to use your phone. I'll pay you back. I'll reverse the charges. I swear. " I was moving behind the counter now and one clerk started making the sign of the cross. Another clerk pointed to a pay phone outside, probably anxious to lock the door behind me and dial 9-1-1. As I emerged from the convenience store, the RV pulled up. They were hidden behind the big rig. I scolded them. Herb scolded me back. "You don't think we'd leave without you, do you?" Wellllll. DAY 7 starting at noon, Monday, June 24. (TEAM SAN DIEGO arrives at ten a.m. on Tuesday, June 25)
We were about 300 miles and less than 24 hours from Pensacola. The riders conferred and decided to go into a four-man rotation - 2 riders and 1 crew driver per van - the hell with sleep. The bikers would rotate every 4th ride and power nap in between thus throwing off the 'normal' rotation schedule whatever that was. They were wired. Crew in the RV were Lois, Thuy, Herb, Marta, Adam, Guy and Shawn. Chef Nguyen prepared food for the riders to hurl into the vans when our paths crossed. The vans were on a tight schedule and had to stay close together. No more lolly-gagging for ten minutes. Excitement increased as we approached Pensacola and no one was able to sleep. One hundred miles to go. Seventy five. Fifty. Chaos in the RV. The crew was screaming at each other to make sure the time check was made, food was ready to toss in the vans as they flew by, pick up more water somewhere and stop to take pictures of the riders. We also stopped for champagne with which to spritz the riders when they crossed the finish line. I had 15 more miles on my RV driving shift but I fell asleep at the wheel waiting in a MacDonald's parking lot while Herb and Guy picked up breakfast. Marta took over the wheel and Guy navigated. We were so close to Pensacola, we could smell it. We could feel it, too. It was drizzling. Thuy was laying across Guy's lap and hanging out the RV window taking pictures of the riders on one of Pensacola's numerous causeways and also screaming at her battery for not working properly. On the causeway, there were two lanes of traffic but all the cars were piled up in the left lane as the motorists saw blinking lights in the right lane ahead and correctly assumed that there was a slow-down ahead that they didn't want to get stuck behind. We were all shrieking different driving directions at Marta. With her nerves of steel, she only went through one red light and avoided hitting many trees. The four riders were getting dramatic and now riding together except for John who made a wrong turn somewhere. He reappeared and got back in the conga line. We saw a sign and freaked out: Welcome to Pensacola Beach. Kodak moment, Kodak moment! Marta, still driving Our Lady of Perpetual Motion, made a turn as someone with bad timing opened the refrigerator. A bottle of champagne flew out. No casualties. "Let's see, what's for breakfast? A cooked potato, a hard boiled egg, peanut butter and jelly on white bread." Difficult choice. The RV pulled ahead of the riders and we arrived in Pensacola Beach at the finish line with a feeling of unrestrained joy. One van arrived right behind us with its orange flag shredded to bits, looking like it had been through the Civil War. We parked and calmly tore over to the pavilion to wait for the riders who were about ten minutes back. The riders arrived to fanfare provided by about a few dozen people most of whom were their crew. (RAAM is strange. It's the only bike race I know that is quite well known but has so few participants.) TEAM SAN DIEGO finished the 2992 miles in six days, twenty hours and three minutes. That's 164 hours of straight riding. Each biker rode about 41 hours and 750 miles at an overall average speed of 18.2 miles per hour. The group was awarded flowers, plaques, other memorabilia and a jumbo check for $1,000. Bikers obviously don't do RAAM for the prize money. The $1,000 barely covered the peanut butter and jelly. The crew jumped into the Gulf of Mexico with our clothes on (another laundry opportunity not missed) and at the same time to enjoy the gorgeous waves and warm water. We lavished two days of rest and relaxation. That night we all went to a glorious dinner where we got to sit in a room that wasn't moving and eat on real china. We reminisced and shared scandalous experiences unknown to each other. Heather said it would be hard to get used to being home. She might just wake up in the middle of the night, jump in her car and ride around the block to look for a place to squat. The next evening we attended the official RAAM banquet on the sand beneath a canvas tent top. Some of the contenders were still coming in. A few finished the race right in the middle of the banquet. The troops were officially demobilized in Pensacola Beach and early Thursday morning, June 27, eleven of us drove to New Orleans in one van and the RV where we dropped them off. We each stayed from one to three days in New Orleans and flew home from there. Larry and Dave drove the other van back to San Diego. There were many lessons learned on RAAM but one of the major ones was that quality of life is in the eye of the beholder. This was definitely a quality experience. RAAM 2002 RACE RESULTS Team RAF reached Pensacola Beach, Mon June 24, in 6 days, 0 hr, 45mins Team Swiss Academic SkiClub arrived, Mon June24, in 6 days, 10 hrs, 7mins Team San Diego arrived, Tues. June 25, in 6 days, 20 hrs, 3 mins Wolfgang Fasching (solo rider) arrived, Tues June 25, in 9 days, 3 hrs, 38 mins Team No Limits arrived, Tues. June 25, in 7 days, 6 hrs, 44 mins Rob Kish (solo rider) arrived Wed. June 26, 9 days, 17 hrs, 35 mins Team ZISVAW (women's team) arrived, Wed June 26, 7 days, 14 hrs, 55 mins Allen Larsen (solo rider) arrived Wed. June 26, 10 days, 1 hr, 5 mins Stefan Lau (solo rider) arrived Wed. June 26, 10 days, 4 hrs, 14 mins Team Clif Bar arrived Wed. June 26, 8 days, 0 hrs, 26 mins Team Millennium/IRSA arrived, Wed June 26, 8 days, 3 hrs, 59 mins Team Twin PAC arrived Wed., June 26, 8 days, 4 hrs, 35 mins Fredi Virag (solo) has reach Pensacola Beach, Thurs. June 27, 10 days, 18 hrs, 42 mins Franz Venier (solo) arrived Thurs. June 27, 10 days, 20 hrs, 19 mins Sam Beal (solo) arrived Thurs. June 27, 11days, 2 hrs, 55 mins Team Leader Bike USA arrived Thurs. June 27, 9 days, 2 hrs, 56 mins Guus Moonen (solo) arrived Thurs. June 27, 11days, 10 hrs, 21mins George Thomas & Terri Gooch arrived Fri June 28, 11 days, 19 hrs, 21mins Michael Lau (solo) arrived Fri June 28, 11 days, 20 hrs, 33 mins My vote for the hardest thing about crewing for RAAM, if you haven't already guessed, is the sleep deprivation. |
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Once the race
began, what turned out to be a surprise was how busy we were. Pacing
a bicycle averaging twenty miles an hour across country conjures
up images of utter boredom and lots of free time ("bring some CD's,
audiocassettes, something to read.") It was anything but boring.
We were very busy with food preparation, catching up on sleep, navigating
(sometimes a group activity when the navigator was zoned out which
happened more often as the days went on) discussing our location
or next move, putting things away, looking for a place to shower
and do laundry, and generally telling each other what to do. ("If
you touch my camera, I'll kill you." - Anon.) When we weren't sleeping
or slurring our words due to lack of sleep, we were on high alert.
Our shifts changed every four hours and this resembled a fire drill
with everyone running in a different direction, barking orders or
reminders (Did anyone phone in at the time station?), checking and
rechecking supplies, yawning, occasionally changing the shift schedule
and then trying to get back on, charging off in a vehicle and sometimes
running over someone's luggage (more on this later), romping through
the fields in pursuit of a potty bush, yawning, retaping the flag
and other fallen equipment back to the vans, back seat driving,
yawning, preparing food and laughing.
We
were instructed on using the headlights and flashers when following
a rider, checking in at each of the 54 time stations across the
country each of which was spaced about 50-75 miles apart (this involved
making a call on a pay phone in a pre-designated gas station or
market that was sometimes unfindable in the middle of the night
if they were closed and their lights were turned off) and to reset
the odometer back to zero to coincide with the distances between
time stations as marked in the route book so we could properly navigate.
These instructions were quite explicit. Our execution of them was
not always thus since the cumulative effect of sleep deprivation
had a tendency to make otherwise easy tasks (like pronouncing words)
progressively more difficult.