Miracles do Happen
 

Well, here is evidence of a small miracle.

I did the Race Across the West back in 2014 on a 4 person 50+ team.

It was amazingly fun. I'd crow about winning our division, but we were the ONLY entry in our division. lol

It was a story of a team mate never being ready for his pull when he was supposed to be. I knew we were in trouble when a crew person actually wanted to bring a hookah along for the trip. It was also a story of a 50 MPH jaunt into the sage when that same crewperson fell asleep at the wheel with me in the passenger seat. :twitchy:

Memorable snippets also include sleeping in the car using a roll of toilet paper for a pillow.

Boy, you gotta love endurance racing.

The "never ready for his pull" teammate was responsible for distributing our jerseys to us after the race was finished. But for some reason, he never did. Repeated requests fell on deaf ears. Finally, he dug up one of the jerseys, and we all decided to give it up to the one of us that wanted it the most, leaving two of us without one.

Still later, the race director dug up another jersey. That meant one of us would still be left without one. Since this kind of stuff meant more to my team mates than myself, I was OK at being the one left out.

Then a few weeks ago, one of my teammates handed me a spanking new 2014 jersey ... still in the bag. I had long since given up on ever seeing one, so I was astounded. Apparently, the race director made it his personal mission to right a wrong, and that's what produced the jersey.

I'm not sure what I was diddling with while leaning on my top tube, but here it is! TWo years in the making.

I gotta send the race director a thank you note. :thumb:

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Most deserved, you were the better man, Vic. Proves what I have thought all along about you.

Bill

That's the top of Stunt Road, and that's Steve.

First in a field of one isn't guaranteed. My son used to enter his chickens in the county fair. He would enter all of his birds and we would stay in town the week of the fair to volunteer. One of his birds was a bantam frizzled of some sort that happened to be the only bird in his class. He was such a poor specimen that the judge gave him second place in a field of one.

The bird's name was Clark, so named because the people who gave him to us handed him over in a Clark shoe box. We took to calling second in a field of one the Clark Award. Congratulations on not winning the Clark Award as well as your generosity towards your team mates.

OMG ... I remember your story! As a matter of fact, I found it so amusing, I've repeated it to a lot of my friends. I LOVE that.

I've been calling it the Chucky award, though. Getting the name wrong all this time. :o

I've since kinda changed my mind about winning first place in a field of one. There is a guy I see every once in a while riding to work. Nice guy. He has several kids, so he doesn't get a chance to ride as much as he'd like. He's also a busy dude ... a physician working in an ER.

So he knew I was trying to train a bit for the HooDoo 500, and when I saw him after the race, I told him that we placed first in a field of one, and avoided the Chucky award (with, of course, an explanation about what that meant).

He then reminded me that there were good reasons why there weren't a lot of entries into the 60+ age category of a 520 mile endurance race with craploads of climbing.

Sometimes, the obvious escapes me.

Good stuff!!

Can I have it?

I remember Stunt Road, off of Saddle Peak, in turn off of Tuna Canyon. The latter was my favorite tough climb back in the 1970s, when it was still a two-way road.

Ha ha, I guess he has a point. That said, wouldn't it be lovely if more folks got out and just did it.

Years ago, someone on this board said, "DFL > DNF > DNS. (dead f#$%ing last > did not finish > did not start). We need fewer of us in the DNS category.

Nice motorbike in the background . . . .

Nice Breathless Agony jersey being modeled by Steve and I would recognize Vic by his trademark grey shorts! Didn't really recognize Stunt Road until Big John pointed that out!

Rick / OCRR

Lol ... those gray shorts are getting hard to find!

Apparently, there has been another miracle ...

I really need to send the race organizers a nice note about this. Doing all that to replace the plaques that were purloined/lost/otherwise absconded with is going above and beyond. :thumb:

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