Road Trip through the desert!!...er I mean Crewing for George as he rode his bicycle 509 miles

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Furnace Creek 508: My crewing perspective from a comfy air conditioned Kia mini van.

A few weeks ago Brandy had asked me to help crew for George who would race in the FC 508. That is 508+ miles in a 48 hour time period and 35,000 ft of elevation gain. Yes, insanity on wheels. After some consideration I thought it would be fun spending time catching up with Brandy and I'd be motivated by watching all these crazy ultra cyclists on their bicycles riding through the desert for 48-ish hours.

The race would begin on Saturday morning at 7am and officially end on Monday morning at 7am. Brandy picked me up at my Mom's house on Friday morning and we headed over to her house with a couple detours (Grandmas', Coffee, and Target). We got to her house where George was going over the route with Jason. I had met Jason at the Anthill Crit in Irvine when we were last out in California and he seemed like he would be good company for this adventure (read: he seemed able to tolerate our constant blabbering with great finesse and little complaint). George asked us to bring out the tub of FC "stuff-gear-etc" and take pictures of all we were going to stage in the van. My job was going to be helping out however I was told and to "Act like a tourist" of which *I* know how to do. What a great job for me. We loaded up the van and headed up to Santa Clarita where registration and vehicle inspection would take place at the Holiday Inn.

George registered and collected his goodie bag of stuff, took his pre-race photo, had his reunion moments with other riders and then we headed out to hunt down Cindy (a race official) to inspect our van. I learned quickly that she had no system, but rather a parade of people getting progressively impatient trying to get her attention toward their vehicles. If I could suggest anything it would be that she carry around a little batch of numbers and give them to people as a way to create some order in this little chaotic parking lot circus act. I just told someone: "I'm behind you", this caught on and we all acted like school children barking who was next and who we were after lol. It took a long time.

After our vehicle inspection we headed over to the Best Western, checked in, dropped off the bikes and headed over to Denny's where I witnessed an amazing feat of belly stuffing dynamics. George consumed 2 full meals (some breakfast taco concoction of pancakes, sausage, bacon AND a bacon cheeseburger with french fries). All I could think was how I hoped he wouldn't pay for this tomorrow on the race day. That's a whole lotta food for a guy his size; um for anyone any size.

We came back to the hotel where we dropped George off to try to sleep and Jason, Brandy, and I headed to the grocery store to stock up on food. We were full from our dunch or linner meal so picking out the food that we would be offering George and eating ourselves proved very challenging. We got into a lot of conversations that were funny.

Here was my favorite:
Jason: I love these.
Brandy: Do you want them?
Jason: Nah!
Brandy: Get them if you want them.
Jason: No, it's okay.
Next isle...
repeat above conversation :)

We walked out of the store with cases of Diet Pepsi, regular Pepsi, cheese its, marinated salmon steaks, bread, bagels, woven wheat's, dill cheese, turkey, provolone cheese, mayo, beaver deli mustard, pickles, bananas, pretzels, and stinky feet chips aka: Salt & Vinegar chips.

We realized that we were running late dilly dallying through the store and we had to make this pre-race mandatory talk or orientation or whatever Chris Kostman calls it. He is a crack up by the way in his Lone Ranger boots demonstrating a proper hand off. Just sayin' The talk by John Marino was especially motivational. I enjoyed that part as well as watching ALL the riders get on stage for the group photo. That is a whole lot of ambition up there at one time!

We headed back to the grocery store again after dropping George off at the hotel to go to bed and try to sleep. We decided to get the ice and a few other odds and ends. We got back to the hotel where Brandy figured out how to stage the van. She really had a great system back there with everything organized well. It took very little communication to find everything because the system made very logical sense. We went to bed or I went to bed, Jason slept on the floor???, and Brandy went off to find a computer to blog update.

Saturday Morning

We were up bright and early. We headed over to the start where we found George a bit upset over the food choices and generally a bit anxious (must have been the pre-race adrenaline). Brandy and I took photos of the start line and we watched all the riders launch out on a very long bike ride. We ran to the van and headed out to the "canyon"; however, we were shortly after pulled over by a race official letting us know that we needed to cover up our triangle..DOH. Thank goodness this would be our only oopsie the whole race. I took the first "leg" of driving. I figured I couldn't screw up too much, um wrong! When we got to the top of the canyon to yell our shouts of encouragement George wasn't looking too happy with us. We would explain later that we weren't where he expected us due to being reprimanded about the triangle. So I was instructed to "leap frog". Well, my understanding of leap frogging was not what George was expecting. I thought leap frogging meant I drive ahead a few miles, pull over, await further instruction, pull ahead another mile or more and hand off, etc...repeat. Um, NO. George pulled up to us on a pass and shot a very frustrated and angry look. He told us or me :P "I'm only going to tell you this once: If you can't see me you are not helping me." I quickly agreed "okay okay" as he told us how he made a wrong turn and we should have been there, etc. I felt really bad that I had screwed up so soon in the "game". Then I looked over at Brandy and Jason and apologized profusely telling them they should tell me what to do. Tell me in detail exactly what to do and I'll do it. After they schooled me on exactly what leap frogging meant I got it and even got an approving shout out from George on our next pass. This little road bump was the only real problem we would have for the remainder of the race, oh yeah there was one more when my sleep deprivation kicked in and I miscalculated a summit and a climb, I'll get to that too.

George has all the details on his blog and website. I can barely find time to get this crew perspective out let alone remember all the places we were, the climbs, etc. I do know that most of the day went smoothly and George was looking strong and alert until the first signs of fatigue, but also elation came over him at the top of Towns Pass. He was very excited to get to this climb in the daylight. It was great to see how he and Brandy smiled knowingly as they celebrated this victory. The wind was so bad as he would come around curves on this climb that he was literally blown off the road at one point. I had a hard time watching this, it was making me really nervous. I think I shrieked a few times as he was blown over the yellow line or off the road. The luminous rain clouds and thunder and lightning added to the dramatic climb. At the summit we took pictures to capture this victory. He was looking tired, but knew he had a big descent to refuel on. Through the night we just helped support his nutrition needs which Brandy was totally on top of and knew what he needed when he needed it. She was awesome and could read his body language very well. We had to pull up next to him a few times and sing some Snoop Dogg to wake him up. We kept ourselves awake and alert by drinking buckets of Diet Pepsi and loudly assaulting poor Jason with many many hip-hop tune age. I hope he doesn't have post traumatic stress disorder when he hears Jill Scott and friends on the radio in the future ;). We were just trying to provide some culture and entertain anyone who happened upon our party van at 2am. Hey, we stayed awake. George seemed mildly entertained as he cracked a smile at our serenade. He was tired and the desert is a big big place both day and night. Brandy drove the whole night shift. She did awesome. I was terrified of driving at night and running over her boyfriend (that would be quite unforgivable) following so close was not something I had had much experience at. I would get a try at this "direct support" when the sun came up on Sunday morning. The other exciting event of the night was that I got a stick up my ass peeing ON a prickly bush rather than behind it doh! Oh the surprises that await in the desert in the dark of night, exciting and blog worthy stuff I bring you.

Sunday Morning
I took over driving sometime when the sun was just starting to rise. I was sooooo sleepy, but after the beautiful sunrise I became more alert. From here on out we all rotated our driving responsibilities. Priority #1: Don't run over George. Priority #2: Let me not have to poop in the desert behind sparse foliage. On the way to Baker George was becoming increasingly agitated. The heat and exhaustion was kicking in strong and the road to Baker was just so long. After a break of water over his head, some massage & kisses from Brandy, and some encouraging words from all of us he smiled again and got back on his bike. When we arrived in Baker we quickly refueled the van with gas, George checked into the time station, brushed his teeth, changed his kit, we got a burrito for him, then we went to Jack in the Box for the much needed solid food consumption. He had gone ahead of us and we caught up to him to feed him. Back on the bike he went and we provided direct support for the rest of the day and evening. Our driving shifts were getting much shorter as we were feeling the sleepies. My brain cells just stopped working at about 6pm and I couldn't even do simple math. On the way up "Sheephole Summit" (the last leg of the race) George asked what the stats were and I gave some really odd numbers like the climb was 1,500 ft and the summit was 800ft lol. Yes, that makes no sense unless he had wings I know...sleepy sleepy dumb dumbs were in full force. The last major road back into 29 palms was heavily traveled and it was dark. We were being passed by very fast moving traffic and that was stressing me out. People were flying by with big ATV's on trailers and at one point Brandy saw a "little green person driving a quad". I was seeing lights directly behind us that I couldn't make out and we concocted a story about the little person on the ATV who was "chasing us down". Can we say h.a.l.l.u.c.i.n.a.t.i.o.n. Poor Jason, see what he had to endure.

The FINISH LINE! As we made our way to the finish line and up over the last big hill we saw another rider approaching so we told George so that he would step it up knowing he was being chased down. So on to the finish line we trekked and we parked the van quickly and went scrambling to run through the final 20 ft all together which was fun. George was congratulated, pictures were taken, medals received and we got back in the van to hurry up and feed the man a big burger with bacon.

The OTHER Finish Line: The victory was not over for us as we still had to safely drive this van and it's human contents back to Huntington Beach (and Jason had to continue on to San Diego). I could not imagine trying to drive without losing my valuable cargo so I begged Jason to please drive us home or at least partially home. Brandy and George drifted off and on into sleep while my head would bob and I would wake up in a panic that I had inadvertently fallen asleep AGAIN AND AGAIN. I had no control over the nodding off. This has NEVER happened to me and was so scary. Again, Jason was patient with my crazy lady antics and accusations that went over and over like this: Are you OK? Jason, are you okay? Are you sure? Do you need to pull over? Should we wake up Brandy to drive? Are you okay? Repeat. Thank you Jason for getting us safely home ... really really. That was the longest drive of my life coming back from 29 palms to HB and when we got off the Euclid ramp I felt like we had truly crossed the finish line :)

It was fun and I would totally do it again!

Note to self: work on better hand offs, go back and study how to read those elevation charts, review 3rd grad math :)