Halfway To Annapolis

After Jody and I woke up this morning from a nice, long sleep, we took advantage of our hotel's continental breakfast.

The choices we had were coffee or juice. Jody had a little of both, but I stuck with the juice, since I'm not much of a coffee drinker.


During breakfast, we got a stark reminder that we were no longer in the West: The biscuits and gravy that were available for the non-liquid-dieters among us.

The gravy even came out of a dispenser, something that neither we nor the couple from Texas that we ran into over breakfast had ever seen.

Yet another reminder that we must be in or near the South was the "Where'r y'all from?" that the Texans offered up. I cannot for the life of me remember (nor do I want to remember!) the last time I heard someone say "Y'all." Wow.

Yesterday, we also got a good taste of the Midwest/South when, at McDonald's, we overheard a group of people talking and the word "God" came up over and over. You don't get that nearly as much in California as you do out in these here parts.

45 minutes out of town, we came across tons of corn fields, so we pulled over to take a bunch of pictures.

We do so much driving and usually have so much free time that we like to stop if we see something we feel like taking pictures of.

We actually don't stop all that much, and I'm usually the one who wants to stop, but as you must know, Jody assigned me to media duty, so I am simply doing my job whenever I tell him I need to do some "work."

Just before we stopped to take the snaps of the corn fields, we caught up to Gerhard Gulewicz (Austria), the third place men's solo rider.


As per usual, we slowed down and I rolled down my window to check on the rider.

For the first time since I saw Cassie struggling to get to the top of a brutal climb (at least two days ago), I saw extreme fatigue on the face of a rider.

Although Gerhard looked completely exhausted, he was more than coherent, from what I could tell.

At first, Jody and I figured that maybe we had just caught up to Gerhard at a bad time, but after a few minutes we decided to go back to check on him again, to be sure he was OK. The second time around, "GG" (as I call him) looked a little better, so Jody and I drove the 6 miles to Time Station 24, pulled over, and gassed up.

A few minutes later, GG showed up. Although he still looked pretty tired, all he did was make a 45-second pit-stop to shed his leg warmers and long-sleeve jersey (that he was wearing over his short-sleeve jersey) before taking off again to conquer the rest of the country.

Since we were still in Kansas, the road wasn't about to get hilly any time soon. I guess riding through such landscape, with farmland stretching for millions of miles, must be awfully boring for some of the riders, but they do have ways of staying "entertained."

As I mentioned early in the blog, many of the follow vehicles are equipped with loudspeakers, so that the rider(s) in front of them can be serenaded with music.

Another entertainment option is to provide the rider with a headset, so the follow vehicle can communicate in a quieter (and more direct/personal) mode.

One major disadvantage of only using the loudspeaker system is that some areas along the route have noise ordinances. At times, the loudspeakers can be loud enough for Jody and me to hear even if we are a few hundred feet in front of or behind the rider/follow vehicle, which means that we can often listen in to (outtakes of) messages that the crew is relaying to the rider.

The fact that we can hear the traffic flow comes in handy, because we sometimes pick up on minor bits of information regarding the rider's condition, even when that info is in German, for instance.

Anyway, an hour after I took that picture of myself in front of that golden field, we caught up with the lead (and only) 2-person mixed 60-69 team called "Beau&Babe" (John and Nancy Guth, USA). Since we noticed that their follow vehicle was driving without its headlights on, which is against the rules, we drove ahead, found a safe place to pull off the road that included room for the follow vehicle, and pulled the van over (without stopping the rider) to quickly issue a warning.

45 minutes later, we were once again at one of our favorite hangouts, Walmart, where the food talk was back in full swing.

For instance, Jody walked over to me carrying two giant containers of Cheese Balls and said, "This is why so many Americans are obese."

We then guessed how many calories were in one container.

Jody's guess: 5000.

My guess: 3500.

Survey says: 4160.

Jeremy wins!



One of today's highlights was reaching the halfway point of RAAM.

As luck would have it, we even got to see (and participate in) a mini-celebration that Trix's team threw for her.

After the 5-minute celebration (yes, even the parties on RAAM have to be short!), Trix got back on her saddle and rode out.

45 minutes later, we caught up with Christoph Strasser.

We were actually under the impression that we'd see Reto Schoch first, since Strasser had a 15-minute lead over him at the previous Time Station, but there are all sorts of reasons why the lead could have changed hands. In any case, as long as both riders are still in the race, the race is far from over. It turns out that Reto was just ahead, by about 3 (car) minutes.

We talked to Reto for a bit (in English) and he was obviously well aware, yet not the least bit concerned, that Strasser was just behind him.

During our brief conversation, Reto smiled and, in his ever calm voice, said something like, "It's a really nice race. I'm really enjoying the challenge."