Heading to the Desert

I saw this weather report on TV this morning, which confirmed what Jody told me: It's going to be a hot one in the desert!

Right after I took that picture to the left, Jody and I went for a 50-minute jog.

I wasn't so happy about having to run this morning, since I was still sore from the half-marathon we ran on Sunday, but, since we won't be getting much exercise in the next week and a half, I decided it was the smart thing to do.

After the run, we showered, checked out of the Motel 6 where we had been staying since Sunday night (compliments of RAAM), moved into our new hotel for the rest of the ride (Jody's car!), and headed to Pier View Coffee for the second morning in a row.

We ordered the same thing as yesterday: Bagel sandwiches. If you ever get one there, be sure to get it on the "everything" bagel, since the sandwich tastes much better that way than it does on ciabatta, which is what I had it on yesterday.

Back at the beach in Oceanside, Mike, the head official, gave the rest of us the morning briefing. Shortly thereafter, the parking lot started filling up with tons of riders and support vehicles.

A little later, at 11:50, 10 minutes before the racers headed out, Jody and I hit the road, since we are assigned to stick with the lead riders.

Within about 30 minutes we already had our first incident, as one of the 75+ riders crashed doing a left-hand turn. We missed the guy's spill by a few minutes, but we were able to assess his condition and contact his crew. Even though he was banged up a bit and had to repair a flat, he decided to ride on ahead, so we saw him off and hit the road again.

We didn't have to wait very long before we were calling in our first warning of the day, as we caught a rider chucking a water bottle into the bushes.

Since I was driving at the time, Jody rolled down his window and gave the guy a stern warning. I don't remember exactly what Jody said, but it was along the lines of, "Yeah, so we can't really have the riders littering like that, you know, especially here in a residential neighborhood."


I'm sure the guy must have been pretty shocked that we busted him, but that was just a matter of us being in the right place at the right time.

Naturally, the rider apologized to us, but that did not keep us from calling the warning in, which is an automatic 15-minute penalty the next time the rider is caught doing the same thing. When we spotted his crew farther up the road at Lake Henshaw, we also notified them of the infraction, and they, too, apologized. End of story.

A while later, Jody and I pulled off the road where there was a stop sign at a T-intersection. Our purpose there was to bust riders for running the stop.

By rule, the riders are not required to come to a complete stop, but they must be going slow enough (roughly 1-2 mph) when they reach a stop sign that their spokes are clearly visible.

Despite the fact that neither Jody nor I was really hidden, but rather standing off to the side (along with, at different times, support vehicles and crew members for various riders), we caught several riders flying through the intersection.

In such cases, the first thing we did was yell, "Yo! Yo! Yo!" to get the rider's attention. The riders usually looked over right away, saw that those doing the screaming were race officials, and stopped. Then one of us ran up to them and reprimanded them, without issuing a warning or penalty. We did notify them, however, that a second infraction would result in an automatic penalty.

Stopping the riders wasn't always that easy. For example, one rider who we yelled at to stop kept riding for about 50 meters before she finally stopped (which meant we had to jog over to her, since riders are prohibited from riding backwards on the course), and another rider ignored us completely, possibly since he did not hear us.

The only other real incident that we had to deal with today that comes to mind was when we stopped a rider at about 1920 (local time) for not having a follow vehicle directly behind him. (All riders must be accompanied by a follow vehicle from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. local time.) Because the rider's crew was just up the road, they returned after a few minutes (the rider called them on his cell phone), got their warning from us, attached a front light to the rider's bike (after I turned the guy's rear light on), and hit the road. We were happy for him that he didn't lose a lot of time.

We pulled off the road at a couple of other stop signs along the way to see if we would catch any riders flying through without stopping, but our primarily reason for doing so wasn't really to issue warnings or penalties, but rather to make sure the riders were aware of the importance of obeying traffic laws so that they would be safe all along the route. I'd also like to point out that many of the riders come to a full stop at stop signs even when they don't see us standing there.

There was actually one other problem we observed: A few riders went off course at a roundabout called Christmas Circle, about 88 miles into the ride. Instead of taking the second right, they took the third right and had to make their way back to the route.

Since we were stopped for a break, I took it upon myself to direct traffic for a while, simply to help out the riders and their crews. Most of them appeared to know where to go, but I'm sure I helped out a few. They probably would have figured out which turn to take, but since I was standing there pointing the way, they didn't really have to think about where to go and were able to continue riding at a high rate of speed. Because it was about 100 degrees out, however, I stayed in the shade as long as possible and only got in the road when I saw a rider approaching.

In other news: Jody and I are now on our liquid diet. We are drinking a lot of water, but because we also need calories, we bought 24 cans of a drink called "Ensure." We've also had a small cup of Coke each (compliments of our buddies, the Italians, who we ran into at Christmas Circle), as well as a fruit smoothie or two, and we plan to continue on the "diet" for as long as possible. Jody did the diet two years ago for the entire ride and last year for most of the ride, so I have no doubt that he will make it all the way, but since I'm a rookie, Jody doesn't think I'll last more than a couple days.

What about you guys who are reading this? Do you think I'll make it? For what it's worth, I do.

Because we can't eat food, we both keep making all sorts of food jokes.

For instance, Jody keeps asking me if I want to pull over for McDonald's. whereas I like to tell Jody what I'm eating as I take a sip of my drinks:


Sip 1: "Mmmm... This steak is delicious!"

Sip 2: "Wow, these mashed potatoes are great!"

Sip 3: "Geez, these vegetables are amazing!"

Last sip: "Oh, man, this cheesecake is the best!"

We also come up with funny conversations like the following one:

Waitress: "Hello, sir? What can I get you for breakfast? You have your choice of French toast, waffles, pancakes, or the Western omelet."

Jody: "I'll take the omelet."

Waitress: "OK, will that be vanilla or chocolate?"

Another highlight of the day was the amazing scenery, as you can see in some of the pictures I've posted today.

We had the best views by far when we arrived at the "Glass Elevator" at Anza Borrego Desert State Park. We even waited for some riders to come by, so we could follow them down and take pictures of them.

The funniest part of the day was when we talked to one of the Austrian crews.

When they pulled up in their van way back at the first stop sign we pulled over at (to catch riders barreling through), I reminded Jody of the Austrian-German sentence I had taught him in the morning and told him that this was the perfect opportunity to try it out.

We then walked up to the van and told one of the crew members that we had a question for them. You should have seen the shocked look on all of their faces, since they must have figured they were about to receive a penalty.


Instead, Jody busted out a "Wo san die Mädels?" in perfect Austrian dialect, which means, "Where are the girls?" The four guys then cracked up laughing.

When we saw that same crew again a few hours later, we pulled up beside them and I popped the question again. Naturally, we got the same reaction as the first time. One of the Austrian guys is even from Schwaz, where I used to live and coach a baseball team, so he got a real kick out of meeting me. I guess you could say those guys and the Italian guys are our new buddies.

As you can imagine, since we're doing a lot of driving in the middle of nowhere, throughout the day we often had spotty cell phone reception. Check out the next photo, showing Jody doing his best to locate a signal...

The last order of business for the day was catching some Z's. In a way, we race officials are on the job 24 hours a day, but since we need to be alert at all times while on the road, we are, of course, allowed sleep breaks of roughly 3-4 hours a night. (Alcohol is also a big no-no for the entire race.)

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, our "hotel" for the race is the back of Jody's car.

When the time was right, and after getting cleared to "go down" (nice term, eh?) from headquarters, we moved the front seats up, folded the rear seats down, made our "beds" in the back of the car, and hit the sack.

Day 1 of RAAM is in the books.