Rubber Duckies, Tasty Biberlis, Great Views, and Crazy Drunks

We are now in Congress, Arizona (a.k.a. The Oven), at Time Station 6, waiting for the lead racers to catch up to us.

Time Station 6 is the first manned time station of the race, and it's quite a spot. The friendly volunteer staffers have seen to it that the place offers such features as restrooms, a shower, drinks, snacks, electricity, and Wi-Fi, but I'd have to say the highlight is the kiddy pool with the souvenir rubber duckies for anyone who gets in and touches bottom.

Both of us have already taken advantage of the shower, and we have also done our "laundry" at the same time. Even though it's only about 8:30 a.m., the temperature is already hovering in the 90's, so our clothes will be dry in no time.

Besides taking care of the time station's amenities, the volunteers eagerly notify everyone around whenever a rider approaches, using a three-step system.

First, a spotter sitting off the side of the road yells, "Rider up!"

Next, some of the volunteers ring cowbells.

Finally, the volunteers (and anyone else who wants to) head toward the road to greet the riders.


The welcome may not quite be the same as a Tour de France welcome, but I'm sure the riders are delighted at the sight of the encouraging fans.

The first rider we were there to greet was RAAM solo lead male rider Reto Schoch of Switzerland.

Since his crew was hanging out at the time station, I took the opportunity to talk to them a bit (mostly in German).

When I saw that one of the sponsor stickers on their van was for "biberlis," I mentioned to one member of the crew that those were my favorite Swiss cookies. Amazingly, the next thing I knew she was handing me one! Score! Unlucky for me, however, I'm still on the liquid diet, so unless I find a blender to stick the biberli in, I won't be eating it for a while.

After several more riders passed through, Jody and I got back on the road.

Because we are now so far in front with the lead racers, who tend to have very experienced crews, and because the riders are spread out a lot more than they were at the start of the race, there is not as much rules enforcement work for Jody and me anymore.


Thus, our main job is to catch the leaders, see how they are doing, and make sure they are safe, and then drive on ahead for perhaps 50-75 miles before waiting for the riders to catch back up to us and then repeating the process over and over again.

From Congress, we headed to Prescott, where we had a nice climb with some more amazing views. That's also where we finally spotted one of the four solo female riders who left Oceanside at noon on Tuesday, Cassie Schumacher.

After the climb, we headed a few miles down to Jerome, a really nice town way up on the side of the mountain, and then on to Sedona, where we stopped for some coffee.

After another long climb out of Sedona, the landscape flatted out quite a bit.

Then came a long, gradual uphill leading to Flagstaff, where the riders were greeted by a powerful tailwind.

Past Flagstaff, we started finding riders again, beginning with the lead 4-man RAW team.

We pulled over to see how the rider who had just dismounted was doing, but he and his crew were anxious to catch up to their new rider, so our chat didn't last very long.

Fifteen minutes later, we caught up to two more of the lead solo females,  Joan Deitchman and Janet Christiansen, who were neck and neck.

A few minutes later, we made it to Time Station 10 in Tuva City.


Although we thought both Janet and Joan pulled over, the only rider we saw taking a break was Joan. As a matter of fact, this was the first time during the race that Jody and I had seen any rider making more than just a super-quick pit-stop.

We parked right next to the crew RV and had a nice, long chat with the crew. They even offered us something to eat, but we had to decline because of our diet. When they heard about that, though, they hooked us up with some frappuccinos.

I suppose if some of the RAAM/RAW riders and/or their crews are reading this, they may think it's not professional of us to accept drinks from crews, but we think it's fine and the "bribes" certainly won't keep us from pointing out any mistakes that we spot any riders or crew making.

UPDATE (written on June 16 at 1147 local time, from Trinidad)

The "Crazy Drunks" part of this post's title comes from the fact that late last night, just after we passed Joan again, we nearly hit a guy walking on the side of the highway. Jody immediately slowed down after we passed him, and we pulled over to see what was going on. It appeared that the guy was simply drunk, rather than up to no good.

We saw him staggering out into the traffic lanes, however, so we pulled up to one of Joan's support vehicles just ahead of us to ask them to call the follow vehicle so that they could warn Joan. We then raced back to the follow vehicle to see where the drunk guy went and to make sure that Joan got the message. By that time, the guy had crossed the road, but when we headed back up the road after checking on Joan, the drunk dude was back on our side, though well away from the road.

A few minutes later, we nearly hit another guy walking on the side of the highway. This one didn't appear drunk, but we weren't sure what the heck he was doing there. Anyway, no harm, no foul.