Madonna—Dreaming On Two Wheels

(photos to come)

Where do I start? First of all, we got first place in the 4-person stock catagory. 6 Days 10 hours 30 minutes. Average speed 19.52--sorry Brett it was no 20. Should have worked harder. :)

There were so many moments and stories about RAAM this year that a couple of beers would not be enough. Tim Case described the experience as a whole eloquently.

For myself—This was by far one of my top 5 experience of my life. There was not one moment that I could say it was because X, because it was everything. The racing, the competition, the craziness, the racers, the other crew members, the driving through the most beautiful parts of our country. I didn’t want to miss a moment of it thus why they couldn’t get me out of the vehicles until 4am for a five hour break.

I slept 5 hours in 72 hours. The last 10 miles of the race was the hardest for me. I was crewing in the mini van, jumping out, and running after bikes for 16 hours. My breaking point was when we had two racers in the van and one on the road. It took everything we had to stay ahead of the racer on the road since the entire leg was a downhill decent. Ryan, who I was driving with, said he could see me go from my normal self to crashing within 10 minutes. I was so tired I couldn’t process the words in my mind when I was trying to read the directions. I wanted to cry for no reason, but held it in because I knew I was just tired.

The town in Missouri my sister dropped me off in was a lot better than I expected especially when she said she found a motel for me to stay at because she wasn’t going to drive me back—thanks family. Turns out it let me cheer on some of the solo racers and gave the crew time to shower and clean up the bikes.

As soon as they turned into the driveway all of them in the RV stuck out their head and said “do you know how to power hose a RV out because this place is a pit.” It took about 45 minutes before I gathered my nerve to step into the RV. Yeah it was a pit.

They made their racer exchange at the location of the motel. Brett made his entrance at about 35 miles per hour—they just caught up to Team Surfing USA. With a 110 degree weather and humidity so high you couldn’t even breathe, there was no way they could keep this pace up. After a while Team Surfing USA caught up to the guys and passed them.

Everyone has been wondering what happen to Team Surfing USA and Team Strong Heart in Missouri. Here is the story:

After Jefferson City Andy and Brett were on the road. We got into some back country area that was beautiful. Brett could see around the bend that Team Surfing USA was in eyeshot. I quickly learned Brett LOVES competition and has the eye of the tiger if he is in reach. Team Surfing USA knew that we were within their sights so they put all four guys on the road to break our two guys. Andy did what he could—and it was by far a lot—but you couldn’t touch Brett’s drive during that moment. I was in the Jeep which was the follow vehicle—we stayed behind the racer at all times. In my opinion, Team Surfing USA had way too many vehicles on the road—1 RV and 4 mini vans. Their vehicles were made up of 1 touring bus, 2 RV’s, a trailer with surfboards, 1 scooter to run errons, 4 mini vans—one for each racer, their own media crew, and cheerleaders. Hell if I could roll like that I would too.

Anyways, they started to climb some hills which made it extremely difficult to go around any cars, so the Jeep and our Van (with Andy) ended up behind Team Surfing USA’s train of cars. Thankfully the cheerleader’s van told Bret when to turn. It was amazing to see their efforts to break us wasn’t working. Brett was breaking all of their guys one at a time.

We made a racer exchange (Steve and Tim were now on the road) after the hills. I went from the Jeep to the passenger side of the mini Van. At this time we talked about slowing the pace down and riding at a pace they could keep for the next 4 hours. We came into this little town passing the Team Surfing USA’s racer and one of their vans that was stopped by the RAAM officials. Knowing that we were far enough up the road we decided to make a racer change (putting Tim on the road). We made a left hand turn down a short decent turned on our blinker to turn right into a diagonal parking spot right before a stop sign when at the moment we were starting our turn, Jason from Team Surfing USA, was next to our van 1/2 a second later he ran into our car. He’s bike was ran over by our front passage tire. He went over the handlebars. Thankfully we were not going that fast so we were able to stop our van before he was never hit. I don’t think any other words were used except the F word from everyone.

Tim jumped out of the car faster than you could blink. Jason got up quickly but what seemed shocking to me was that their media crew was filming before he was even up. Jason started to say his left foot was broken. Within seconds Tim was in his Firefighting mode. They got a bucket of ice while I called 911. At that moment I made the call to neutralize our team since Surfing USA was neutralized. I called our Crew Chief, Brad, and told him what happened and said they need to come to our location immediately. I then called the Jeep and told them to stop racing.

After about an hour of talking with the RAAM officials, police, the other team. We continued to race. Unfortunately Team Surfing USA decided that they were going to pull out of the race. They said they came to win and they would not be able to win with three guys. Jason who got hit was taken to the hospital but was not seriously injured. RAAM considered it an accent and told us to continue. Thankfully we did not get any penalties and that no one was seriously hurt. As for the entire Strong Heart team, we feel horrible on what happened and wish Jason a speedy recovery.

I could go on and on about what Brett did, what Andy said, what crazy decent Tim took, how Steve was amazing and that he got the nickname Diesel. All of these stories will and should be told on a long bike ride.

I want to thank everyone for the support for Team Strong Heart and to our biggest fan Jorge—Thanks Jorge for the “Madonna answer your F**n phone” voicemail at a time that needed a good laugh. This will be an experience I will never forget. If you have the time to crew for Team Strong Heart I highly recommend taking advantage of the opportunity.

Plans for 2010 are already in the works. Stay tuned. This will be another great year for Team Strong Heart and Race Across America.

I’m going to try to keep this one short since quite frankly it feels like I’m saying the same thing as last time.

I got to the dog not mentally ready to race. My mind this week has been on Team Strong Heart. By the time I got to the line I was more focused.

The wind this time was going to be on the way back so I was going to go as hard as I could on the way out with the tailwind to make up time for the headwind on the way back. Since the finish line is 1k past the start line you have to do what you can to compensate for the loss.

The guy behind me didn’t pass me until I was half way out—I thought he would get me much sooner. On the way back, I was ready to lose it. I say that a lot, but this time there was true want to ease the pain. Thankfully I didn’t have anything in my stomach but I was debating about the water I just took in then thought against it. I needed it since it was a humid day. My time as 18:22 about my average time. I came in 4th place that day.

Once the pain was done it was time to party in the parking lot.

Madonna—Dreaming On Two Wheels

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

2009 RAAM—First place baby!

Monday, June 22, 2009

Podunk Town, MO

Friday, June 19, 2009

David Zebriskie is on Team Strong Heart?

The day before

Blackdog #4

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Next Stop: Cali

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

There they go….