Who'll stop the rain?

Friday

I get to the lovely town of Bloomington after a 3-hour drive into a 35 mph headwind the whole way, and when I get to packet pick-up, the lake in which we’re supposed to swim has whitecaps, which doesn’t seem to be a very good sign. My bike rack is of course in the Purgatory section, so I resolve to get here plenty early tomorrow to get a good spot on a rack, in order to shave those all-important 3 seconds off my probable 1:30 sprint time.

That night, dinner at Biaggi’s, where I blithely ignore the chatter about what the best “pre-race meal” is. Every time some newbie asks if the steak-and-lobster special with a side of onion rings is a good pre-race choice that they should emulate, I firmly tell them “no, but it’s a great birthday meal, so if it’s your birthday too, especially one in which you’re now officially old and are supposed to lose all hope, have at it.” Finally they get the idea and meekly order their sauce-less pasta. I’m a little disappointed that everyone is ready to bolt out of there so quickly that I don’t have a chance to order a large slab of birthday cake........but my faith in humanity is restored later that evening when Bridget and Colleen stop by with brownies made by Bridget herself. With friends like this, who has time for whining?

That night, after my po’ pitifully old self uses my handy Exacto knife to whittle down my race number so that I can put it on the seatpost without having it touch any part of Sálome’s frame, and puts Dino’s race number on him, I miraculously fall asleep. Only to be awakened at 2AM by an idiot bimbo with the wrong number probably drunk-dialing her ex. Warning to idiot: I have your number, so you can expect the random 2AM calls when the mood strikes me – always during the week when you’re hopefully trying to sleep so that you can get up in the morning for your stimulating job at Bebe. I am of course unable to fall asleep again.

Saturday

Since I’m already up at a ridiculously early hour, I go ahead and have my typical pre-race morning meal consisting of oatmeal, a Pepsi, coffee (this is new), and a cheese stick. I also tuck an orange away for later, just in case. I get to the race site ridiculously early, a little after it opens at 6, and rack Sálome as far away from the madding crowd as possible. This is when it starts raining for the first time, so I carefully cover her up with my Happy Birthday plastic sheet, so helpfully given to me as a decoration the night before. Who knew it would be so multi-purpose?

The rest of the morning unfolds thusly: it pours, then stops and hopes lift that a race will happen. More pouring rain. Thunder and lightning. Milling about, picture-taking. I eat my orange. Rain. Wind. Rain. At one point, I find myself talking to several new CTCers when I suddenly see Bridget, Colleen, and Annette hovering perilously close to Sálome.

CTCer Kathleen: “So this Peace Corps mission I was on was incredibly rewardi....”
Me: “Excuse me,” I bark, interrupting. “I have important issues here to deal with – there are people standing near Sálome with callous indifference. I must dash.”

I go over to this band of giggling hooligans, who claim they were only re-covering Sálome with her cloth and making sure no other bikes were crashing into her, including the idiot’s bike racked right next to mine facing the wrong direction. Hmm. I decide to accept this explanation since I don’t think they have the steel-trap minds that extreme deviousness requires – even though, naturally, it would make sense if they were trying to eliminate early on a fierce competitor such as myself. My theory is borne out when, a few seconds later, Colleen shows us the latest marvel of her cool transition bag:

Colleen: "Look! My bag has this plastic cloth you can pull out to cover the bag and protect its contents from rain!"
Bridget: "Umm, dear, that might have been a bit more useful 2 hours ago. Now it’ll just keep everything in there all steamy and damp."
Colleen: "Oh."

Finally, we get the announcement that the race will go on, but as a duathlon. Something about lightning, blah blah blah. By now we’ve all learned that the official rule is that every time lightning is spotted, there’s a 30-minute countdown period in which the skies must be lightning-free in order for the swim to happen. This leads to a lot of calls of “start over” and “no, never mind, that was Tasha’s camera flash!” going on. In any case, the du is about to commence – a 1.5 mile run instead of the swim. Meh, how hard can this duathlon stuff be anyway?

(to be cont.)