Dan H
I finally made time to sort through my pics and post them on my site. (hey,
I have a life!)
Being a newbie to the whole pro team support thing, I never would have
thought it took 5 days to do a one day race.
The short version goes like this:
Wednesday I rented a car and got a rack for it compliments of Jeff Kuhns
@ Rack Attack. Many thanks to Jeff for the hook up! We tested that rack
under the most extreme conditions you can put a roof rack through short of
an off road rally and it performed perfectly.
Thursday I drove the now team car 730 miles to SF. (100mi. side trip to
pick up equipment) Dinner at 11:00PM.
Co bike tech Christophe and I spent most of Friday mounting tires on 30
new wheels, truing them and mounting cassettes. Friday night we serviced as
many bike as had showed up by that time so the team could go for a shake
down ride Saturday. Dinner at 11:30. Saturday at dawn we got the rest of
the bikes ready for same. Saturday afternoon the bikes got a final wash,
lube and last minute changes to gearing and so forth. I also serviced
Brei's bike and a couple others. The car was then sponsor stickered.
Christophe won the coin toss to decide who would ride in the car for the
womens race and who would feed for the mens race. It was determined that I
would be wheels for the women and feed for the men. Again, late dinner.
Sunday, race day, up at 4:00AM. It was only an hour earlier than the
other days because our hotel (King George) was right downtown and the street
noise was right there. We could hear conversations, people singing and
yelling on the street, and every morning at 5:00AM what sounded like a dump
truck full of glass bottles being dumped outside our window.
I got the race start at 6:00AM. The womens race started at 7:00AM! No
flats, no mechanicals.
After the womens race I drove to the feed zone with Katrina, Scotts (one
of the team) wife and Jonah who was visiting from Australia. Between bottle
had ups, we could walk up the hill to the intersection and see the riders
coming back down across one of the split corners. That's where I got the
video and some of the pics. The pics from the car are during the womens
race. Again, no flats, no mechanicals.
Sunday night we put the bikes back to their regular configuration and met
with the team for sushi where many stories were told.
Monday morning I loaded up the team car and drove it back home getting in
about 2:30AM. Tuesday I returned Jeff's rack to Rack Attack, de-stickered
the car, returned it, went home and got ready to work 1st aid at PIR.
Pics & vids: www.bicyclereparman.us