I have to admit. I was rusty. I hadn't gotten ready for a bike race in a while, and I was kind of disjointed on Friday morning running around my apartment. I had a few things left on my to-do list, like change the tires on my race wheels to a Michelin Jet file-tread, mix up some of my secret formula energy gels andd hydration, and pack my clothes for the weekend.
I checked the weather for Barry Co, Michigan. Then I checked it again. And again. I could not believe that it was going to be in the high 50's to low 60's for this race. Sometimes personal experience can be so hard to overcome with logic and new information. I wanted to pack for last year's race, not this year's race. I couldn't stop myself from packing for cold weather, but I kept it limited to a craft windproof base layer, a pair of craft tights, and some arm warmers.
My girlfriend had accepted my invitation to accompany me to the race, and was going to bring her car into the city on Friday morning. She was aiming for 11AM, but she ran into the kind of delays that I faced getting ready for last year's race. She arrive until 1PM. She pulled into the alley behind my building with her large American-made Luxury car (her Dad didn't think it was a good idea to borrow his foreign made SUV to take into Michigan), so I figured I would have no problem fitting the Falcon into her trunk and the rest of my gear in the back seat. I was wrong. The seats did not fold down, instead a small portal opened up in the arm-rest to the back seat. I took the wheels off and tried to wedge the bike in the trunk. I could not get the stays far enough in the small portal for the handlebars to clear the trunk. Before I could solve the problem, a moving van pulled up to the mouth of the narrow alley and started honking at us. They wanted us to move so they could back in and do their job.
I asked Morleigh to drive around to the front of the building into the loading zone across the street. I told her I would run into the building to get my trunk carrier, and we could put the bike on the trunk. But as I moved through my building I remembered that my plan B was not the trunk carrier, but the back seat. I had a tarp to wrap around the bike and protect the car, so I continued through the building and met her out front. I was initially confused as she was parked in the middle of the street with her hazards lights on, and not next to the curb in the loading zone. I pointed for her to back up, and stopped when I got close enough to the street to see the puddle of water six inches deep as wide as the loading zone. It had been raining hard all monring and my neighborhood was flooded. As I was not wearing hip waders, she was gracious not to park in standing water. Instead I hopped in to the car and pulled it around the hotel into an alley. I swung into an open parking space in the apartment lot and started to wrestle with the Falcon. It would not fit into the back seat. So I had to rip apart the trunk trying to find an allen wrench (thankfully I had packed a multi-tool), so I could take the seat off. As I was digging in the trunk a car pulled up and an older Russian gentlemen watched us, then parked next to us, and said with disgust as he carried groceries into the building, "That's MY spot". I apologized and told him we were just trying to fit the bike into the car and would be goine in a few minutes. He shot eye darts like a skunk shoots stink. The bike wouldn't fit in the car as is, so I tore apart my well packed race bag to find a multi-tool and yanked the seat post. Without wheels and a seat post the frame slipped nicely into the back seat. And like that we were off.
The ride to Michigan was uneventful. Traffic was tight and slow through downtown, but light and moving quickly on the Skyway. Neither of us had eaten lunch, we planned to stop on the way. Unfortunately there are no restaurants off the Skyway. It winds over some of the most industrial and desolate parts of Chicago, then through Gary Indiana. It wasn't until we passed onto I-94 that we found a friendly blue sign advertising a pair of restaurants. I gave Morleigh the choice between Denny's and the Longhorn Steakhouse. She chose "Not Denny's", and we went towards the Longhorn.
I was a little surprised because of all the restaurants in Indiana, we had ended up at the one place I had eaten before. My Ex-wife and I had stopped at the same place on the a trip to the SE shore of Michigan for a relaxing weekend back in 2008. It was one of those strange moments when past and present collide. Regardless, we had a nice late lunch. As it was an odd time (4pm) for a meal, the place was virtually empty, service was fast, and the food was delicious. We loaded back into the car and continued on our way.
While we were at the restaurant, the driving rain had finally stopped. But it was only a few minutes along the highway when we caught back up to the tail end of the storm and continued to drive with the clouds for the rest of our journey. I explained to Morleigh my concern that the roads would be mushy if they were wet, and that it would be as hard to ride as it was last year when when the roads thawed in the afternoon.
We did not get a spot in the sponsoring hotel on Gun Lake, instead we were staying farther north in Grand Rapids. Thus we took scenic route along I-196 from Benton Harbor to Grand Rapids. We arrived at the hotel, and as we were pulling into the driveway Morleigh asked me if I wanted to go check out the race venue. It was still pouring rain. I had hoped to get on the Falcon a little bit on Friday and work out my legs, but I did not want to go to the starting area and tool around in the rain, the mud, and the dark. My biggest concern was simply not having the right equipment to clean my bike if I were to get her muddy. So instead we went and checked into the hotel, and then downstairs to the attached restaurant for a bite to eat.
Morleigh ordered light, a BLT-hold-the-T, and I ordered carbo-load, a bowl of macaroni and cheese. It was a huge bowl. I was not terribly hungry because of the late lunch, but still, I ate for 20 minutes straight and when I smoothed the pasta back down into the bowl, it looked like I had not eaten any of it. At the end I consumed maybe half of my pasta. Morleigh did better with her sandwich, but still did not finish all B from her B_T. (Yes, I did eat most of her left-over bacon because what good is it being a cyclist if you can't eat bacon?)
On the way back to the hotel room we swung by the pool area, and peaked into the workout room. They had a stationary recumbent bicycle so we went in. I sat down on the stationary bike in my street clothes and started pedaling. I had on jeans and dressy-shoes, so I did not want to pedal hard or fast, but it felt good after sitting in a car all day to spin my legs a little bit. Morleigh sat with me for a few minutes, watching me, and then asked me for the room key, she wanted to go back upstairs. I handed her the key, and kept spinning for a few more minutes. After getting my legs loose, but before I started to sweat I switched over to the elliptical trainer.
I do not, in general, like elliptical trainers. They are invariably designed for someone who is about 6 inches shorter than I am, and when I am on one I generally look like a cartoon character running in place as the rug slides out from underneath them. But it can be fun to see how well built they are by sprinting on them. So I hopped on and revved it up to 150 rpms. This did NOT make the machines computer happy as it could only measure up to 150 rpms and gave an error message as I pushed it faster, but it did not sound like it was about to tear itself apart like some other machines I have stress tested in a similar fashion.
Having worked out the stiffness from sitting, I made my way back to the elevator and back upstairs. I knocked on the door of our hotel room...and waited. I didn't just sit and wait, but instead played my turn on a few of the half dozen games of "Words with Friends" that I happen to have going at the moment. There was no answer so I knocked again. I played another turn and still there was no answer. I wondered if I missed her in the elevator when I brought the stairs up. So I went back downstairs, looked in the fitness room, the lobby, the pool, and in the car. She was not there, so I went back upstairs, in a state of near panic, and knocked on the hotel room door. It took a few more minutes, but finally she opened the door.
I was relieved. She was embarrassed. While we were in the fitness room she had heard "the voice". You have probably heard "the voice" sometime in your life although you may not have recognized it as such. Henry Rollins labeled "the voice" as such in a spoken word show I went to in Albany about six years ago. He told the audience about his first trip on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and hearing the voice in the wide expanse of white frozen trundra.
The voice whispers, "Psst...Hello there."
"It's me again."
To which you reply, "No...not again...not this time...I've been so good."
"Not good enough" the voice whispers.
"It's time. You should prepare."
"I don't want to. If you leave me be I promise I will be better next time."
The voice cackles with laughter.
"I will not be bartered with or trifled with. Time is running out."
"No"
"Don't argue with me, time is fleeting. You will find my alter, and bow to me in prayer."
And so Morleigh had been praying quietly in our hotel room, responding to the call, and setting a disagreeable B_T sandwich back free into the universe. She was so worried that I would take her back to Chicago because she was sick, and that she had ruined my bike race, it was impossible not to smile. It wasn't the way I had hoped to be spending the night, but a few trips downstairs to pick up and drop off towels, and we were back on track. We were in bed at a reasonable time with an alarm set for Oh Dark Thirty in the morning.
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