I Swear I Passed Kindergarten

If you've somehow made it through your day without running into one idiot, here you go. I thought I'd be original and make a t-shirt, showing that when I say "track" that I'm not talking about a rubber oval around a football field. Unfortunately, flipping over the letters to prepare iron on transfer is not my strongest skill. Maybe I can just claim that track riders are just supposed to react, not think.


Boat Street Criterium was fun. I was introduced to the traditional Rubicon (well at least Tuckie's) warm up. Norrene and I left with plenty of time to get to Seattle, but traffic was tight and I didn't actually rush when we got there. I registered, changed, put in my orange devil eyeballs (Nike Vision contacts), and busted up the hill we were parked on 3 or 4 times.

The race before ours was down to it's last 5 or so laps, so it was time to go. At the line, there were 18 racers- 9 of us were cat 1-3, and the others were collegiate racers. They had their own primes. The first 15 minutes of the race hurt as a warm up. I hung in the back quite a bit, but when I had to come around a rider that crashed herself out, I was done being there. Once I warmed up, I felt great. I helped Norrene get one prime by leading the lap, allowing her around the outside, then closing it up, so she could get a gap. Yey. She got the next prime as well, after getting a flat. Luckily, one of the primes included a gift certificate to a local bike shop- new tube and some pocket change.

With 4 laps to go, I stuck on Norrene's wheel as we scooted to the front. A group of 5 of us controlled these last laps. With one to go, my trusty lead out ramped it up. Coming out of the last turn, she stayed wide and I had the whole road. Unfortunately, I ran out of gas before the line. Little Taylor G. had the best lead out of her life, coming around me right before the line. Oh well. I'm happy with the race overall and it was fun.

Tragedy stuck the men's race that night. Adam and Doug drove up later, so we didn't see them. Doug says they saw us on the road going home. About 10 minutes into their race, a rider suffered cardiac arrest, passed out, and crashed. He died soon after. Shocked, the riders went home. The rider, Brad Lewis was a memeber of the promoting team. They offered the racers their registration fee back, but in good form, all told the promoters to give it to Brad's family.