.

I’m not sure if I mentioned that I have the best team. I do. Bega, our director, takes great care of us on the road and otherwise. That said, after I finished feeling like my eyeballs were bleeding during the National Criterium Champs on Sunday, then chillin under the Cannondale tent by the start/finish line for the men’s race, Bega took us out to run wild on the streets of Downer’s Grove for a bit.

We began by taking a bottle of wine over to our buddy, Brad Huff, newly annointed US National Crit Champ at a BBQ being thrown by Hartley’s mom. I am so happy for those TIAA-Cref guys. When I saw Huff cross as first American, I got goosebumps. For those that don’t know Huff, you should. He is so positive, outgoing and kind. If you could bottle up the enthusiasm he and Friedman have and sell it to cyclists, I think the WADA would ban the stuff.

Anyway, long story short, we left the BBQ for a bar that closed at 10 pm. Last call at 10 pm. I put it on the Aussies among us, “it’s your duty as Aussie citizens to find us another watering hole..”. They did and we danced and danced and danced. Good night. Good to see Gord swaying out there, his last Downers ever, one cycling dude among maybe 20 dudes and maybe five girls. Somewhere in here, Bega gave us the team car, which was abandoned somewhere on the Downer’s course and after the Bamboo Room kicked us out, many of us were left to our own devices. I was lost and wandering around suburbi-land with an old bud, kinda looking for some cheeseburgers. The best I could come up with was a hide-a-bed at a Mariott (my buddies had a room there) that was not the Mariott I had a room in. Close, but not quite. Among my finest moments was when the elevator door opened and exposed me in last night’s dress to a lobby full of Toyota United guys who were doing what I should have been doing: getting a shuttle to the airport in a fairly time efficient way. “Hey! YOU DON’T HAVE A ROOM HERE, BECKY!!!”. They all had been dancing, too, about three hours or so earlier but looked amazingly fresh. I slunk away in a cab to get the team car and ended up here————-the pic is of me missing my flight, in last night’s dress, with Sheeba and Jeanette in bed. Nikki found us this way. Bega, my alleged ride to the airport, didn’t even bother getting up for my flight time, as he knew it would all work out. He even had a ‘do not disturb’ thing on his door.

Ah, I was first on the standby list. It worked out.

The race was hard. I remember that. Oh, and I couldn’t get off the back. Like, not the back-ish, but I was last, I think, pretty much the whole race, except for one moment when I slung up to the front somewhere around 19 laps to go. I think I thought a lot of things during the race, as great ideas seem to pop into your head in times like that, but mainly, I remember thinking, “man. I shoulda trained”. I didn’t like the Saturday evening race at all, as they allow category 3 riders in the International Challenge, making avoiding them as they are slung backwards, the biggest challenge of them all.

ah well, it all worked out.

Lates,
BB

This entry was posted on Monday, August 21st, 2006 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.