Event Day

Why am I smiling? Because it's over! Because I had a great time (except for miles 155 - 185). This photo was taken at the Red Robin at about 11:30 p.m.. Having been up since 3:45 a.m., it's pretty amazing that I remembered how to smile. My readership are probably all aware of what a non-night owl that I am.



Here I am at the finish line area.



Below, Jon Bren, glad to be done. He was awesome strong that day. His GPS got us to our hotel that night. Otherwise, I think we'd still be wandering around Portland. Jon also brought along enough bottles of Gatorade to keep the whole crew awash. He didn't want to get dehydrated, I guess. He also gave us his usual financial seminar when we were traveling. Did you know that most of the plastic bottles which we put into recycling bins are recycled in China? Most of the US plastic bottles are made out of NEW oil. Something is wrong with this picture. The Chinese buy our recycling and ship it across the ocean and make new bottles.




As usual, Tom Baffney manages to look mischevious even after 12 hours on the bike. He was wasted, though, and I don't mean from drinking. I don't think that I've ever seen him as tired as he was afterwards.


STP gives you an opportunity to see the whole spectrum of bikes and riders. One lady on a recumbent had a custom blue, flowered fabric "fairing" which made her aerodynamic and kept sunburn away.

Another group riding together had pipe cleaner head-dresses sticking out of their helmets.

My favorite, though, was the group with the "All winos, all the time" jerseys. We seemed to go about the same pace, because we kept passing and being passed by them.

Our fellow Walla Walla entrants riding in a separate group had a terrible time with flat tires. Walt Keyes had 4 flats (count 'em four), and Clint had one. About 5 miles from the end when they had the last flat, they were out of tubes and patches. Phil Kress came along and saved the day, donating his spare tube and helping them to get it changed. Hooray for Phil.

We had four 60 year old riders: Jon Bren, Tom Baffney, Phil Kress and Wally Fisher. Phil's daughter had given us a zipped up picnic container with a note: "do not open until the finish." Well, we were all so tired that we had no thought of opening anything except the bedcovers to crash.

We did open the package when we got back to Walla2. It contained a note from Courtney, "If this is what you do for your 60th year, what are you going to do for your 70th - the Ironman?"
In the package was gin, tonic water, lime juice, a lime, plastic cups and instructions for making our celebratory gin and tonics. We managed nicely!