Posted by Victor Birch on September 16, 2007 at 23:48:03:
Here are a few lines from a summary of our trip.
THE AWAKENING
"In the middle of my first leg, I began to think that we had overestimated our abilities and underestimated the course. We ran hills in Mobile. They did not prepare us for the Blue Ridge Mountains."
THE CRISIS
"Back at the hotel lobby, I broke out the laptop to plot a course on Mapquest to exchange point 25 for our final legs. The highways on Mapquest did not match the highways on the map provided by the relay officials. I called Timmy to see if he had a better map. He asked me where we were and I told him that we were at the hotel in Boone. Timmy began to use language that I cannot print here and repeatedly say, “It’s over, you ain’t gonna make it”. He informed me that Darrin was next up and he only had a 2 mile run down hill (which he did under 11 minutes)."
THE SOLUTION
"I began running through the hotel banging on the girls hotel room and charging into the guys’ room (forgetting that the 2 Valeries had made it there) and scaring the daylights out of them. We rapidly piled into the minivan and took off. Fortunately, I was driving and my years of minivan driving experience paid off. Along the way, there was rapid acceleration, rapid deceleration, hairpin turns, screeching of tires and running of red lights. There were many sarcastic comments such as, “don’t pay attention to that caution sign that doesn’t apply to us” and “Those speed limit signs are for passenger cars. We’re in a minivan put the pedal to the metal”. There were some sincere remarks too such as “maybe I SHOULD have purchased the insurance on this rental” and “Victor, if a deer steps in front of us we’ll all come out better if you just plow over it, don’t brake”. To make a long story short, that retrace to the hotel costs us between 35 to 50 minutes."
The rest of the story should be in next month's Pace Letter.