Jan 25, 09:54 PM by Steve | And There Was a Race Too
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report
Things went from bad, to worse, to maybe not so horrible. The first stage time trial of the Southern Nevada was the least interesting thing that happened today…
Faced with a long drive out to Nevada, just outside of Las Vegas, the plan was to pick up Chester at 6am. That was the plan anyway. I should have known the day would not go our way when we actually left our house on time. We never leave on time, so something would have to go wrong to make up for it. And wrong it did.
First, I realized I left all the memory cards at home, after picking Chester up. So back home and grab the cards and go again. Now about 20 minutes behind schedule we were off. With a quick stop to grab a bite to eat from Starbucks, of course.
Next, I realized in Oxnard that I shouldn’t be in Oxnard. Really, nobody should every have to be in Oxnard, but specifically we were supposed to take the 126, so off at the next exit, wait at the longest light in the universe, and backtrack north to the 126. Another 10 minutes behind schedule.
Then, while on the 126 it started raining heavily, which slowed things down. Unfortunately, it left a lot of water on the roads and while on the 5, in Valencia, I hit some standing water and spun out. Did a full 360. Then a 180. Then hit the guardrail. And slid down the guardrail. An officer that was behind us called the CHP and blocked traffic for us. The CHP stopped the traffic so that we could limp to the opposite shoulder and exit off the freeway. Major props to the CHP—they were very helpful and even lent us a jack to use, since I seem to have misplaced mine.
I was pleasantly suprised that the damage was far less severe than I had expected. The right rear was totally shredded and half the bumper and tail light where gone, but the wheelwell was intact and thanks to the extravagance that is luxury automobiles, I happen to have a full size spare on identically expensive alloy rims. So other than the fact that half of the rear of my car is gone, you wouldn’t know it by looking at the wheel!
Ok ok, so now things couldn’t possibly get worse, could they? I mean, we were delayed an hour now but had budgeted some stops in, so as long as nothing else went wrong we should still make it to the race in plenty of time. Alas, fate was against us today, and when we reached Ridgecrest I knew that something was terribly wrong. A quick call to Gary, and a quicker awarding of the dumbass of the year award for not having a map or atlas with us, we were given alternative routing and told that if we missed it this time, there was no hope.
We made a quick pit stop for gas, food and bathroom at the junction of the 395 & 56, then continued on to Barstow and the 15 North. A few hours later, another call to Gary… Jason answered:
Chester: So it was the 15 South right? Are we supposed to be in San Bernadino?
Gary (background): *&!%$
Chester: Haha, just kidding, we just passed Baker…
My car has a really neat feature, where you can enter a distance and it counts down for you as well as calculate the estimated arrival time. We watched the estimate to Las Vegas (the race was about 20 miles further) start at 2:50 and gradually tick down to 2:00, then 1:50, before settling around 1:45. I would feel better getting that under 1:40, so I pushed the speed a little faster. I decline to state on a public forum how fast we were actually going, but lets just say we hit Vegas at 1:38. Traffic through was a little slow due to today’s fire in the Monte Carlo, but not too bad and we eventually arrived at 2:00 sharp. Chester, who had already changed in the back while we were driving popped out, signed in, had about 5 minutes to warm up and then was off.
I took care of a few things, had a few extra minutes to warm up and then went off too. How did we do? Ah, who cares… at least we got there.
Pictures of the car…please?
— anon at Jan 26, 09:06 AMWas this in the Mini?
— bill at Jan 27, 08:38 AMNo, the 740
— Steve at Jan 28, 12:38 AM