Team Millenium/IRSA
Terry Zmrhal and Tracy McKay
Well, it is Western Oregon, so rain should be expected. It drizzled
on and off, and at one point, we had quite a heavy shower. We
were to do leapfrog support for the first 80 or so miles. We did
a fair amount of roadside cheering in this section. We also got
our first penalty here, as Tracy flew right through a stop sign.
Apparently a few others did the same, but we reminded our riders
to stop constantly throughout the remainder of the race.
This was to be my view of America for a lot of the race!
Although for half of it, there would be this rider in front of
us!
We left rainy western Oregon, as our riders climbed over Bake
Oven Hill into dry eastern Oregon.
It was dryer, but still quite chilly.
The plan for day and night shifts was that the
night crew would find a motel in the afternoon and get some sleep.
The day crew would take over this motel at the shift change. The
tough part was trying to figure out where we would be at the designated
shift change time and to find a motel nearby. Muffy found a motel
in Fossil and relayed this info back to us. Of course excitement
and the fact that they hadn't been awake long meant the night
crew only got cursory rest at this first stop.
Tracy was riding into Fossil, so we drove to the
motel (which was a mile or so off route) for our crew switch,
and sent Terry and his night crew back out to rendezvous with
Tracy for the rider exchange. Michael was in charge of driving
Da Bus initially, and drove Tracy's night crew out to do
their crew shift at the rider exchange which was to happen near
or at the time station.
At this point, we heard rumblings that Chris and
Steve weren't getting along. As a group of strangers thrown together,
there were likely to be crew conflicts. We'd all try to deal with
and rearrange as necessary.
Eventually all the day crew and Michael were at
the motel trying to sleep. Unfortunately the room only had a double
and a twin bed, with 5 folks needing sleep. Michael and I took
the floor with sleeping bags and pillows. It was on this first
night that we discovered Michael has a mighty snore. Where did
I pack my earplugs? I was still too wired to sleep, and had a
restless few hours.
The other unfortunate thing was not coordinating
on race time. Muffy said to rise at 3 AM to head up the road,
which we took as 3AM race time (two hours ahead of local time),
but she was still thinking local time. This left us a little short
on sleep, and had us catching the riders well before shift change.
Most of the crew got a bit more sleep in the van, but I was still
wide awake.
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