MS-150 Chronicles 2010 - Part 1

As many of you know, I've inflicted my account of the MS-150 weekend charity bike ride from Houston to Austin on my friends and family for several years now. Sorry to say, this year will be no different!

PRELUDE

It's April 3rd, two weeks before the Ride, and all is well. My bike is checked out, and the training rides with friends Shawn and Dave have got me road-bike ready (props to Northwest Cycle for their excellent rides from Zube Park in Hockley, an easy 15 minute drive from 290 and Beltway 8). I decide to do the CychoHash ride that takes place the first Saturday of every month. It's the bicycle version of Hashing, which is to say a cross-country jaunt of sorts, and a trail marked with flour. I get in about 28 miles with a bunch of friends, and we end up at a park on Lake Houston. After some refreshments and general foolishness, I'm thinking to myself: "What a great opportunity for a refreshing swim". My third step into the water, I impale my left heel on something. I pick up my foot, and firmly attached is a crab, and not a small one. It's about double the width of my foot and nearly as long, with a stalagmite about an inch long sticking in my foot. I fling him off and hobble out of the water. "I just stepped on a crab", I tell my friends. A couple of them say "there are no crabs in Lake Houston". Really? Tell that to the crab.

I socialize for a couple more hours, and the foot seems OK. I head on home, and by Saturday night it starts to swell. By Sunday, it's a balloon, and I'm on crutches. Monday morning, I call my doctor's office, a call I have come to dread. Over the past few years, his Screener has developed to a fine art the practice of scheduling your visit for the convenience of the doctor, nurses, insurance lady, the Screener herself, a bevy of complete strangers, and for all I know, Jarod The Subway Guy. You as the patient, however, are somewhat lower on the old Priority Tree. Poison Ivy? "The doctor can see you next Tuesday". Head cold? "The doctor can see you next Tuesday". Stomach pains? "If your stool isn't bloody, the doctor can see you next Tuesday". Secondary infection in chest due to Head Cold not treated promptly? "Tuesday".

I've learned over the years, though, to describe my symptoms to The Screener in such a way as to score an appointment that doesn't require me to put a Reminder on my frigging Outlook Calendar, but even that has been hit and miss. See, this girl is a pro. She's heard it all, and if I oversell the symptoms, she pulls out the heavy artillery and tells me: "You need to go to the emergency room". True story.

I'm ready for her this time, though: I quickly describe my symptoms and then declare that I can be there in 30 minutes. The Assumptive Close (as they call it in Sales) takes her off her game, she stumbles for a moment, quickly recovers and tells me that "the earliest the doctor can see you is 3:30". Score. Not only is my appointment in the same week, but it's on the same day! I gimp in that afternoon, Doc looks at my wound, prescribes two antibiotics and pain medication, and I'm out of there, but not before he says "I didn't think there were any crabs in Lake Houston". I end up being on crutches until two days before the MS-150, but discover that I can ride a bike relatively pain-free, so I'm good to go. And Crutches being a regular ice breaker, conversation-wise speaking, I'm asked repeatedly by friends, acquaintances and even the checkout girl at Krogers "what happened to your foot"? I soon discover that telling the truth does me no good at all. None of them believe there are any crabs in Lake Houston.

In year's past, I've frequently written about my travails in getting the registration folks that organize the MS ride to correctly process my application, with the end result being that when I would go to packet pickup in the days before the Ride, they would have no record of a Peter R. Smith, or try to convince me that I was actually Peter J. Smith from Pasadena. No such problem this year. I was in and out in of packet pickup in record time, my bag full of goodies and rider number 7024 in hand. But as fate would have it, one problem was replaced with another, albeit that this one affected everybody.

It's very early Saturday, April 17th, and Sharon is driving me to the start, heading south on Eldridge to the new (temporary) starting point at the Omni Hotel. Seems that the regular starting point at Tully Stadium has some kind of construction going on. Three miles before we get to the Omni, the cops divert all traffic off of Eldridge heading west towards Highway 6, then south to I-10, then East to Dairy Ashford, then west on I-10, then East on I-10 again, and finally North on some sidestreet that will supposedly get us close to the Continental Team.

The starting point was at Eldridge and Dairy Ashford. Continental's team truck for luggage was located in the parking lot at - you guessed it - Eldridge and Dairy Ashford. Out of time and options, Sharon dropped me off as close to the start as we could get, and I biked towards the starting gate with several dozen others. Since Sharon was driving up to meet me in LaGrange later in the day, she ended up hauling my luggage - all forty pounds of it - to LaGrange. At least I had a Fallback. Various other riders were not so lucky.

As we were working our way towards the start, I heard what I thought was somebody singing the national anthem. I couldn't be sure, though, since the rendition was, how shall we say, unique? Now, maybe the weather and acoustics were playing some tricks on us, but this version seemed to be rendered by an older gent who sounded - not to be unkind - like a drunken Scotsman who mistook his cat for a set of Bagpipes (Insert Mental Image here). The high notes were indescribable, and when he hit "and the land uh-huv the Free-heeeee!", it spooked Cyclists, Motorists and stray dogs alike, with several near-accidents as a result.

In reply, a coyote howled in the distance.

Stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3!