MS-150 Chronicles 2010 - Part 3

SUNDAY MORNING:

It's 4:30 a.m., and just as promised, Continental rolls out their version of Reveille, turning the lights on at the service end of their huge tent, accompanied by the Volunteers (who had been up since 2:30 a.m. prepping breakfast), moving into the tent, mixing Gatorade and doing the dozen other things Volunteers do to make the Riders' lives easier. Progressively, the lights rolled on throughout the Tent, with a dozen or so folks covering their heads or burying them into their sleeping bags, determined to forestall the inevitable approach of dawn.

From the great height of his velour-covered Luxaire Power Inflatable Air Mattress (with 144 individual air pockets to ensure a good night's sleep), my Bunk Mate to the left with the earplugs (apparently designed to block out the sound of his own snoring) complained that he "slept like crap", a sentiment echoed by my Bunk Mate to the right, also from the lofty heights of his cushy air mattress. I offered to check under their mattresses for a pea, but neither of them got the cultural reference. In two minutes flat I had my sleeping bag rolled up and stowed in my luggage, as the whine of a dozen small electric motors being used to deflate air mattresses filled the tent, no doubt to the great distress of those doggedly trying to sleep in, not to mention the sensibilities of those who worry about the carbon footprint of a device as controversial as an air mattress deflator motor.

Maybe the government could come up with a wind-powered version, with the appropriate subsidies, of course.

In quick order I threw on my bike togs, brushed my teeth and prepped my bike. The temperature felt like it was in the mid-fifties, but that could have been the 100% humidity. Suffice to say it was chill, and with the exception of the roads, the campground was a muddy bog.

Over the years I have enjoyed the traditional MS-150 pancake orgy early Sunday morning, where local volunteers turn out a Google of pancakes, producing the batter in containers that - I kid you not - look exactly like small cement mixers. The cooks are an interesting mix of young and old: hulking high school boys to muscle the 50 lb sacks of flour, the older folks flipping flapjacks and filling the trays, and teenage girls taking the trays out to the serving area. It is a machine of efficiency, and I'd guess they serve close to half of the 11,000 or so Riders. And what a treat it is to step inside the kitchen. There's just nothing like walking through a building with the smell of hundreds of pancakes cooking to make you forget about your own aches and pains.

I was always a little concerned about those cement mixers, though. I mean, assuming they're dual use, how clean could they really get them? Reminds me of another disturbing aspect of MS-150's past, where the huge tankers that supplied water to the mobile showers had "Roto-Rooter" emblazoned on the side. As to the cement mixers at Breakfast, I was prepared to rationalize whatever amount of concrete I was ingesting, having recently read that cigarette manufacturers now include concrete in my Marlboro Lights. Bizarre but true, per the anti-smoking Fascisti, who assure me it's so mostly because they say so, the same indisputable argument they use to document the 470 other known hazardous chemicals and carcinogens that Big Cig supposedly pumps into my Smokes along with the concrete, purely out of spite. I suspect this is more of the same rationale that allows people to be absolutely certain that Global Warming exists and is caused by people, but most particularly cigarette smokers.

Not that I'm saying that cigarettes are not harmful, mind you, but I fully expect to read in the coming months that cigarettes will also be discovered to contain the effluent from chemical plants, waste dump methane, depleted uranium, that silvery scratch-off lottery ticket coating and Soylent Green, whereafter somebody who looks like Charleston Heston will run through the streets shouting: "People!........cigarettes are made from peeeeople!"

But I digress.

Either way, if I can endure a little concrete in my cigarette, I guess I can handle a little bit in my pancakes, and the pancake line is always open by 4:30 a.m. so I can get in line early. As I finish stowing my gear, though, I discover that Continental has breakfast ready by 4:45 a.m., so I won't even need to hazard the LaGrange breakfast line. Mere steps away is a veritable banquet, including Taquitos with all the trimmings, great coffee, orange juice and Danish. I'm third in line and chow down. There doesn't appear to be any organized plan for the Team to assemble en masse for Sunday's start, so I mosey over to the Starting Gate around 5:15 in my Road Runner bike jersey, and there's already about 100 people in line.

Within minutes it starts to rain, and for the next hour it varies from a downpour to a drizzle, the Riders either rolling up the collars of their rain gear, running for shelter, or simply hunkering in place and getting thoroughly soaked, knowing full well that this too shall pass. When it really started coming down, one guy rushed into the single Port-a-John conveniently located at the start. After about five minutes, the coffee started working on me, so I walked over to wait my turn to use the facilities. A few more minutes passed, and I saw that a line had formed behind me, with a few of the Riders shifting their weight from one foot to the other, a sure sign of their urgency. After a few more minutes, I knocked on the door. It immediately popped open and the first guy asks "do you need to use this?".

He was using the single toilet available to 500 Riders as his personal rain shelter. You can't make this stuff up.

In several past posts, I have complained about the Sunday Morning Line Cutters; you know who I'm talking about: the people (almost all men) who sleep in until just before the Start, and then try to force their way to the front of the line on some bullshit premise or another, such as "my team is up front, we have to start together". I am proud to report that not one of them has ever gotten past me, but this year, I encountered a whole new scam. Around 6:45 a.m., one slightly overweight guy came blustering up on the right shoulder, demanding that all the riders that had been sitting there patiently since 5:15 a.m. "shove over on the left, dammit, shove over on the left!". "Why?", somebody asked. "Because the right two lanes are reserved for riders taking the Express Lunch Route, and the left two lanes are reserved for riders taking the Challenge Route! We need to make room for the Express Lunch Route!". This time I didn't even need to raise my voice. Several dozen heads of the people around him who had endured 50 degree temperatures and steady rain for the prior 1.75 hours swung in his direction, looked at him briefly, then ignored him.

He grumbled over to the right shoulder, looking sullen, and no doubt composing a sharp memo to the Ride Committee, or whatever portion of the MS-150 bureaucracy that was devoted to the special needs of self-appointed Entitlement Scrounges. Not that I'm besmirching Express Lunch Route Riders. Truth be told, any route that promises to limit your saddle time whilst simultaneously getting you to Lunch early looks mighty attractive at Dark Thirty Sunday morning, the day after riding 100 miles.

This reminds me that a handful of our friends went Cowboy and did the entire Houston to Austin route on Saturday, with another friend leapfrogging in a car to provide support, food and fluids along the 75 mile second leg from LaGrange to Austin. I wonder how they did? I also wonder what ten kinds of crazy you have to be to venture 175 miles in one day, with no traffic cops to separate you from the traffic? The relentlessly cheerful MC at the Start Line interrupted my meditation, announcing over the PA system that we were ready to go. As we moved forward, I thought: it takes all kinds to make this Ride the unique thing it is, and maybe they're not so crazy.

After all, they avoided standing in the cold and wet for 2 hours on Sunday morning.