Long time, Team Zero, Wolf

On my way home from work Friday I took a detour up to exit 131 on I-75.  I was stopping by to see my accountants, a husband/wife team that had a second home down here for 5 or 6 years but still lived primarily in Douglassville in dreary PA.  They are hopefully going to be able to relocate to Florida full time soon.  They have been doing my taxes for years and years.  I met them when I was still working for Entre Computers/Ameridata and was sent out to their home office on a service call.  We always got along well from day one and have maintained a very friendly relationship over the years.

The reason I was heading up there was to pick up an old computer of theirs which was not booting.  Thye were hoping I could at least get some important files off the old box and move them to a new PC they just bought.  They live in a huge beautiful house in one of the many large communities that dot the SW Florida area like freckles.  I had not seen Tom or Sue in a long time, not since I left Pennsylvania for good back in 2000, meaning 14 years had flown by.

I was wondering how it would be reentering the space of someone that hadn’t seen each other for nearly a decade and a half.  The answer was, just fine.  Sue was really amazed, she said I didn’t look any different then when she last saw me.   Of course I know there are lots of small differences in how I look now versus 14 years ago but it was nice to know that as a whole, the wheels haven’t totally fallen off.

I sat down and talked to them for quite awhile, before I knew it I had spent an hour chatting.  Cindy was making dinner so I told them I needed to get going.  I grabbed the two computers and told them I would see what sort of progress I could make on them this week.

On Saturday morning Cindy was outside helping me knock out a number of outdoor to do’s before Randall and his girlfriend were scheduled to show up mid-afternoon.  After handling those chores and doing a quick run to Lowe’s I had to put on my baker’s hat.  Monday was Lily’s birthday and we thought making my kick ass chocolate birthday cake would be a nice surprise.  I have made the cake enough now that it is pretty easy.  Cindy for once actually picked up a few pointers in the cake prep from me, especially when it comes to the icing preparation which is the most important part of the while thing.   Randall and Lily pulled up shortly after I finished mixing the icing and was letting it cool.

This was the first time I met Lily, whom Randall had been dating for several months.  Like Randall she is an avid biker and works only a couple miles away from where he does.  It didn’t take long to get a good vibe about her.

We gave her the brief tour of the property and then just hung out for a little bit.  Cindy and Randall still had to pick up their race packets for Sunday’s triathlon so we figured we would combine that trip with going out to dinner for efficiency sake.  While we are at packet pick up Randall and Cindy spent some time at two of the on site tables, one guy was giving a free neural analysis and the other guy was like a sports rehab guy that was giving free rock tape applications.

Rock tape or stuff like it was first seen in the summer olympics several years ago.  Supposedly, by taping certain areas of your body you can have gains in power, endurance while helping to avoid injury.

I watched the guy apply the tape over Randall’s left knee,  when he was done in sort of looked like an open patella knee brace.  Personally I am quite skeptical if this sort of product offers anything beyond a placebo affect but I can verify that I see it in use more and more often.  The stuff seems to really adhere strongly to the skin.  I would imagine after removing it a few times you may start shaving whatever area you are regularly applying it to.

After heading out we decided to do dinner at Carraba’s despite it being around 6PM on a Saturday night, a day and time that you would NEVER entertain stepping foot into the place during season unless you liked 2 hour waits.  Our gamble paid off, only sitting through a pretty brief 20 or 25 minute wait before our seating buzzer flashed red.

While we were enjoying our drinks at the bar, I took notice that even though we were well within the happy hour time period which goes until 7PM, we weren’t being served 2 for 1 draft beers, a long standing Carrabas tradition.  I figured it was just the latest in a long line of changes Carrabas has made in the last 10 years that have lessened my enjoyment of the place.

I asked the bartender if they stopped the 2 for 1 deal.  He said that instead of doing 2 for 1, they now just charge half price on draft beers during happy hour.  Randall paid for the bar bill so I didn’t run the numbers to verify this.  I can tell you that the glasses they serve you draft beer in are at least a third smaller than they used to be.  The tall but very small diameter glasses are just the latest subtle change to pad the bottom line. The menu at Carrabas seemed to change a lot, they added a ton of new things.  It looked like they almost doubled the amount of entree choices.  I guess that is at least one thing to nudge the needle back in a positive direction.

We didn’t stay up very late on Saturday night due to the triathlon the next morning.  I got the van loaded up with as much as I could Saturday night so we could just jump in and roll by 4:45 am the next morning.  The van had Randall’s bike and accessories and the running club’s PA system, speaker stand and bull horn to be used at the race.

The 4:15 alarm was not welcomed but I did somehow wake up on my own a minute or two before it actually went off.  I had my customary Pop Tart breakfast and then followed up with my customary bathroom to trip to make sure the tank is empty.  This is one of the parts of being a race participant that I really dislike.  I fear the idea of being in the middle of a race and having some sort of bathroom emergency pop up.  I ALWAYS make sure to get things nailed down before leaving the house.  Sure, once I get on site I will need to take a leak once or twice but I absolutely do NOT want to have to deal with anything else once I walk out the door of my house.

Well despite attending to this need at home, shortly after getting on site I felt this need reenter my body.  I was not happy.  I can only attribute this to the additional anxiety of participating in my first event in over a year, even though my role only required a little over 10 minutes of total work.  Thankfully this race is based out of a hotel so I didn’t have to resort to port-o-potties but I still was very unhappy that my digestive system was giving me additional overhead to deal with.

As I was a couple miles from the hotel I had something else flash into my head that gave me additional distress.  Even though I remembered to bring the portable PA system and speaker stand which was to be used to start the race, I forgot to grab the Ziploc bag I have in one of the crates which includes the accessories for the set up, most importantly the microphone.  Without a mic the system was a paperweight.

I did not immediately panic, I though that I could utilize the mic from the large PA system that the club uses for the award ceremonies.  Shortly after getting on site I went down to the beach to grab the mic, hoping to be able to cover up my lack of planning.  When I got down there I saw the speakers and main box for the system but no cables used to connect it all together, rendering this system useless as well.

I immediately contacted the race director and several people in the club that dropped the PA system off for use.  The initial info I got was the cables and mic were left with the system in the conference room where early packet pick up was held.  I fast walked up to the hotel and walked around the area looking under tables to see if the red and black bag containing the cables was left behind.  The search came up empty.  I was starting to get very worried.  Imagine if we had no cables for either PA system, shit.

I made another call to the race director and described what the bag looked like.  A light bulb went on.  She said she had the bag, it was in her hotel room.  Evidently it was given to her because nobody knew what was inside of it.  Whew, crisis averted.  I met up with her and grabbed the bag, taking it down to the finish line.  I dumped the stuff on the table, interested in grabbing the mic to run it up to the start line.  As soon as I did the hope fo covering up my mistake vanished.  The connector the mic for the big sound system is not compatible with what my portable rig uses, damn it!  That meant for the start of the waves we were going to have to use the less powerful bull horn I brought along.  I was pissed at myself for not bringing all the stuff I needed.

So all that was left was to wait for the race to start.  Relay teams were in wave 2, starting two minutes after the first wave.  Cindy was nervous as she always is before every race.  She was worried she would let us down if she didn’t run fast enough.  I assured her no matter what time she ran it didn’t matter, we weren’t there to establish any world records.  After she took off running I returned the worthless portable PA system to the van before heading to the transition area to meet up with Randall.

They have very specific rules when it comes to handing off the timing device between team members during each transition.  There is a box on the ground defined by tape where the next leg of the team must stand.  The chip hand off has to happen inside that box.  We spotted Cindy come running into the area right around the 25 minute mark (24:35 official time).  She was exhausted, almost to the point of delirium.  Randall unstrapped the timing strap from her leg, slapped it on his and then grabbed his bike and was off.  Both Cindy and I expected Randall to make short work of the less than 10 mile bike course which he did, averaging close to 21 mph for the ride.

I had positioned myself in the chip hand off area a few minutes ahead of Randall’s return.  I had stripped down to my tri suit bottoms, had my ear plugs in, sneakers on and my goggles up on my forehead.  I elected to wear sneakers to make my roughly 1/4 mile run to the beach faster since it goes over a large section of hard surfaces and road.  After getting to the beach I could quickly strip the sneakers and head into the water.

Randall came steaming back into the transition area, threw his bike on the rack and came over to me so I could grab the chip.  I affixed the strap to my right leg and was off and running.  Since I got to skip the first two events I had an unfair advantage over the other participants I was passing on the way to the beach.  I was moving pretty quickly for me, enough that I was breathing heavy when I finally hit the sand.  After quickly removing my sneakers and pulling my goggles down I was into the water.

Even though the water wasn’t very deep for quite awhile, I didn’t waste much time before getting horizontal and swimming since you can always swim through water faster than you can trudge through it.  I modified my normally very deep stroke depth so I wasn’t hitting the bottom.  It didn’t take long till my first bump in the road came up.  My left goggle evidently did not have a good seal and filled up with salt water, enveloping my eye in a constant stinging misery.  I determined that although it was uncomfortable, it wasn’t worth my stopping and losing time to correct it.  I kept stroking.

I really hate swimming in open water, I hate swimming in open water with a bunch of people even more.  Throughout the swim I was dealing with bumping into people, people bumping into me and getting cut off several times.  I never really felt comfortable during the swim.  My pace was steady but not fast by any means.  Entering the water after running at a brisk pace seemed to put me at an oxygen deficit that I never really recovered from.  Plus swimming in a lap pool where you are pushing off the opposing wall every 30 seconds or so does not prepare you for open water swimming where it’s one long slog with nothing to push off of.  The 1/4 mile C in the gulf water felt like double that in a pool.

Coming back in I tried to swim as much as I could before emerging from the water to jog in the final few yards.  As soon as I stood up I felt disoriented and unbalanced, almost falling to my right side.  I caught myself and trudged up the beach and across the blue timing finish mats, sucking major wind.  I felt like I worked harder than I should have to considering I was only in the water for less than 10 minutes. Randall, Cindy and Lily all cheered my arrival from the water and joined me in collecting our race finisher medals.  I didn’t talk much until my breathing had slowed down after chugging about a half bottle of water.

I glanced at the race clock seeing it was 1:06 something when I finished, meaning our finish time was somewhere less than 1:05 because of our delayed wave start.  1:05 was the goal Randall, Cindy and I threw out there loosely before the race so to beat that was cool.  After emerging from the water I wanted to quickly exit the throng of people gathered around the finish chute, talking to herds of people is something I just don’t do well.  Cindy and I grabbed our stuff from transition while Randall and Lily snagged some food.  We returned and set up a blanket on the lawn to hang out.

In the more open setting I exchanged race stories with many of my friends from our local athletic community.  I almost felt dishonest claiming myself as a real race participant having only done the short swim.  The results for this race have always been slow to be posted, this year was the worst example of that to date.  It took forever for team results to start being posted and when they finally were it was only the cumulative time that was posted.  We managed to place 4th in the the mixed gender team division, meaning we actually received an award, which were being handed out to the top 5 in each category.  However even though we knew our finish place, the awards ceremony did not start until much, much later.  By this time it was hot and humid as hell, the main courtyard had no shade.  We retreated to a perimeter area to wait under some palm trees.

Evidently there were some scoring errors/omissions that were rather big, affecting the awards.  Being a timer myself I have had my feet to the fire like this so I did sympathize, however that sympathy eventually ran out when I just got sick and tired of waiting.  When the awards did finally start, they went at a pace that was too slow considering how many needed to be handed out.  To put the icing on the cake the team divisions awards were the last to be handed out.

The three of us went up to receive our awards, something I don’t know that any of us expected to receive before the day started.  The awards and the finisher medals that were handed out were not very impressive at all, especially considering the entry fee cost for the event.  Everyone, no matter 1st place or 5th got an identical frame with what looked to be a two sided post card in the center of it that just has the race name and logo.  There was nothing to designate it’s significance.  The finisher medal was tiny and noticeably smaller/cheaper than the events prior years medals.  As someone who is involved with putting on races, these sort of shortcuts stand out like a sore thumb to me.  Since this is a for profit race, these are clear moves to pad the bottom line.

Because of the turtle slow results/awards we did not get off site until shortly before noon, pretty insane for a race that started at 7:30 AM.  We piled in the van, glad to get out of the sun.  The Dunkin Donuts coffee we picked up on the way home felt good going down and helped soothe my inner rumblings about waiting around for 3 hours.

When we got back to the house everyone was anxious to hop in the shower before eating lunch to wash off the sweat, sand, and in my case, salt water off of them.  Cindy made us all a nice lunch that we enjoyed while catching one of the endless home improvement shows on HGTV.  After eating it didn’t take long for the early wake up call to mix in with the digesting food to bring on some extreme drowsiness.  Cindy and I retired for a nap, Randall and Lily followed suit.  We all didn’t emerge from the bedrooms until after 5pm.

I began looking online for the full event results to be posted.  They were nowhere to be found.  Even the cumulative times that we saw on site were not posted.  Again, my race timing background and efforts to make times available online nearly instantly make this sort of delay really annoying.  The results didn’t become available until early this morning.  If you want to see our team results you can look here.

Last night we all just relaxed except Cindy who was slaving in the kitchen making shrimp risotto.  We enjoyed it while watching my latest Netflix rental, Wolf of Wall Street.  I had heard a lot of things about this movie ahead of time, mostly bad.  The negative commentary however was focused on the sex, nudity, and the incredible amount of times the F word is used in the film.  I actually went into the movie thinking I wouldn’t come away with an overall positive view of the film.  Well I was very wrong.

Yes the movie had a ton of graphic sex scenes and adult language but for whatever reason it all seemed totally appropriate.  Supposedly the film is based on a true life story.  I have to assume a ton of artistic license was taken, I can hardly believe that any human being could live a life of excess to this degree.  If it is more or less true all I can say is wow.  I thought the acting in the movie was nothing short of brilliant.  Even though it was VERY long,  I had no issues with it.  If anything it could have kept on going. It was just the type of film that kept your attention non-stop.  If you are a bible thumping,  nudity hating, thin lipped prude, don’t even think about renting this movie for a second, you may go straight to hell.  Everyone else, A rating, see it.

After the movie I watched the end of the 3rd period of the Blackhawks – LA Kings game.  Lily is from Chicago and a big sports fan.  I retired to bed when the game was 4/4 at the end of regulation.  Unfortunately for her the Kings won the game in OT, advancing to the Stanley Cup finals.

I was up and out this morning before Randall and Lily got up.  Cindy is still off today so they are hanging out a bit until heading back eastward.  It was nice meeting Randall’s new girl, we loosely threw around plans for them to return for us to do some type of team arrangement for the Marco Island triathlon in the fall.

I have a busy week ahead which will be wrapped up with my picking up the dogs for another extended visit while Ali is in Costa Rica.