RAAM heats up

Solo RAAM leader board

Team RAAM leader board

Jenn's parents and I drove up to Bloomington to surprise her during the team's squad changeover. We arrived around 0330, and the team RVs were on site, as was the utility van Jenn has been co-driving a good part of the week. Crew members were moving around, doing their thing, save for a few who were getting some much-needed shut-eye. Jenn was part of that last little group.

A few minutes after we arrived, the team rotation van arrived. Five or ten minutes later, the racer of the moment and the chase car arrived, to much applause. His family was gathered on the sidewalk near the entrance to the time station, which had to be a morale booster for him.

The applause woke Jenn, and I was ready. I watched her stirring around, and moved so that I was partly hidden by the front roof pillar of her van. By the time she opened the door, I was almost in the door zone and greeted her with a big hug--a surprise for her, especially since she had just awakened. She introduced her parents and me to everyone on the team and crew--some more than once in her excitement that we were there.

As one would expect, they have become a very tightly-knit crew over the last several days. This is to be expected, given the intensity and duration of the event, but it's still fun to see, even from the outside. It was also fun to watch the coreography in the set-up and break-down of the equipment used for feeding the team, allowing them to shower a bit, and so on (They don't want to use the lavatory in the RV, as they would then have to dump the tank, which takes too much time).

Jenn's teammates and crewmates appreciated our visit. I'm glad we went.

And I'm flying up to watch their finish tomorrow. Their ETA was something like 0400 Sunday at one point, but has moved up to 0100 Sunday, then 2100 Saturday, after a few fast legs of the journey. They may even beat that ETA, although I suspect the mountainous terrain of western Maryland will make that difficult.