California, here I am

It's been a tumultuous couple of days for me. The closing, scheduled for Tuesday morning 8 June at 10:00, almost got pushed back until after my trip. This was not an option, for several reasons, not the least of which being that the seller had all her household belongings packed for travel.

Even a few hours' delay would have killed the deal for me. It was quite the emotional roller-coaster. It did finally happen, though. We closed on the house Tuesday afternoon. It's ours (well we share ownership with the finance company, but...). Jenn and I spent Tuesday night there, and got up far too early (and not early enough) so that we could fly to California Wednesday morning.

Several folks' flights were delayed, so we didn't get as much done Wednesday afternoon as we wanted. I spent some time working with another RV driver on our crew, building her confidence level in the unfamiliar-to-her environment of a vehicle with about four times the shadow size of her normal car. I spent some time later working on the Team Type 1 race wheels--installing Tufo Tubular Rim Tape instead of traditional rim cement and getting the team tires ready.

I spent almost all day building bikes for the race. Several of them desperately needed cleaning, despite team emails to the riders suggesting that they clean their bikes before shipping them for the race. Once the bikes were cleaned, we applied electrical tape panels then reflective tape on the electrical tape (so the reflective tape could be removed later without harming the paint schemes). We replaced a fair number of cables, some chains, a cassette or three, and a tube or two, then added lights as required by RAAM rules.

It took a while to do all this--Team Type 1 racers each have two bikes (road and time-trial styles) and Team Type 2 has road bikes (save for one rider who brought two bikes), for something like twenty-five bikes for three mechanics to build, tune, and kit out for the race.

We had a team meeting later in the evening, and were reminded of the importance of observing several key rules of the race. Some of us were assigned debit cards for specified purchases, we clarified a few other operational issues (showers are inside the RV, instead of a less-than-satisfactory outdoor shower system, for example) and some introductions were made. It's going to be an interesting trip. There will be some photo sessions tomorrow, followed by official inspections over safety issues and a couple of meetings so that RAAM officials can assure themselves that all racers and crew have had opportunity to hear about any changes to the rule book, the route book or anything else they think we need to know.

My mental clock is on some unknown time schedule. It's going on 3:30 EDT as I type this (12:30 in the morning out here), and I'm tired. I'll probably have stuff to edit into this post at some point. I hope I can remember it when I'm in a place to post it...