Alarm goes off: 4:45AM, start of my day as a CRW roadie. Not roadie as in road biker, but roadie as in the Jackson Browne song. Today I volunteer at the CRW century.
Susan and I have been volunteering for the century for many years. Susan will usually arrange the water stops and help out at one. I do preregistration, help arrow, and sometimes sweep the ride. I had mostly given up sweeping, since this got me back really late, and Susan, who has spent most of the day at a water stop, had to wait a couple of hours more for me. But Susan was out of town for this event, and they seemed to need sweeps, so I signed up to sweep the century. I also arranged to ride over with Don Blake who was bringing all the chairs and tables, water bottles, and miscellaneous century equipment. I’d get a ride and could also be of some use loading and unloading.
What didn’t dawn on me right off was that the century roadies get up quite early in the morning. The first riders are milling around somewhere in the 6:30 range, so we have to be set up by then. No lounging in bed sucking down coffee and reading the paper today. Don arrived promptly at 5:15 and we were setting up the show by 6.
It rained overnight, but the forecast was for it to clear, and it had stopped by the time we were setting up. In my naivete, I believed the weather forecasters, and I distinctly remember saying to several people “yes, it’s kind of overcast, but it’s going to be a perfect day for a century.” That was the kiss of death.
Being a century sweep means starting the ride late enough so that you will pass the stragglers when they might be getting into trouble and can assess if they’re liable to make it. In cases of real distress, we have a cell phone that we can call the mother ship for a rescue. So I had plenty of time to chat with the other volunteers, drink coffee, etc. Sometime after the start of the shorter rides, we took off. Within about 1/2 mile it has started raining. Within a mile, I had a flat tire. This did not augur well for the rest of the day.
One of my favorite scenes from the movie “Young Frankenstein” is when Dr. F. and Igor are digging up a grave in the dead of night. Dr. F. is bemoaning the fact that his fine medical career has been reduced to this, digging up dead people with an uppity hunchback. Igor replies “Could be worse, could be raining” and we hear an immediate thunderclap. In our situation it was already raining but it could indeed be worse. The rain continued, and then it started to get cold. I was wearing jersey, shorts, and a windbreaker, and that was all I had. I had taken out my emergency plastic bag raingear from my seat bag because I wanted to make room for the windbreaker, which I would take off when the weather cleared. Needless to say, that never happened.
So I’m riding along dicing with hypothermia and thinking how embarrassing it would be if a century sweep became one of the sweepees. I usually chow down on a sandwich at the first water stop, but I realized if I stopped for any length of time, all body warmth from riding would be gone, and I would really freeze. So I scarfed down a Snickers bar (could hardly move my fingers to open the wrapper) and took off. It was 1:00pm.
The ride started to take on a surrealistic nature. It was a lot like swimming, there’d be a warm spot, and I would begin to think I would survive, then into a cold spot, and I was sure I was going to die. But by the time we hit the second water stop, it had actually stopped raining. No sweepees, the crew was waiting for us to close up shop. It was 3:00pm.
I think we finally rolled in somewhere around 5. We passed only a few riders, all within a mile or two of the finish, so our sweep detail required no work.
I was looking forward to a nice sandwich, but when we arrived, all that was left were four pieces of provolone cheese (for which I would have fought anyone to the death).
Then we hung around until we were sure everyone was in, started packing up the tables, chairs, left over food. Then Don and I drove over to his church to unload the tables and chairs, and he dropped me off. After some minimal unpacking -- getting all the wet things exposed to dry air so they didn’t become a mound of festering mold, I was ready to relax. By the time I finally had a large alcoholic beverage in front of me, it was 7:45PM -- just 15 hours since the beginning of the adventure. Dinner? Well, I had the spoils of the century, a leftover jar of pretzels and a tub of peanut butter. Life is good.
(It was a long day for me, but it was only one day, and it gave me some appreciation for volunteers like Anne-Marie and Melinda who devote their whole day for each and every century)
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