Happiness and Heckling

The weekend was packed full of fun and frivolity. I kicked off with Friday night spent enjoying the arts festival with Miranda and Corley before heading down to the longest yard to enjoy some food and beverage with the shop guys as a thanks for working the triathlon. Saturday found us up and at 'em for a quick stop at Gray's lake to enjoy story time with the family before heading off to my prescribed volunteerism at the tri. Fuller and I worked the wheel pit for the pro athletes races setting up on 35th and Grand at the far end turn around. After a bit of convincing the various police and volunteers that we really were supposed to be there, we finally got things set up and began the afternoon of waiting around. Luckily we had a few additional revelers stop by to keep things lively.

It was pretty awesome watching the various packs of pro men and women fly by us as we cheered them all on. Trading a few hours of easy work was well worth the front row access we had. About the only regret is that the single request for help we fielded (a woman needing a 4mm allen wrench) had to be left unanswered as we had only brought wheels and no tools. From then, it was time to pack up and hopefully get some relaxation in before the evening activities commenced.

Rumors about a gravel overnighter started flying around a week or two back. It seems the loose plan was to start around 10 in the evening, ride enough gravel to last through the night and then end up heckling the tri people somewhere on course. Sounds like a great plan to me.

Kyle Sedore, Oakley Rob, Kurt Benson, Fuller, Joe from BW West, and myself took off from Legends on 60th and Ashworth and the crack of dark Saturday night which equates to roughly 10:20 PM after some food and liquid fueling. Heading west on EP True we went baja style riding through the dead end past Jordan Creek and eventually worked our way down to Booneville road and over to Booneville proper by 11. We briefly debated the first beer stop of the evening, but eventually bypassed the Waveland in favor of heading to the Cumming Tap for our first round of the evening. We hit the tap somewhere need midnight and split a pitcher between us while Kurt also thought it was necessary to bolster our spirits with a round of Red Bulls as well. Most everyone chugged theirs down, but I wisely packed away that gem for a later pick me up.

From Cumming we decided to try for last call in Martensdale. A mile or so out of town we had our first flat of the evening on Joe’s trusty La Cruz. Now here’s how you can tell you’re in Iowa. Here we were at 1ish in the morning, a group of 6 guys standing around working on a bike and 2 separate cars happened to roll by, both checking to make sure we were good to go and offering to shine their headlights on the situation to help. We got the flat repaired in time to make last call.

After another pitcher split, we headed back from whence we came. Somewhere about halfway back to Cumming we decided to stop and break out some food. I think we were all feeling a bit punchy at the time as the stop also included a rousing game of duck-duck goose played in the midst of the gravel road in the wee hours of Sunday morning. We wound our way back through the Booneville loop and made our final break at the Waveland west where we enjoyed their great hospitality. Of course they weren’t actually open at 4 in the morning (who knew?), but we did find the patio furniture to be quite inviting. After a bit more snacking on processed meat sticks aka Slim Jim’s, we headed back towards town only to stop for the 2nd flat of the evening.

Rather than run through the bigger rollers on Booneville road, we opted to head back out to Grand and roll it double file paceline style clear down to Raccoon River Park to let the heckling and shenanigans begin for the Hy-Vee Tri. We actually started off with some varying congratulations to friends at the swim start where roughly 1 billion people were milling about.

From there we headed up to heckler's hill which ended up being just west of 35th street going up Grand. We scoped out our spot in time to head off to Kum and Go/McD's for food and supplies aka beer. Apparently there is some conspiracy going on to keep people from thoroughly enjoying themselves on Sunday mornings as beer sales don't start until 8 AM. Alas, we were relegated to various energy drinks which, at that point, probably wasn't a bad call. When we got back to our spot, Kyle showed us all how to properly get in the spirit of heckling.

All told, I showed 68 miles and change with 3000’ of climbing for our overnighter along with more laughing, fun, and folly than I can remember having for a long time. One punctuation to the evening was experiencing flying down the various hills at 25+ mph in the pitch of night which was thrilling and terrifying at the same time. I finally rolled back home and to bed around 10:30 after having eclipsed the 26th hour of awake time before dropping like a ton of bricks for a few hours nap.