Waking up at 4 AM sucks. Just ask Kim. I got to go back to bed! Kim, Rachel, Dylan and Todd took my forester up the mountain for the first few legs of ski to sea. Laura, Kaia and I went back to sleep. I dropped Laura and Kaia off at the canoe point and drove Rachel’s car to where I would spend a LONG time waiting to mountain bike. My parents showed up and we went to hang out near the river where the canoers would be coming in. They cheered for all the teams running up the hill carrying their canoes. Coincidentally, we ended up meeting Aspen, a guy who says he is dating Laura. Laura denies it, but she denies ever dating any guy really.
Kim did downhill on a snowboard, Rachel x-country ski, Todd road bike and poor Dylan ran 9 miles downhill and got heat stroke. My whole team showed up at the mountain bike site before Kaia and Laura did in the canoe. They had a pretty slow time, but thankfully they made it so that I had enough time to go without being disqualified. I think I did pretty well on my mountain bike leg. It was about half on the road so it wasn’t really much of a mountain bike course. The hardest part was a 10 minute run through a sandy beach. I handed off to Steven, a guy I had never met, and he took off to kayak.
We all waited at the end where Laura’s parents showed up. Steven ran up and rang a bell to end the race. Our total time was somewhere above 6 hours while the first place team was under 3. Crazy people.
A bunch of us went out to dinner for some really good Italian food at D’Anna’s in Bellingham, and afterwards Dylan got Kim and I some free ice cream at the shop next door. We said out goodbyes to our team, especially Laura who is moving to the east coast to work on a ship for a few months.
What a fun time with a great group of people! My goal was not to be last, and after wiping out a few times and having to take off my board and walk twice (the snow was slushy) I was not last! I passed a guy who had a broken boot and had to ski down on one ski and some girl’s first downhill run, it seemed ;) I passed other people as well–no one told me that 75% of my leg was hiking UPHILL in my boots carrying my board-that was brutal, but I was able to relax and eat cookies the rest of the day while I cheered on my teammates. Matt, you should post some of the pictures for everyone to see!
Comment by kim — June 14, 2005 @ 2:57 pm