Spartanburg 300K -- April 21, 2007

It was only noon, but I was already pressure-cooked and soft, like a holiday pot roast.

And I still had 100 miles to ride.

How’d I get myself into this predicament? Piece of cake: One simple mistake knocked the blocks out during Saturday’s 300K in Spartanburg, S.C.

But this is a tale of recovery. These long rides bring their share of suffering and hardship, but they’re also the acid test for determination and perseverance. And so I lowered the bucket one more time, even when the well had run dry. I eventually found my legs, got back in the game and finished on a high note for one of the more pleasurable brevets of my cycling career.

Branson K and I headed down to Spartanburg on Friday evening. Branson, a first-year randonneur, had completed a qualifying 300K the week before in Morrisville. He was trying to get a bit more experience under his belt in his quest to do Paris Brest Paris.

I’d skipped the Morrisville 300 with a cold. I needed this one for the record books in my own attempt to qualify for PBP.

I played DJ on the drive down from Durham, spinning two disks from my favorite alt.country band, the Backsliders.


We reached the Day’s Inn in Spartanburg, about a quarter mile from the start, late Friday evening. Like true randonneurs, we immediately powered up the TV to the Weather Channel. The cycling gods were smiling on us: 45 at the start to mid 70s in the afternoon, lots of sun, light winds. That wool undershirt I’d packed would remain in the bag. This would be a day for sunscreen, a light vest and arm warmers.

As is often the case before these endurance events, I slept poorly. I had two disturbing dreams; in both I managed to oversleep and miss the start. One sequence involved a rental car -- I think a Buick -- mired window-deep in a muddy swamp.

Apparently, real oversleeping would not be a problem: Branson accidentally set the alarm for 4:30 a.m. -- an hour earlier than we’d planned to get up.

I caught a painfully slow breakfast at a nearby Waffle House -- the cook was distracted by a dozen call-in orders -- then rolled over to the start.

I chatted briefly with RBA Bethany Davison, reliving our respective adventures on the Easter fleche, then said hello to friends from former rides -- Doug from S.C., Paul from Charlotte, Kris from Asheville, Jimmy W., and Caroline on a Serotta equipped with what she called her “big girl gears,” a 53/39 combination. The head count was 16 with a couple notable no-shows, including Jerry and Rich.

Bethany puts on a well-oiled event. We rolled off at 7:01.

Now, about that mistake….

* Mistake #1. Let’s see…what am I forgetting?…. In packing up before heading down to Spartanburg, I installed the Schmidt dynohub wheel on my bike of choice, the Plastic Fantastic Fuji. I typically use the Schmidt wheel to power an E6 light on any ride that might stretch into the night hours.

I overlooked one minor detail when I switched wheels: The computer magnet.

That oversight dawned on me when I spun the front wheel to reset my computer. With no magnet to trigger the sensor, the computer remained dark.

Bottom line: 187 miles of flying without instruments. I would not have the psychological crutch of knowing how fast we were going. I’d also have to be extra vigilant for any solo navigating from the cue sheet.

* Mistake #2. Speed run to the turnaround. Bethany’s course, one of the best I’ve ridden, fell in the shadow of South Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains. We were treated to spectacular views and quiet rural roads as we rolled down one hill and up another all day long.

My bike had not seen daylight or pavement since the April 6 fleche. For the record, I pled a pipe-stopping head cold and the RUSA newsletter deadline. Truth be told, sloth also had a seat at the card table. And so I showed up without any blood in the legs.

The smart recipe would have been an easy warm-up, a moderate pace, then bring it home on the last 20 miles, which are mercifully flat.

I was not prepared for the 19-plus ride time average we posted on the way to the 93-mile turnaround. I knew we were going out fast, but with no computer I had no idea how fast.



Don’t you just love the allegiances that develop as the ride progresses?


For the first two hours, Branson and I fell in with the lead group, which included Jimmy and Kris K. Jimmy is the guy who navigated us home on the High Point 200K.



Kris, who works at Biowheels in Asheville, has Rockabilly Sideburns and Racing Legs. He is delightful riding company, but he is not a man to be trifled with in the hills. Several times he whipped the pace into a froth.

Kris had his brand new carbon Look out for its maiden voyage. The bike had exactly 29 feet on its odometer -- 29 feet being the distance across Biowheel’s shop floor to Kris’ car.

“I was still adjusting the seat in the parking lot,” Kris joked as we clipped along at a feverish pace. A New England transplant, Kris recounted the painful joys of Saunders Whittlsey’s famously impenetrable dirt road randonnée.

* Mistake #3. Nor any drop to drink. The Holly Springs control fell at mile 55. Call it pilot error, but I did not replenish my water bottles there, thinking I was good for the final 30 miles. Wrong. As we got rolling again, I realized I had only one bottle left.

Branson and I, who’d dropped off the pace for a pit stop in Marietta, caught up with the front group about 8 miles after the control. They’d suffered a crash when a rider’s seatpost binder snapped. He collected two other riders when he went down. Two would have to be sagged in.

We continued on and the front group swept us up on Shady Grove Road, one of the hillier sections on the course. Kris and a guy in a Yoo-Hoo jersey amped up the pace as we neared the turnaround. Call it Battle Rattle. Rather than drop off and ride alone, I did my best to hang in there.

My legs eventually burst into flames and radioed out a five-alarm distress call. I lost contact with the group about three miles from the control.

By the time I got in at 12:20 or so, my water bottles were dry. Me, too. A classic case of dehydration.

I hunkered down at a McDonalds and tried to collect my wits. When Kris and Branson came to get me, I looked the boys square in the eye: “I’ve been sick for the last week,” I told them, “and if you don’t like that excuse, I got a couple more where that came from.”

Kris smiled from sideburn to sideburn. He’d obviously heard that kind of sandbagging before.

Kris and Branson and Jimmy attempted to gather me up for the ride in. Nothing doing. I was dragging up even the smallest ramps. I drifted back, back, back. When Branson turned around at a stop sign, I waved him on. It was time for some solitary suffering.

For the next hour I crawled along, coasting down any grade that offered even the slightest gravity assist. It was a dark hour. The mental clouds loomed on an otherwise cloudless day. But I’d faced this crisis before, and I was confident I could pedal through it.

I stayed on top of the water while I waited for my legs to return, and I scaled back my ambition to stretches of 1.8 miles, 2.8 miles, 2.5 miles, clicking off the mileage at each and every turn and resetting my mental odometer. Little by little I chopped away, each turn of the crank taking another bite out of the 187-mile oak that I was trying to bring down.


Clifton, one of the riders caught up in the day’s earlier crash, passed me on Little Eastatoee Road. “We’re two-thirds of the way through,” he said. Clifton was obviously counting the miles too. He waited for me at the turn on to Highway 11 and together we made the 5-mile run to the Mobil station that served as a control on the outbound leg. I made certain that this time it was also a water stop.

Jimmy was waiting there. He’d lost contact with Kris and Branson coming through the hills. Yoo-Hoo jersey was there, too. He looked stung and was sitting on the gas pump island. He’d apparently not eaten on the way out and was now paying the price.

Jimmy, Clifton and I left together -- and I gratefully lost contact with them a half-mile up the road.

For the rest of the day, I enjoyed the freedom of a solo ride, setting my own pace, working at a comfortable output, stopping for a few pictures, ducking into a country store for another refill on water, watching the afternoon hues play off the distant mountains.

I exchanged a quick hello with two teens on a dirt bike. They slowed on their way up the road, wanting to know if I was having a good time. Why, yes I was. It was a cosmic postcard afternoon.



For a fleeting instant my internal planets lined up and my bike took me to a place that wasn’t on the cue sheet.


I rolled in at 7:30, meeting my goal of finishing in the daylight. Branson and Kris finished at 6:37 p.m., about five minutes behind Doug, who did much of the ride on 2 gears, thanks to a frayed shifter cable. Phenomenal times for all of them. Jimmy and Clifton were also in, and for the next hour, we soaked up the blood orange sun, drank double fudge Yoo-Hoos and Branson’s Belgian beer.

The war stories exhausted, Branson and I loaded the bikes on the roof, put Hank III’s “Straight to Hell” on the box and headed home.

Flèche Team N.D.D.: A Tale of Perseverance

"Perserverance."

Capn John Ende pointed a limp French fry at the small sign in Rose’s Restaurant in Boydton, Va., the lunch stop for Flèche Team N.D.D.

We were 65 miles into our 232-mile roundabout trek from north Raleigh to Lexington, NC.

The team had been riveted to the TV in the corner, which was turned to the Weather Channel. An earlier forecast of cold and cloudy, with a 30 percent chance of showers, had turned sinister.

Now it was a 70 percent chance of rain in the darkest morning hours, with snow showers likely by dawn. A low of 27. 15-25 mph winds. Where had this come from? Just what kind of curve ball was nature trying to bean us with?

Then Ende pointed to the sign on the wall. Perseverance.

For the first time, Team N.D.D. took a hard look around. Rose’s had lots of those painfully motivational signs. The ones sales teams and real estate agents are so fond of. You’ve seen ‘em. They usually have a color-soaked landmark shot -- say the Golden Gate Bridge poking through a dense fog -- with a simple, jingoistic word to live by: Vision. Attitude. Courage. Commitment. Character.



And yes. Perseverance.

We mocked them all, each and every slogan. Had a good laugh over cheeseburgers and fries. Haha. Stupid signs.

Later that evening, those signs would come back to haunt us -- like a recurring case of athlete’s foot -- as a midnight rain poured an icy pitcher of water into our shoes and soaked our jerseys, when the heavy splatter of spring snowflakes obscured our way, when we shook and shimmied and shivered at the Liberty Kangaroo.

When Team N.D.D., to a man, made the decision to quit, hang it up, throw in the towel or at least find a dry one.

Try this slogan on for size: Abandonee.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Our humble story is rooted in the post-PBP year of 2004, when Team Flèche Wound -- comprised of Capn John Ende, Rich Go Faster Bruner, Greg Dive Bomber Schild, John Game Face D’Elia and Mike S’Bagger Dayton -- assembled for its inaugural event. For a write-up, see RUSA's newsletter.

The team went on hiatus for three years while memories faded, egos healed and lawsuits settled.

When the team members contractually agreed to a reunion tour, the major sticking point was the new team name. After heated debate and the exchange of several defamatory e-mails, the team settled on a moniker, suggested by Capn, that tripped off the tongue and fell over the lips:

Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Hellbound, Flèche-Eating Subhumanoid Zombified Living Dead, Part 2, In Shocking 2-D!

Catchy, no? Imagine the team’s chagrin when they later learned the name was not an original creation of Ende’s but had, in fact, been unceremoniously “Ripped Off,” with hardly a single word disturbed, from a wikipedia listing.

Team N.D.D. gathered in Raleigh on Okay Thursday, the day before Good Friday. At a pre-ride dinner, the weight gains of several team members aroused suspicion: steroids, eating disorder, or just plain fat? Meantime, Dive Bomber’s choice for the main course -- Lobster and Sausage Ravioli -- was roundly condemned as foolhardy and a potential gastronomic fiasco.

Come game day, the team gathered at the Stony Hill Rural Fire Department, just north of Raleigh. Always ready to carpe the diem, the boys climbed aboard the hay-stuffed carcass of a burned-out car for a photo op.



The team rolled off at the crack of 9:15 when it became clear that the last chance for a partial refund had passed.

Within 1.5 miles, history repeated itself. Just as he’d done in 2004, S’Bagger claimed the first county line sprint, catching his teammates asleep at the wheels.

The crew motored north with more yammering than hammering. The day was cold but the sun was up, the leaves were out, the wind was light. Life was good and plenty and available in two flavors: original and root beer.

After skirting Oxford, the team N.D.D. route shirked Virginia and crossed over Kerr Dam, where the boys stopped for a combination photo op/nature break. (Wallet-sized prints can be purchased in the team store.)

At around 12:30, the team hit the Boydton town limits. It was there, at Rose’s, that the boys first caught wind of the ominous weather report.

After careful deliberation, the team agreed that “everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” The team also decided, by a 3-2 vote, on a “wait-and-see” approach (the minority position had lobbied for immediate panic).

The team unanimously rejected, as unreasonable and cost-prohibitive, Game Face’s suggestion to rent a snow blower.

The weather held as the team swept westward into Skipwith and the Clarksville control, before bending south and back into the Tar Heel state at Virgilina. The smooth road surfaces that the team had grown accustomed to gave way on Dirgie Mine Road (as in "you've got a dirgie mine"). Eye teeth rattled loose.

After a water/snack stop in Surl, where every other customer seemed intent upon buying as much beer and beef jerky as they could carry at one time, the boys pushed into Mebane, arriving about a half-hour after the sun called it a day and retired to the barcalounger.

The team had picked Martinhos as the control and dinner stop, but the place was crammed to the gills with teenagers. Tired, cold and sweaty, and in no mood for the stench of youthful optimism, members got their cards signed and pushed up the street to Pomadoros (loosely translated: “Tony’s Rib Joint”).

No sooner had we sat down than Go Faster managed to piss off our waitress, LaToya. Something about teabags, I didn’t catch it all. The upshot was that LaToya lost my order and I had to wait an extra 15 minutes for my meal, digesting my liver, while everyone else ate their ribs. Except Dive Bomber, who ordered the crab and pepperoni shells.

We finished dinner around 10 and pulled on all the warm clothes we had. One look at the dense gray sky and the wind, now scuttling in from the northeast, confirmed our fears: the night was about to turn from cold to emotionally abusive.

The good news was that we had a tailwind. The bad news was that the sky was spitting on us, like a close talker with a stutter.

This I can live with, I thought. Some of my best friends are stutterers. Only two hours to Liberty, our next control.

The light rain did not last long. About 30 minutes. Then came the heavy rain, followed by a steady deluge. Meantime, the temperature, previously hovering around 35, lost an engine and nosedived to 33.

About five miles out from Liberty, the snow started. Big, wet, ugly blinding flakes. The exact opposite of the "New England Winter" postcard. I could feel the rain streaming into my left shoe, the newspaper bag I’d been using for insulation capturing a big swimming pool of ice water.

This is not good, I thought. Not good. Not good.

Some teens cruised by in a Chevy. One of ‘em leaned out the window and yelled: “BICYCLING IS FUN!” I thought I recognized the car. It had been parked outside Martinhos earlier that evening.

We made it to the Liberty Kangaroo, stashed our bikes and scurried into the warmth and the light.

Tammy was working the graveyard shift. She’d been expecting us, but she hadn’t signed on for the wet rats that high-tailed it to the hot chocolate and coffee machines. Tammy set out stools and a folding chair. We left grateful puddles on the linoleum.

I’m not sure who uttered it first, but it had the ring of magic. Abandonee. The word became our mantra, our raison d’etre, the new kid on the block. We weren’t quitting. We were on a much more noble course. We were ABANDONING. We’ll take Option C, please. It made perfect sense. It was unsafe to continue. Too dangerous. Too cold. Too everything. And surely, all five other flèche teams would be right there with us. Only a damned fool would ride on in these conditions.

Satisfied with our plan of action, I ate a bowl of instant jalapeño cheddar noodles. They had the taste of a hollow victory.

The problem was, we couldn’t figure out how to abandon. We were too far from somewhere to rent a car. Team meeting. Who did we know? What friend within a 50-mile radius could we call to come collect one or more of us at 2 in the morning? Clearly we weren’t thinking clearly -- no one has friends like that.

We made two or three runs at Tammy and her white Ford Taurus, which was parked curbside out front.

Would she consider loaning her car to us?

Nothing doing, Tammy said.

We tried to sweeten the pot. How about $50? What about that?

Can’t do it, Tammy said. She was on to us now. We were after more than just another bag of Doritos. She began avoiding direct eye contact. Tammy and her Ford Taurus were out.

We began scoping the customers that straggled in. Most were on a serious mission, motivated by the cut-off time for buying beer. Almost all left lugging massive 24-packs with a built-in handle. Not the best candidates for a rescue, frankly.

A heavy snow was still falling outside. We stared dejectedly into the puddles at our feet. I looked more closely. The linoleum needed replacing.

Tammy had mentioned a laundromat about a mile down the street. No way will that be open, we said. We’re doomed.

But Game Face said he’d go check it out. We waited for his return, watched four or five cases of beer walk out the front door.

Game Face returned. The laundromat was open. He’d checked. Even went in the door.

Suddenly, Hope appeared and body-slammed Abandonee to the floor. What was this -- you mean, we might actually finish this thing?

D’Elia grabbed two rolls of quarters. We said toodles to Tammy and headed over. The laundromat was downright humid. We got busy, stripping off everything we owned. I took note of the security cameras in the ceiling, wondered how long it would be before the sheriff cruised up, busted the whole lot for indecent exposure.

The local headline would tell the entire sordid story: “5 Id-yots Caught BUCK-NAKED at the Laundromat. With NO CLOTHES ON!”

How we would explain that to our kids and our wives? Would we get royalties if the footage appeared on "Cops"?



For the next 30 minutes, we jammed quarters in the slots, watched the black lycra go round and round in glorious circles. Pulled em out from time to time, watched the steam waft off of the riding shorts. Smile and smile and smile. I put my dryer on high until the entire load was toasted.

Rich tried to put a pair of his socks in with mine. Nothing doing, I said. Here’s a quarter. Go get your own dryer, I told him. I knew where those socks had been.

The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful. The sky lifted, the moon poked through, the roads dried. Highlights from the last 50 miles: Standing in the 24-hour McDonald’s Drive-Thru in Randleman eating an egg, sausage and cheese biscuit at 4:30 in the morning. Riding a bike straight through the automatic doors of the Wal-Mart. Eating the All Star breakfast at the Waffle House in Thomasville.

We rolled into the finish at 8:30 a.m., tanned, rested and ready to do it all over again.

All it took was a little Perseverance.




-- S’Bagger Dayton

Loafer’s Glory

Ride above the river
Mars low in the sky
Piss off the bridge
Like a young boy
Down the mountain
Over the dangerous ridge
A short story
It’s home again
To Loafer’s Glory.

Morrisville 200K / March 31, 2007: The Kid Is Back

The Kid is Back...

And what better way to prove it than to shatter the peloton at mile 80? Our friend Wes, returning from six months of spiritual exile (that's a nice way of saying he's slowly recovering from a bad bike/car collision in Oct. 2006) did exactly that on Old Greensboro Highway on the return trip of yesterday’s Morrisville 200K.

http://www.unc.edu/~alanj/

JoeRay and I made a pact on Thursday to take yesterday’s ride easy, maybe hang back a bit. In short, a social ride, a chitchatting, easy breathing slow rolling affair.

It was not to be.

A massive crowd – 40 is a guess – were on hand at the start. (Yours truly got busted by Sridhar when I got Joe to retrieve my card, essentially short-cutting to the front of a line that was a dozen deep. Note to self: wait your turn next time.)

Many of the locals were there – Chet and Cyndi, Jerry, Branson, Dean, Danny Thomas, Todd from the camera shop, Dr. Steve. Missing were Dan, Bob, JD, Caroline, Gilbert.

So many folks, so much check-in, that we did not get rolling until 7:13, according to my GPS.

The weather was supposed to be cloudy with a 10-15 mph SW wind and a chance of showers in the afternoon. In fact, the day remained cloud-free and the SW was not as strong as predicted.

As many as 15 riders hung together for the 62 mile trip out to Siler City, and the pace was remarkably fast: we hit the turnaround with an 18.7 average, according to JoeRay’s computer. The group included me, JoeRay, Rich, Wes, Jerry, Branson, Andreas, Justin (an 18-year old on a touring bike with disk brakes) Tom from Lumberton (who was also at Spartanburg), Tom’s wife Mary and a few others I’m forgetting or do not know.

Our crew was the first to the control and we did a quick water grab. I don’t think we were there more than 10 minutes.

We ended up losing a few at the control, including Jerry who was still in the boys room when we got rolling again. I’d say we had a group of 10 as we motored up Snow Camp Road – Tom, Justin, me, Rich, JoeRay, Wes, Steve, Branson and one or two others. At one point Tom and Justin rode off the front but we reeled them back in at Snow Camp.

When we turned onto Old Greensboro Highway we had a favorable wind.

That’s when Wes opened the bay doors and dropped the bomb.

My GPS shows a conspicuous spike in the pace about 3 miles down Old Greensboro. A jump from 22 mph up to 28. Wes exploded off the front, did a massive surge over one of those steep rollers. Joe hung on for dear life, and I hung on to Joe. In my mirror, I could see the damage done. It was a war zone with bodies everywhere and the smell of burnt flesh.

Tom from Lumberton managed to bridge across and the four of us finished together, never really letting up the pace. Joe suffered for about 10 miles after we turned off Lindley Mill but he eventually got his legs back. We made a five-minute water stop at Andrews Store before dropping down Jack Bennett to the lake.

We finished at 2:05 p.m. If you count the late start, our total time was 6:52. We bumped our average ride time up to 19:1 mph. My GPS shows that we did 61 miles of the ride – or a little under half – at 20 mph or better, with 17 of those miles at 24 mph or more.

I apologize for a report that focuses so much on speed and result, but I’m afraid we may never be able to match this, and I thought it was significant enough to memorialize it. (And for the record, I have plenty of slow brevets under my belt.)

Yes, the Kid is back.

High Point 200K / March 24, 2007

This ride is run by the father/son team of Richard and Joel Lawrence.

http://ncbikeclub.org/randonneuring/highpoint.html

It's a terrific route -- especially the 71 miles from the start up to within a healthy spit of the Virginia state line. The course rolls and twists up through Walnut Cove, past the entrance to Sauratown Mountain. You get spectacular views of Pilot Mountain and Hanging Rock. The course loops east and back south from the turnaround and while most of the hills are through by then, there's still plenty of rollers to test tired legs. The finish skirts a metropolitan area, putting riders on a busy section at the end of the day. Not much fun, but tolerable in a group of three or four riders. At the final control Joel fires up the grill and serves hot dogs and hamburgers to a ravenous and grateful group.

As fortune would have it, Me, JoeRay, Jimmy Williams and Chris from Ohio were the first finishers. We didn't plan it that way. We got lucky.

We were the first to the turnaround, having left at 7:00 with lights. Those without had to leave at 7:30, so we had a full half-hour jump on most of the field.

We made it to the turnaround at 11:04. The course is pretty hilly going out, and the turnaround is at 71 miles, so that was a respectable time.

Four minutes after we arrived at the control, the speedy crowd from the 7:30 start rolled in.

We rolled out of the stop at around 11:20, the first group to leave, and we held off the racers for over an hour, but they closed in just as we turned off a very smooth downwind stretch onto some rough chip and seal. We rode as a group for about 10 miles, then they spit three of us off the back on a steep climb up from a creek. JoeRay hung with them for a while, but two of the guys – Danny and some big tall monster – decided to ramp it up and lose him too. So he dropped back with us. But they gave us Jimmy, who had been riding with them. And that proved to be our good fortune and their bad luck.

After lots of hard efforts I felt completely cooked and had a hard time hanging on with our little group. I got a leg cramp pulling up an incline. No big surprise, as our mph average actually came up a bit in the last 50 miles.

Meantime, we noticed that the guys in front did not seem to know where they were going: we saw them pause at a stop sign for a very long lookaround before heading on.

So….we roll into the finish at 2:11 – a 7:11 200K, my personal record, and likely the same for the rest of the crew.

And guess what? No fast guys. No Danny, no big tall guy. Had they packed up and left already? Were they that far in front of us?

Nope. They got lost. 4 bonus miles. They rolled in about 15 minutes behind us.


Our ride time average was just over 18. Did the ride 19 minutes faster than last year.

We had a really good group coming home. Everybody shared the load. Joe is in fine form and really took some fast pulls at the end of the day. Our biggest asset, tho, was Jimmy who by his own admission knew the route like the back of his hand.

Goes to show a navigator is as important as a boiler room.

Spartanburg 200K / March 17 2007

I'm catching up on posts. This, organized by SC RBA Bethany Davison, http://people.clemson.edu/~sjm/brevets/200K.info.htm, proved to be the toughest 200K I've done to date. A sunny day, but incredibly windy and cold. We had unfavorable head and crosswinds most of the day, with starting temperatures in the 20s. Then add winter legs, lots of hills and the climb up to Caesar's Head.

We formed a big group heading out but Rich had a flat tire going out and that split us up. Along for the ride was Rich, Branson, Ende, Jerry. Given the conditions, not surprising that we had 16 mph ride time average. Four of us finished in 8:29 -- Capn, JD, my SC friend Doug G and me. Caroline was just a few minutes behind. We lost her on a 30 mph run down New Cut Rd.

It was good to get this one out of the way. The first official ride of the brevet season and the toughest of the 3 local routes I'll do. The push to PBP 07 has begun.

I rode down to Spartanburg with Rich and told him of my recent decision to leave my job. So the two of us are in transition. He just moved to Lillington for work. Has a sharp duplex in downtown.

On the ride down we listened to a cheesy, useless french CD by Berlitz. By the end of an hour, we could count to 10 and tell the waiter that we have reservations. And not much else.