LOTOJA '08

When you are checking in to a room for the night, this is never a good sign.I guess the good news is that when you get to bed late and wake up before 5 AM, you don't get much sleep anyway, so it doesn't matter that you feel like you are sleeping in an ashtray. We booked the room before we even knew if we were going to get in this year with the new registration rules, and this was still the best we could get.
The Doctor, the Rookie, the Robot, Me and Cousin Kevin get ready to ride over to the start line and get going.

My goal this year was a sub 10-hour finish, which was a lofty goal considering how things had gone the last 2 years. To get a good time, all of your stars have to align perfectly. Weather, health, nutrition, support, mechanical and even the people around you all can play a huge role in how this whole thing plays out. I got really lucky this year.
This year we all broke up more than years past and made it even more difficult for our support crew to make sure they got food and drinks to all the different riders coming in at different times along the way. We had great help and not only do they take on the stress of making sure we stay fed along the route, they also put up with the thousands of miles and hundreds of hours of riding we put in all year to get ready for an event like this. As we were driving from the finish line to our hotel we stayed at in Jackson Hole, we picked up a hitch-hiker riding his bike back into town. He had come up to jackson the night before and left his car, then hitched a ride down to Logan to do the race. He had all of his food in neutral support and no one there for him. Apparently he is not as smooth as the Doctor and could not lie, i mean convince some nice young ladies that it would be fun to spend 10 hours in a car or standing along side the road getting yelled at by rude cyclists.I am extremely lucky to have a wife that pretends to understand my obsessions and even pretends like she has a good time doing this for me, all the while having a baby strapped to her chest the whole day. I love Megan way more than i love any of my bikes, but if you see any sized 54 bikes listed on ebay or KSL classifieds being sold by "The Bake-a-holic" please let me know.After the last 2 years of the Doctor and Cousin Kevin waiting for me and helping me through my tough rides, i up and left them both this year. I have no excuse for this. As i lay in my ashtray the night before the race thinking of all of the ways that the race would play out, it did not go like any of the scenarios i had imagined. All 5 of us this year rode in with sub 10 hour finishes. The only mechanical issue we had were Cousin Kevin blowing out a tire, and the Doctors Prostate. There is nothing like seeing your beautiful wife standing at the finish line of a 200 mile race with a giant bottle of ice cold chocolate milk.