Another Year, Another Couple Hundred Miles

During most bike races, at some point or another, i think to myself...."Self, remind me why we are doing this again?"
Unfortunately, during a race that takes over 9 hours, those thoughts tend last a lot longer.
Fortunately, within seconds of the race ending, i can't remember having those thoughts and can't wait to do it again.

We started at 6:37 with a lot of guys from the team in my start group.We knew it would be fast and painful and that most likely, not everybody would hold on to the lead group.
The only person from our team that could hold on to the winning move half way up the strawberry climb was the Robot. He killed it and had a great ride this year taking 5th.
The rest of us regrouped into a couple of different packs and chased for remaining 160 miles.
I dug a little too deep trying to stay with the leaders over the first climb and paid for it the rest of the day.
I spent much of the day looking at cousin Kevin or DC's butt. We eventually got into Teton Village 3 minutes slower than i did last year with a 9:46.
Despite it being a long and stressful day for the wives, Megan did a wonderful job setting a personal best for feeding me.

After seeing a bunch of friends finish and spending a little time in the icy stream, we made our way over to the Hotel.
We showered, changed and found a restaurant that would take 20 of us for Dinner.
I ordered everything on the menu and we finally made it back to our rooms around 10 o'clock for some much needed sleep.

It wasn't until just after midnight that the fire alarms started going off and we got a frantic knock on the door saying we needed to evacuate the building.
We hurried and got dressed and made our way out into a smoke filled hall, and then outside the building into the parking lot with a couple hundred other drowsy hotel guests.The fire department was called and eventually started trickling in 15 minutes later.
After about a dozen Volunteer Firefighters eventually showed up and made their way in and out of every room a few times and checked the whole building twice, they came out and announced that it was safe to re-enter the building, but if we heard a fire alarm during the night, that we should take it seriously and evacuate the building immediately.
As megan and I were making our way back to our room, I saw the hotel manager waiting at the door of Cousin Kevin and his wife, who were a couple doors down from us.
Apparently, after dinner, Jenn was either cold, or Kevin wanted a special mood set, so he lit a fire in the fireplace in his room. There was a little plaque in the rooms on the mantel that told how to light a fire in the fireplace in every room except Kevin's. Someone had stolen it so all you could see on his mantel was a little bit of glue left over from where the sign was. Unknowingly, Kevin neglected to properly open the flue and ventilate the fire so it started a backdraft and after a few hours of smoldering, the smoke eventually started seeping into the hall and rooms surrounding his room. One of the guests woke up and called the front desk, which led to a frantic manager running up and down the halls with a fire extinguisher, knocking on everybody's door and telling them to get out.
On behalf of me and the other 300 guests that were able to stand in the freezing cold parking lot in the middle of the night, after just riding our bikes 206 miles, I want to say, THANKS KEVIN!

We eventually got back to bed around 2:30 AM.

FYI: if you have a comb-over, even if you are evacuated from a building in the middle of the night, make sure your comb-over is combed-over