2015 Trans-Sylvania Epic: The last three stages as I saw them from my head/eyes part

Soooo...

Stage #5?

Yeah.  Get up (slowly), pack (slowly) a cooler with eight All Day IPAs (because seven would be too few, nine would be too many), get in Chris's Sprinter van (slowly), and head over to RB Winter Park to observe and applaud the efforts of others (and eat pizza).

Borrow a cup from Chris under the threat that if I don't return it, he will have to buy a new one and that will make him angry.

photo cred: Trans-Sylvania Epic media team

As long as it's in a coffee cup, it counts as coffee.

photo cred: Trans-Sylvania Epic media team

Because you can't drink coffee all day if you don't start sometime before 10:00AM.

Get an offer to ride around in the Stan's NoTubes van.  Accept.  Spend the day jostling around, cheering, getting rid of my beer supply, hobbling.  I think I might have done something useful for somebody... maybe.

Stage over, eat pizza, head back to camp, crawl into bed, pass out.

Wake up and look around.  Everyone is gone.  Guess it's time for awards.  I get out of bed (slowly) amble over (slowly) in time to see more happy people being happy on boxes.

End the day... watching Django (part one) on Bill Nye's iPhone.

Stage #6

I accept a ride in the Stan's van again.  These two guys, promising to not toss me around like a football all day.

Drew and Jimbo... they ask you to get in the van, no bad touch?  One should always accept.

I have to leave the beer behind.  I need to work on the other Bikes of the Pros article for MTBR that I said I would write.  Since my laptop needs to be plugged into an electrical outlet in order to work, I grab a pen and borrow a notebook from Chris... once again, promising to return it or else he will have to buy a new one and that will make him angry.

photo cred: Trans-Sylvania Epic media team

 I spend the day jotting sentences, cheering, grabbing aid bags for riders, being sorta useful.  Get back, crack a beer, translate my gibberish into a digital format, click "send," and with my responsibilities behind me, crack another(s) beer.

End the day... watching Django (part two) on Bill Nye's iPhone.

Stage #7

Wake up (slowly), get outta bed (not as slowly as the day before), get ready to head to the start.  Grab my bike.  I can get on it today (slowly).  Just enough so as to pedal some flat gravel, but I'm now thinking I'm gonna be able to go back to work on Monday... on some kinda bike.  When the race starts, I ride out with the single speeders... until the road goes up, and I turn around and go back.

Watch the single speeders come back through camp and somehow they take more than 25 minutes to change a flat.  Hop in the Stan's van.  No beer again.  There will be more than enough later.  Help out at the aid station until it's time to go back to watch the finish.

Roll down to the Lone Wolf Cycling heckle pit.  A certain level of debauchery ensues.  The single speeders finally arrive and the level is pegged.

 photo cred: A.E. Landes

For some reason or another, it needs to end, we all leave, I sorta roll through the finish with the single speeders, dinner, awards, Stage #8 starts...

I do what I can to make sure it goes smoothly and the racers stay hydrated.

photo cred: Aaron Chamberlain/Singletracks.com

Stage #8 ends, more pizza shows up, and everything morphs into a Stage #9 dance party and with some encouragement, I join in... but not with the youthful vigor of a 45yr old.   I do not get low to the window nor to the wall, but I do what I can and occasionally get negative feedback from my hip/back/sacrum thing.

In bed before midnight, but not before someone walked off with my Enduro™ cup (sads), and up around 6:00AM, packing and waking everyone (remaining) in Upper Eagle.

Tomorrow.  What I've done since then, how I'm feeling, what my plans are from here... maybe a recipe or two.