Murray State weekend (warning...this is a long post!)

Alright..so the post you've all been waiting for. The Murray State race weekend.

As usual it took the team a while to get our crap packed into the 3 vehicles we were taking. Left town about 4:30pm Friday.
My car was loaded down with 3 bikes on top and 3 bikes on a trunk rack on back along with 4 of us inside. We'll just say my car isn't meant for that much weight and we had climbed up some hills at slower-than-tractor-trailer pace. Can't wait to have a car that still has some power with that amount of weight attached/inside.

Got to our beautiful Super 7 motel in Cadiz (I think that's the name of the town), Kentucky at 10 (ok, I don't really remember what time it was...so I just made that up). Normally one car goes inside and checks in and then we all go into the rooms. That way we can be charged for a couple rooms with a 2 people in each, as opposed to 3 rooms with 4 people each. Well that plan didn't work out so well as the Super 7 didn't have anywhere for the other two cars to hide out of sight. So we parked in a corner and took off a few bikes and started messing around. All in all, we had to get one extra room and were charged for 4 people to a room, paying about double what we thought we were going to be able to pay.

Got up around 7 Saturday morning and loaded up the bikes and headed to a McDonalds about 50 feet from the motel. Had a delightful breakfast (Deluxe breakfast with pancakes, eggs, sasuage...mmmm :) and headed about 15 minutes down the road to a really nice park.
Unloaded the bikes and then just messed around for a while. The A's race is always the last to go so we just goofed off for a while and cheered for the C's and B's. Mizzou represented well. Took 1st and 2nd in the C's. Also took a couple of the top 10 positions in the B's. As for the A's...we all finished. Chad broke his bike a couple times and came in with Lou. I felt like crap from the beginning. Had a great start as usual, until I encountered a bump in the grass that I didn't see and it almost threw me from my bike. Luckly my right hand and right knee saved me. Right hand was fine but right knee got a nice cut (and a nice bruise that's coming in as we speak) on it. I wasn't climbing worth crap, and you can only make up so much time on the downhills and flat ground. I was about 5 minutes back on Chad and Lou when I came through at the end of the second lap (9.5 mile laps, A's do 3 laps) when the conference director decided to have mercy on me and said, "if you want to stop now i'll place you". (For you non bike speaking readers, that means I still got points for the race, as opposed to DNF'ing, but didn't have to do the last lap) His words were music to my ears. My reply, "hell yeah! Thanks!"
Part of my climbing problem is that the seatpost I have now can't go up as high as I need it...so i'll throw the old one back on it and let the climbing commence.
I didn't check to see what places we all took...so I'll find that out when they go online in about a week.

After Chad and Lou came in we packed up the vehicles and went out in search of food. We found it in the form of a all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. We ate a lot..it was good. Then two of the cars went back to the park to practice the dual slalom course and my car went back to the motel for some relaxation.
That's about it for Saturday. Lou and I walked across the highway to get a Wendy's frosty, and then I walked back over about 3 hours later with some other guys for another frosty...which my stomach told me later was way too much frosty.

Sunday we got up at 6am and had convenience store breakfast (this is where we all go into a convenience store and choose breakfast in whatever form we see fit). Headed over to the park so the dual slalom guys could practice a little before the course was supposed to close at 8am for qualifying.
The guys, and girl, qualified and the short track races started. Our B riders did well. Lou and I did well. I took 9th and he took somewhere between 15th and 18th.

Then the dual slalom finals took up the next couple hours. Our boys did super-great and we packed up and headed home.
End of story.

The next collegiate race we're going to is in Michigan in a few week, something like a 13 1/2 hour drive. So if you know anyone that wants to donate a large truck (to haul the bikes) and a large passenger van we'd be glad to use it!