An Irishman, a Mini-Dress and a Lawnmower

Scott and I wrote our race blog for his site, which you can read here. But as I was writing my section, I realized I would be remiss if I did not account for the drama we were exposed to while watching for him to pass on his bike. That is what follows below.

11:00 AM I notice one of the athletes that stopped at the port-a-pot is in tears and using someone’s cell phone. I can’t catch everything but it sounded something like I did the one time Scott tried to take me mountain biking with another couple when he was in law school. Basically a lot of crying and insisting that I can’t go another step and in fact will not be moving until someone brings a car around for me.

It sounded like the person on the other end may have been less than thrilled with her decision, but I could sympathize. Coincidentally, road assistance had stopped in this same spot to help someone that must have slipped a chain, so he was advising her not to go on as well, but she was clearly having a personal crisis.

We invited her to sit in a chair in the shade of our tent and after she explained how nauseous she was I offered her some of our pretzels. This immediately dis qualifies her, by the way, and I feel a little guilty that I let her off the hook, but Road Assistance came over and we could kind of tell he wouldn’t have let her back on the course, noting she would just become an emergency situation later on in the race.

At this point, she admits that she tried the Louisville ironman last year and had to be taken away in an ambulance. (Sidebar: On telling Scott this story he says, “Oh my god. I know who she is. I read her blog last week and it freaked me out.” Sidebar 2: You can read her account in her blog and she mentions us!) As Scott will say many times, the Rev3 staff is AMAZING. Road Assistance drove her back to transition and gave each of our girls a free “volunteer” t-shirt.

Incidentally, Zoe pointed out that the road assistance guy was using “English words”. Ha! He had an Irish accent.

12:00 PM Second batch of volunteers show up, most of which are high school girls wearing Future Teacher t-shirts. Except one. One girl who showed up in a short strapless sundress and stacked heels. To stand on the shoulder of the road by the port-a-pot. If you cannot picture this…picture a high school car wash fundraiser and the annoying girls on the corner yelling “CARWASH!” in a screeching voice, while not actually participating in any of the car washing.

According to her, she came right from church.

One, I’m sure god was happy you dressed like a hooker to worship him. (She didn’t really look like a hooker, but the dress was SHORT and the heels were HIGH.) Two, was there no room in your car for a pair of flip flops? Or shorts to throw on under your dress so the gusts of wind created by professional cyclists didn’t cause multiple Marilyn moments?

Now, I will say, she did hold people’s bikes for them while they used the pot, made sure they got the right nutrition and hydration on the bike by the time they were out, and gave them encouraging words upon their departure. However….mini-dress and heels. Cannot get the picture out of my brain.

12:30 PM A man you can only find in Firelands or the movie Deliverance saunters over to where we have set up camp. “Who has authorized you people to be here? I have to mow! All these cars are in my way! I have to mow!”

“Ummm…those aren’t our cars. They belong to all those volunteers down there. We just came to watch.”

“Well I need to mow and all those cars are in my way.”

Okay, sir, do I look like I have any authority whatsoever? We are sitting here with three little girls that are currently coloring Strawberry Shortcake pictures. We point him down to the volunteer tables and start packing our stuff, even though I know Scott is going to be coming at any given moment.

Jason tries to reason with him that it will only be a couple more hours and the bikers should all be past this point of the course. Could he just come back?

“NO! There is a football game on in an hour.”

Helpful. And by the way, I’ve seen longer grass in my own back yard, which we all know Scott’s obsession with lawn care, and this is a small patch of grass between a parking lot and a cornfield!

He comes back ten minutes later, after we have pretty much packed up everything but the tent, and says. “Aw, you don’t have to move the little ones. I can mow around you and turn the blade the other way.”

Information that would have been helpful ten minutes ago.

Meanwhile Scott has biked past, yelling out to US, but nobody even noticed him…thanks, dude.