Rally Tennessee

I firmly believe there is nothing worse than a blank screen. Even a blank sheet of paper is better than a blank screen. There! Now that my screen is not blank, perhaps I can write a little something about our trip to Tennessee over Memorial Day weekend.

Seth's dream in life is to race in the Dakar Rally, an enduro race that used to take you from Paris, France to Dakar, Senegal. It started from varying places over the years, covering different routes, but always ended in Dakar, the view of the ocean bringing sweet joy and delight to the sand weary drivers, navigators and riders. A few years ago the race was canceled due to terrorist threats, and has since been relocated to South America. This turn of events greatly saddened Seth, who has been dreaming of and romanticizing Africa in general, and the Sahara desert in particular. His sadness was short lived. We watched with increasing excitement the coverage of last year's Dakar Rally, the first held in South America. The scenery was stunning. The course, if possible, was even more challenging than crossing the Sahara. It looked insane. The thought also occurred to Seth that it would be easier for him to actually fulfill this lifelong dream of his if the race continues to be held in South America instead of Africa. If he really wanted to, it would be possible to drive a support truck down to South America. Of course, it would take more vacation time than anyone I know possesses, but it would be possible, and it would be an adventure. (More possible than, say, driving a support truck to Africa.)


So! Seth's dream lives, and now he is trying to prepare himself for it. He's been doing lots of little motocross races, just for fun and fitness, but over Memorial Day weekend he did his first Rally race. It took us just about 24 hours to get from Vermont to Tennessee, stopping for at least 3 hours in northern Kentucky (I had a meeting to go to, and we were borrowing an emergency road triangle from Dad.) When we finally made it to Tennessee, we were pleasantly surprised to see our first Armadillo. It managed to scuddle off the road just in time to avoid being hit by an oncoming car. Seth started unpacking his motorcycle and getting it ready for inspection. We realized that we had forgotten to get the road triangle out of Dad's car, which was really the only reason we had stopped (according to Seth). After Seth had talked to a few people at registration, and figured out what he needed to do and when, he sent me on a mission to find all the things he needed: an orange emergency triangle, rubbing alcohol, and scotch tape. I made a few of my own inquiries, and discovered that the nearest place to get all of these things was a little town about twenty miles away. (They have a Walmart). Off I went, unknowingly driving past some of the very roads Seth would be racing on come Sunday!

I managed to get Seth everything he needed, his bike was inspected, and he attended his new driver orientation course. All was well and Seth was so excited!

Maybe some pictures will make you excited too.

Hmm. Do you think someday I might be THE most embarrassing mom in the world, for taking a picture every few seconds? I think I might, and I think Seth will agree.

Seth's day consisted of riding to a control point, checking in at the correct time, riding to the check in at the start, racing, leaving the control at the end of a stage, riding back to the check in point, and riding to the next stage. There were three stages, and they raced each one 3 or 4 times.

My day consisted of racing (in the 4Runner that won't break down) from spectator area to spectator area to try to see Seth in action. Sometimes I missed out on some pretty vital information, like, the second stage was cancelled for the rest of the day, so don't bother going to the spectator area!

Here's some shots of Seth in action! The first was taken from the spectator area of Stage 1. The second is Seth checking out after the finish line of the Roan Airplane stage (the stages were loosely titled based on the roads they were on.)

I went to the start of one of the stages, and spent so much time trying to find it that I totally missed the motorcycles. But I did get to see the cars line up to get started. The drivers and navigators got out to chat while they were waiting.

The next day I decided not to drive around for hours on end just for little glimpses of Seth in action. I decided to stay in the Pit area, so that I could see him every time they got to take a break. This way I didn't miss any vital info. :-) This is a picture of Seth lining up to check back in after a pit stop. I think his motorcycle looks like Wall-E, but don't ever tell him I said that. (Incidentally, my motorcycle is white, blue, and very sleek looking, so I like to pretend that his is Wall-E and Mine is Eva!)

After they checked back in, they went off to race three stages, and I curled up in the back of the 4Runner that won't break down and read a book/took a nap. I was rudely awoken by the sound of loud engines revving and honking. Ah, the motorcycles are back! They lined up to check back in to the Pit area.

Seth is still alive! Hooray!

Well that's about it for pictures. I did take some movies, and I'll try to get some of those up at some point.

The weather on Sunday was not good at all for motorcycle racing. Thunderstorms were rolling through the area, and it oscillated between torrential downfall and scorching sun, making things wet, slippery, and steamy. While the guys were out doing the last set of stages, a helicopter flew over and landed across the road. Uh oh. A knot formed in my stomach as I saw a few of the motorcycle riders riding back in early. Most of the riders are from a shop in NH where we bought my motorcycle, and Seth does a few races with them every year, so we know them pretty well. I saw them ride in, and strained to see if Seth was among them. He wasn't, but I went to talk to one of the guy's wife, to see what was going on. We finally figured out that Andrew, one of the rider's from New Hampshire, had a bad accident and they were air lifting him to the hospital in Nashville. A few minutes later Seth rode in too. He said that all the guys who knew Andrew had come back after the stage that Andrew crashed on, but some other riders went on to the next one. He was on his way to the next one when he decided he should take heed and call it a day. So he came back, and we started loading everything up frantically, thinking that if Andrew was seriously hurt we would be driving to the hospital with the other New England fellas. The ambulance FINALLY brought Andrew up, and all the motorcycle riders who were back ran over to see him. It turned out that while they were still going to fly him to the hospital and make sure he didn't have a concussion or any other internal injuries, he was not seriously injured. What a huge relief! We met Andrew and his wife Jen at the Burke Montain Hill Climb last year. I thought of Jen finding out from a phone call that Andrew was being taken to the hospital and vowed never EVER to miss a Rally or important race that Seth enters. Getting a phone call would be more horrific than being there, I think.

Anyway, Andrew is fine. He got home a day or two late after staying overnight in the hospital just to be sure. Seth was planning on racing in the New York Black Stages Rally in the middle of September, but he has hurt his knee and won't be able to race. He is really disappointed. Oh well though. Maybe next year!

Inauguration Nation

We'd been planning it for months. The crowd on election night was so massive, so full of energy. So EXCITED. We couldn't miss an opportunity to be part of something like that! So when I woke up on January 18 to a few inches of new snow, and more falling steadily, I knew I had to get going. I had to get out of the driveway before the plow came through and delayed me further, and I had to get onto the highway before the roads became even worse. No more lazy Joanna.

I managed to make it to the highway with no problems, except for the guy in front of me who was going soooo slooow. Oh well. The highway seemed fine. People were moving along at a relatively normal pace. I saw a car turned backwards in a snowbank on the side of the road. "How did that possibly happen?" I wondered. It occurred to me that not too long ago it would have been significantly more difficult to make the journey I had started on. All the way to Washington D.C. from snowy, frigid Vermont, in the middle of January. My daydream of horses and wagons trying to plow through several feet of snow, with old-fashioned people on old fashioned snow shoes trying to dig them out ended abruptly when the car in front of me started spinning for no apparent reason! I switched lanes, applied the brakes carefully, (since I wasn't sure exactly why they were spinning) and watched as I passed them, spinning into the snowbank that was the shoulder. "I guess that's how that car got there!" I thought grimly to myself. The thought of me doing the same thing in Seth's Dad's van, which I was driving, and the resulting need to call Seth in from his play-day on the mountain to come and get me was so embarrassing that I pushed it straight out of my head and never thought of it again.

"I MADE it!" I thought, as I parked in a pile of snow outside Susanna's apartment. I could hardly believe it, even though I hadn't put that great of an effort into it. I just sat, and held the steering wheel, and tried to find cds that had fallen to the ground. Susanna and I took a walk around New Haven, and since she needed to return a library book, I was lucky enough to get inside of the Yale library! In the past, whenever I've visited a nice college and its library, I have immediately felt the need to gain access to said library, and thus been enticed to go back to school. It hasn't actually worked yet, I haven't gone back to school. But seeing the Yale library DID make me think about it. Seriously.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with this story, except that it started out on an intelligent feeling note. In my great rush and excitement to leave in the morning, I had left without a book to read on the long train ride from New Haven to Washington D.C. Susanna graciously let me borrow a book from her excellent selection. That night we watched "The Office" (ruining the mood of intelligence we had cultivated so far) and had popcorn and had a splendid visit.  In the morning we made it to New Haven's Union Station in plenty of time, boarded the train without incident, and were on our way!

We took the train to Baltimore where we met Susanna's friend Meghan.  One of her friends drove the three of us to a Metro station outside of DC.  Meghan and her friend are both in a nursing program at John Hopkins.  "Just in case there is some kind of disaster, and you wake up with a black ribbon on your arm, make sure you take it off!"  someone said.  "Well, if you have a black ribbon on your arm you are probably not going to be physically able to take it off yourself, but try to get someone's attention, so they know you're not dead," someone else said.  It had not actually occurred to me that there would be a disaster, but this was all good to know.  None the less, this line of conversation was making me nervous.

We made it to D.C. and met some of Susanna's friends from college at an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner.  The wait was horrendous, but the food was delicious!  After dinner, Susanna, Meghan and I found our way past all the street vendors selling "Obama-gear" emblazoned with rhinestones and other nonsense to a party at their friend Kelly's house.  This was a peace corpse party, and it was apparently more of a "ball."  We were significantly under-dressed.  This is nothing new for me though, and the party was quite fun.  It was a good thing I've been to Africa though, because if I hadn't had a single story to tell about something I had done in Africa, I would have been in serious danger of feeling left out.  ;-)

We left the party with another friend of Susanna's, whose house we were going to spend the night at.  (If Susanna didn't have so many connections, I don't think we would have been able to pull this trip off!)  We took a cab from the party to Deb's house, and it turned out the driver was originally from Ghana!  It was turning into quite an African-themed evening.  He said "have any of you been to Ghana?"  Everyone in the cab (except me, of course) said something like, "actually, yes!  We have been to Ghana!"  This was obviously not the answer he was expecting, as he seemed surprised, but very pleased.  They congratulated him on the recent success of the elections in Ghana, and he beamed with pride.  As we made our way across town we noticed huge groups of policemen and National Guard on every corner.  Police cars and ambulances screamed on every street.  We wondered if there would be any guardsmen at the end of Deb's street to protect us through the night.   We talked of bringing them hot chocolate and cookies, but like most good plans this one never came to fruition.  

It was a frigid night, and the wind was brutal.  We thought of the people we kept hearing about, who were camping out on the Mall.  I don't think you're allowed to build fires on the Mall, so there is no way we could have lasted through the cold dark night.  Instead we "slept" in warmth and safety at Deb's with three guards at the end of the street.  We did not actually do a lot of sleeping though.  What we did was more like laying in bed silently, listening to the sound of sirens come and go, this time driving right past the front door, and next time maybe a few blocks away.  We dozed.  Deb was in the parade the next morning, as a marcher for the Peace Corpse.  She had to leave around 5 or 6 (I don't remember which.)  I heard her leave, and remember being glad I didn't have to get up yet and make my way out into the cold.  

Eventually our time came.  We left the house around 7:30, and started walking towards the Mall.  We had planned out the night before where we would try to enter.  Of course, we knew it was going to be crowded on the Mall, and we knew there would probably be a line to get in, but we did not anticipate the sheer volume of people who would be on their way to the Mall.  There were lines of people waiting to get into each of the ticketed gates.  The lines were so huge, we did not realize they were lines, and they had organizers shouting at people to get out of the line if they did not have a silver ticket.  Or a blue ticket.  "I think we're supposed to go over here," Meghan said, "this is the line for the people with tickets."  So we followed a different, faster moving and single file line of people trying to make their way through to the other side of the bigger line.  We finally did make it out of the silver ticket line, and suddenly it felt quite cold.  "It was warmer in the crowd," I observed to Susanna.  

There was a lot that hadn't occurred to us.  Of course someone might target the inauguration of such a hope-inspiring guy for a terrorist attack, and we might wake up with black ribbons around our arms.  Of course, it made perfect sense that there would be just as many people trying to get to the Mall as there would be on the Mall.  Of course the sound of sirens would be constant, there were tons of people in town!  Of course we would be making our way through huge crowds and trying to stick together.  Meghan had a bright green scarf on, and that was the only thing that allowed us to keep track of where she was in the crowd sometimes.  "Why didn't I think of wearing something bright!"  I thought, "that would have been so helpful!"  Instead I was wearing a brown coat and blue jeans.  I didn't exactly stand out.  

We finally found our way into the Mall somehow.  We emerged from a little pathway along the Smithsonian castle and at first I didn't even believe we were on the Mall!  It didn't seem nearly as crowded as the crowd we had come through to get there!  We found our way to the nearest jumbotron and waited.  On Sunday there had been a concert at the Lincoln Memorial, and they were replaying it on the jumbotrons.  Pete Seeger came on, playing "This Land is Your Land" by Woodie Guthrie.  The crowd sang and danced, and it was wonderful!  The sun was out, the Capitol was gleaming, and Pete Seeger was a-wailin'.  Every once in a while, the jumbotrons would cut from the concert to show footage of whoever was arriving at the moment.  People cheered as Senators walked into the Capitol having normal looking conversations, who probably didn't even know they were on camera.  Eventually, Obama arrived, and the crowd went wild!  People waved their little American flags as if he was actually standing in front of them.  

At this point, we decided we needed our own little American flags in order to fully participate.  We found a boy scout who was giving them out.  The jumbotrons created an interesting phenomenon.  The crowd was not cheering for what was actually happening on the stage at the Capitol, but for what was being displayed on the jumbotrons.  People were being introduced as they made their way to the stage.  Dick Cheney was announced and rolled out looking Mr. Potter-esque, but the crowd cheered, because they caught their first glimpse of Obama on the jumbotrons, making his way through the capitol.  Some relatively unknown ambassadors were announced, and the crowd went WILD as Barack Obama's daughters were spotted on the jumbotrons.  When Dr. Biden was announced, the crowd was relatively quiet because nothing was happening on the screens.  I wondered if the people who were on the stage noticed the fickleness of the crowd!

Finally, the time came for the swearing in.  Joe Biden was sworn in, and we were excited.  The crowd cheered.  It was actually happening!  Was it possible to believe that change had come?!  We dared to believe.  Then Obama was sworn in.  When the gaff was made, I couldn't figure out if they were actually making mistakes or if there was something wrong with the sound system.  That didn't really matter to us anyway, Obama was now president, and we cheered, and cheered, and cheered!  I don't think I've ever seen so many people so happy.  It was an exciting time.  

Then, it was over.  It was rather anti-climactic, really.  So much anticipation and excitement leading up to the event, and then a quick swearing in, a long speech, and viola!  That was it!

Another thing we hadn't anticipated was leaving the Mall.  Getting out was even harder than getting in!  We had kind of stumbled accidentally into the Mall, but we couldn't seem to find out way out!  We kept moving towards the corners, towards known exits, only to get deep into a crowd of pushing and shoving and have the people in front of us turn around and say "this exit is closed."  At one point, a group of people moved a port-o-pottie in order to get themselves out of a crowd that was not moving anywhere.  We were glad they didn't knock it over.  It was crazy to see the crowd come alive though.  Individuals didn't move the porto-pottie, the crowd moved it.  After we tried three different exits to no avail, we thought perhaps we should just stay put until the crowds cleared.  We went to a vendor to get some hot chocolate and wait it out, but they were out of hot chocolate!  We went to the next one, and they were out too!  It seemed our wait would be a chilly one.  It was at this point that we were walking down one side of the Mall, kind of checking things out, thinking how glad we were that we weren't part of the McDonald's line coming all the way out the door of the Air and Space Museum, when we suddenly stumbled our way out of the Mall almost as easily as we had stumbled in!  We came upon a group of people standing at a huge chain link fence, and as we approached, the fence opened!  Huzzah!  We made it!

Outside the Mall, the crowds had taken to the streets.  We simply couldn't be contained on the sidewalks.  Most of the roads were closed anyway, and anyone who was crazy enough to be driving in D.C. at this point deserved to have crowds block their way, as far as I'm concerned!  After a few blocks, we came across the first restaurant we had seen outside of the Mall.  It was PACKED.  We crossed to the other side of the street just to cross it.  Eventually, we got back to Eastern Market, where we were staying, and thought maybe we would try to get something to eat there.  We put our name in at a restaurant and were told it would be about 2 hours.  We thought we'd go back to Deb's house and wait there, and try to watch the parade in the meantime.  We snacked on cheese, crackers, pretzels and pistachios.  Just as we had satiated our hunger, the restaurant called (only 45 minutes later, not 2 hours!)  We decided to give up our spot, because we were watching the parade in great anticipation of seeing Deb on TV!  Every time one channel cut to commercial, we'd switch to another one, so we didn't miss anything.  We never did see her though, and found out later that as soon as the Peace Corpse came, EVERY network cut to commercial!  Ha ha!  We had given up our seat at a restaurant for nothing!  Deb was throwing a party in the upper room of a bar that night, so we finally did get some food when we got there.  As we started eating, it occurred to us that it was the first thing we had eaten that day, aside from our early afternoon snack.  

The next morning, Susanna and I had to be back in Baltimore to catch our train around 8:50.  We had planned on taking the Marc commuter train from D.C. to Baltimore in the morning, but we were a little worried that it would be sold out, or overcrowded.  (The trains from Baltimore to D.C. the morning of the inauguration had sold out weeks before.)  We got there around 6:45, just to make sure we had plenty of chances to get on a train.  We got on the 7:15 train, and made it to Baltimore in plenty of time to catch our train back to New Haven.  Whew!  What a whirlwind! 

After we got to New Haven, I started my car trip back to Vermont.  I've always loved how quiet our neighborhood is, and I was looking forward to not hearing sirens for quite a while.  The roads had cleared since the snowstorm on Sunday, and my trip was uneventful.  I had slept on the train, but I was still exhausted, so it seemed to last forever.  When I finally got home, I opened the car door, and heard a police siren somewhere down in Barre.  I laughed to myself.  How fitting.