The Mexico Interval: Prerunning Day 4 through Race Day!

It's been a while since I've posted the last segment of this story. I apologize for that. We're almost done! If you need a refresher:

• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2

Last Day of Pre-Running
We had one day of pre-running left, and even though Seth was anxious to get on the trail he was gracious enough to allow us a nice, sit down breakfast after an entire day of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We emerged from Suite 101 and found the hotel restaurant to be quite luxurious. The hotel was the Hotel Catalina, and it was an oasis in the bland unlucky dryness of the desert. There was a pool in the courtyard, which I greatly looked forward to swimming in after we dropped Seth off. Even imagining my entire body engulfed in cool water felt like a luxury. The restaurant was refreshingly dim with lots of dark woods. The coffee smelled amazing.

There was coffee.

We had all finally started learning lessons and ordered HUGE breakfasts, just in case they needed to tide us over to tomorrow's breakfast. I demanded that Seth allow me to sit and drink a whole extra cup of coffee. It gave us time to discuss the plan for the day.

We'd continue driving south to the closest place where the course crossed the road. Seth would ride north on the course until he got to yesterday's drop off point. We'd drive back to the hotel (where we could finally swim and eat lunch), and at some point head out to pick him up. Day 4 was definitely the most convenient for the pit-crew!

We headed south on a road that had obviously been very recently paved. So recently that it didn't even have any lines painted yet! It was nice to see results from all of this construction. We found the course crossing easily, and started our side-of-the-road motorcycle maintenance routine. Seth was off! We were off! On the way back to the hotel, we noticed that the lines on the road had been painted, which seemed strange since we hadn't noticed any cars (or semis) passing.

Back at the hotel Jimi and Tommy took a dip in the pool, while I read on the side and resisted the urge to take a nap. We had had a slight snafu with the credit card at breakfast and I used the satellite phone to call home and ask someone to call and double check that it was approved for use in Mexico. I felt like a hot shot in a movie, lounging by a pool in a tropical paradise with my sat phone on the side table waiting for an important call.

After a small while we decided to head to the pick up point and find Seth. We had no idea how long it would take him to get there, and obviously hadn't learned ALL of our lessons yet, because we were optimistic that he'd get through it quickly. We settled into the familiar waiting game. The day grew hotter and dustier, although this checkpoint had a lot more action. Racers were coming through all the time, finishing, starting, or gassing up on the way through. Tommy took Jimi's bike out again and even though I worried about him being out with the race traffic, I was a little jealous that he had the guts to get out there with them. The loss of our two days at Mike's Sky Ranch meant that I wouldn't get to ride a motorcycle at all on this trip.

Eventually Seth arrived, and we headed back to the hotel for a lovely sunset, dinner, beers and billiards. Finally, a good day. At dinner the credit card was brought back to us again with much shaking of heads and waving of hands. I tried a little harder to understand what the problem was, and finally caught on to the difference in the swiping motion of the gestures from what I expected, and noticed that this new fangled credit card with a chip and all sorts of fancy things didn't have raised numbers on it, and therefore couldn't be used by the old fashioned credit card readers that swipe and use carbon paper to catch a copy of your credit card. I found this hilarious, and gave over my normal credit card in a fit of laughter.

The next day, we drove back to Ensenada and found our hotel, the Malena Suites. This hotel had been recommended by Manuel, Car-Part's lone Mexican employee, and he would arrive in a few days to help us with the race.

Ensenada
Ensenada was a relief. Seth and Jimmy took themselves out of town to pre-ride some nearby sections of the race, and Tommy and I were free. Free to sleep, eat, drink, explore, stay in, go out... we relished and savored every moment not spent simply waiting, driving, and getting cokes. We stared at our fully stocked pantry (our suite had a kitchenette!) not believing the amount of food at our disposal. Sometimes we walked into the kitchenette and opened the cabinet doors, just to make sure we hadn't imagined them being stocked with food. I bought a hat at a tourist shop. We declined to buy antibiotics at a farmacia. We put limes in our watery Mexican beers and drank them all afternoon.

We did some laundry, debated restaurants - the novelty of choice! We navigated the maze of pre-race nonsense, registration, tech, qualifying.

Manuel met up with us and we were relieved to finally have an interpreter. By the time race night rolled around Tommy and I had spent enough time by ourselves to be slightly relieved of our desert stresses.

 Seth, on the other hand, who had spent all of his time in the desert alone, and who had spent all of his time in Ensenada with Jimi tracking down electrical gremlin's in the race bike, was more than ready to get back to it.

The Plan
Finally race day came, and we all sat down with ice cream and beer for a team meeting. (By which I mean that Tommy and I had ice cream and beer while everyone else had chips and salsa.)

The plan was for Jimi to start the race, and ride through the wash out of town with everyone else, then switch with Seth about 70 miles out. His ankle was still sore and that was their switching point would be the  beginning of the section they rode on Day 1 of pre-riding, where "a frickin' tree hung him." He would not be riding over that mountain again. Then, Manuel and Jimi were going to drive to a checkpoint right before the race track started following the road, and switch again. (Incidentally, this would be the same location where Tommy and I sat waiting for hours and hours on Day 1 of pre-riding, where a shiny Californian waved a sandwich in my direction and called "What's a Dazzling Urbanite like you doing in a place like this?" ) Seth and Manuel would literally follow Jimi down the road for a few hours, and hopefully Seth would be sleeping. Before things got rough and sandy they would switch again and Seth would ride the rest of the race, to Coco's Corner then crossing a mountain range to the western side of the peninsula (where Tommy and I would be waiting), and up through the desert back to Ensenada.

The problem was that even though it was a loop race, once you got to where Seth and Jimi would switch for the last time, support cars couldn't follow (race rule of unknown origin). This meant that while Seth, Manuel and Jimi were making their way down the eastern side of the loop, Tommy and I would be driving down the western side of the loop (back into the desert with cactus Christmas trees and giant boulder battle fields). We would meet Seth at the bottom-most point of the race loop at dawn, change his tires and air filter while he ate and relaxed (ha!), and send him on his way. We'd race each other to the next agreed upon pit area (we had mapped pits that were close enough to the road for us to get to in the truck), and wave wildly at all the motorcycles that passed to make sure Seth spotted us.

Fool-proof, I know. This plan had some major flaws, but it was the best we could do with our comparatively meager resources.

The rest of the story unfolds from different perspectives. I'll share them with you in the order I became aware of them.

Cabin Fever! or, My Vermonty Valentine

When we left for Vermont everything was brown, and had been brown.

The trees were brown, and bare. The mud was brown, the grass was brown, the sky and air seemed to have taken on a brown hue. Even the pine trees were turning brown!

We set off after work on a Friday on a last-minute, desperate attempt to escape the dreary brown sameness that winter in Kentucky had come to be.

I drove. Seth drove. I drove.

I watched familiar, snow covered mountains take shape in the morning light. Seth slept as we passed our own personal well-loved landmarks - our Road to Vermont. "World's Best Breakfast!" - we've never passed while it was breakfast-time, but the parking lot was stuffed so I kept on. We wound around and thru and into, until finally, with exhilaration I pulled into a parking spot in Montpelier.

Happy Velentine's Day, Montpelier!

We took stock of our breakfast options and decided on the Coffee Corner, Montpelier's favorite diner. While we waited for our food I noticed that they had the coffee mugs stacked under a heat lamp - the kind you'd normally keep a prime rib under - and I loved them more. I felt my head and my heart shifting back into alignment.

After breakfast it was the moment we'd been waiting an entire winter for: we got to go skiing! We'd decided cross-country/back-country skiing was the least mentally exhausting variety, and therefore well suited to the the sort of day that's never really begun, because the prior day never really ended. We jumped back into the car and turned the heat on full blast in an attempt to heat every nook and cranny, and made our way to Irish Hill at Berlin Pond, our former go-to hiking, skiing and dirt biking destination. Irish Hill is what Vermonters classify as an "Ancient Road" which stays on maps and is open for public enjoyment, but which is not actually a road that one might be interested in driving their car on. It is flanked by a hand-built New Englandy stone wall, and you'll find the ruined foundations of an old farmhouse and barn. You'll also find trails heading off in every direction, and a crystal clear spring running through it. The woods are old, the history thick. Seth loves it, I love it.

We left the car on while we changed into our ski clothes (heat still blasting). There was one other car in the small parking lot and I fervently hoped that no one would come back to it while we were changing!

"Should I wear this vest under my coat, or just a base layer?" I asked Seth. Normally I would never consider wearing more than a base layer and a soft, light jacket for cross-country skiing, and here I was with a down jacket and thinking of adding another layer!
"Normally I wouldn't wear this coat cross-country skiing, but its all I brought and the Kentucky winter has weakened my defense," he responded, echoing my thoughts exactly.

We made our decisions and hopped out, just as two dogs came bounding down the trail followed by their human.

"Hey, how's it goin'?" Seth called.

"HEY GUYS!!!!!!!!!" we heard called back.

Our brains jerked to attention, and there was Cliff, one of Seth's long time co-workers in Vermont. We caught up for a bit and then Cliff said "You guys sure picked a cold weekend for a visit!"

"We were to hot in Kentucky!" I joked, "but now we're not used to the cold and we have to bundle up..."
I was obviously trying to excuse my choice to don an obviously down jacket for anything other than lift riding and downhill skiing.
"Well four degrees is cold even in Vermont, but the good thing is your face will be numb in a few minutes and then you won't even notice," Cliff responded.

I smiled, and my smile stretched across the skin on my face like it only can when it is actually cold outside.

We headed off, into the woods, across the creek and up the hill. We paused. "Last time we went this way we ended up skiing down a rocky creek bed." I mentioned.
"Yep!" Seth smiled. He turned and kept on.

"Is it really only four degree?!" I called...

I've not often had a problem keeping my teeth warm while I ski. It was presented as a major challenge when I realized I would have to stop smiling in order to let my teeth warm up. While I was pondering the pros and cons of cold teeth and a smile Seth fell backwards while he tried to make it up a particularly steep section of the hill, and sank just slightly into the powdery snow so that it looked like he had found the most luxuriously splendid feather bed. His smile was so massive that it made my teeth cold just to look at him, and I pressed my lips into a thin smile to keep from laughing.

I felt my soul bubbling within me as though we'd been separated for months.

After we found ourselves in the woods we headed back to Montpelier for a quick lunch and a visit to Three-Penny Taproom, the best bar in the world (arguably). I had an "Edward," one of Montpelier's favorite beers by the Vermont brewery Hill Farmstead, the best brewery in the world (literally). We sank into our bar stools and exhaled.

We stopped by Hunger Mountain Co-op, Montpelier's local food co-op, to stock up on a few essentials: Broke Stock Farm Maple Syrup, Lincoln Peak Marquette Wine, Maine Brewing Company's Mean Old Tom, and some Vermont Coffee Company Dark Roast. We grabbed two Stewart's Sourdough Rolls for the road, and headed up to Burlington, and to Hannah and Craig's house where we were most graciously being put up for the busy Valentine's Day President's Day weekend.

To be honest, I'm surprised we didn't fall into bed with exhaustion, but we stayed up long enough for a great visit. While Seth and Hannah left to pick up dinner, Craig and I checked the weather for the next day. The high was 0 degrees, and a windchill advisory was in effect for gusts of 35 mph, (which would feel like -45 degrees, the warning warned.) Exposed skin would succumb to Frost Bite in 15 minutes.

"Hmmm," I thought, "there is nothing that's going to stop me from skiing tomorrow." [Ahem - sidenote here - if anyone was ever even remotely curious why Seth and I are perfect for each other, you should have your answer here.] Seth and I consulted for a while in the morning. We had planned on skiing the Teardrop Trail, a back-country trail that goes up into the Nebraska Notch in the Mt. Mansfield/Stowe area. The trail was built in the 30s and is one of Seth's favorites. It is well designed to be protected and hold snow, a perfect ski through the Green Mountains. I've never skied it before and was really excited to go, but Seth said that while he thought it was well protected from the wind, the speed we'd pick up just skiing down it would create enough windchill to be dangerous. We decided to stick to a cross-country style adventure and keep our noses intact.

I put all of my warmest clothes on and we jumped back in the car. We had decided to head to Stowe, and ski on some trails we used to mountain bike on. We'd seen ski markers on the trail when we'd been there before, and we thought it would be fun to see it in the winter.

This time we really bundled up. We put our goggles on over our hats to keep our eyes from freezing, and added face masks to protect our beautiful faces (and my naked teeth). Every inch of skin was covered, except for a narrow slit between my goggles and face mask.

After two minutes of skiing I could hardly breath. I could feel the airways in my nose constricting as I breathed in frozen air, and my fleece face mask was too thick to get enough oxygen through. (Bad design, obviously.) I yanked it down to my chin, and immediately the condensation on my face froze, slightly. I smiled. It was difficult, but I couldn't help it.

The forests in Vermont are glorious. They are deep and dark and silent, with giant pine trees and very little underbrush. The sun slants in and everything sparkles. My first instinct is to get lost in them so I never have to leave. We glided around through the still, frigid woods. There was no wind here, and soon we found that we were WAY overdressed and had started sweating. (HA!) We stopped for a photo op at an old lift chair bolted to a tree. Normally this is a fine viewpoint, but today we could only see white in the distance.

We needed to keep going, though. Since we'd started sweating we needed to keep working to stay warm. We made our way around the trail system all too quickly, and soon we turned around to head back to the car. I guess it was just as well, because I'd begun to feel ice crystals forming in my eye lashes. On the way back though, something amazing happened. We ran into other people. There was a faint glimmer of remembrance in my soul. The memory of not being quite so out of the ordinary for loving, and embracing the cold and the beautiful, sparkling snow.

After we got back to the car I declared that we obviously deserved hot chocolate, so we stopped at a gas station and helped ourselves. Luckily, Stowe is fancy-pants and it turned out we deserved hot chocolate and fresh apple fritter donuts.

We left Stowe and drove up, around and about to Fairfax, where we'd invited ourselves to dinner at Robin and Thom's. The drive was beautiful, as always. The dinner was delicious - as always. It was so wonderful to see our Vermont family again.

The next morning it was time to tuck our souls into a snowdrift and head home. As we neared the Vermont/New York border I determined I'd better stop for coffee before we left the Green-Mountain-Coffee-At-Every-Gas-Station State,  and stopped at a little country market. While I was filling my recyclable Green Mountain Coffee to-go cup, I heard the bells on the door jingle.
"Morn'n' Hal"
"Morn'n' Vern, how's Mel?"

My trip was complete.