Wet and Cold and Windy and Easter Candy

The Ship of Fools/Voyage of the Damned left Rochester at the standard time and with minimal butt-on-glass action but a maximum of dirty schoolyard drawings-on-glass action, we arrived in New Haven at a semi-reasonable hour. Our hotel, a Lodge of great Economy, ensured a welcome and safe environment by virtue of having two or three cameras at every corner, all viewable from the super villain lair-worthy front desk. We immediately went to sleep, with Jake concluding his solo-sojourn by walking right in the door we thought we had securely locked so as to protect us from the nefarious societal elements lurking just outside.

The next morning, after a decidedly restless sleep, Jake woke up and said, "Ok, we need to address the elephant in the room: Who was snoring last night?" I broke out laughing and pointed at Don, who confessed to snoring a bit when he sleeps on his back. "It sounds like a two stroke engine going full blast," said Jake. I likened it, in my characteristically graphic way, to a man who had somehow discovered a way to stick a straw down his own throat and blow chocolate milk bubbles with his phlegm, amplified. Either one works.

We drove up and down State street, sleuthing out a Dunkin' Donuts from which we could buy breakfast before setting up shop outside of a school. Despite knowing this time trial was a climb, and knowing how miserable my life had been less than a week ago doing something very similar, I still signed up for it. I was neither passed nor did I do any passing, but I did finish without Donning and I assert that my hyperventilation at the end was a result of sprinting in that rarified air. Jake took top RIT D climber and Zach sniped my brilliant time by two seconds, so now he has a target on his back. We waited by the marshall and cheered people as they went past, and a BU rider declared that he was going to "shit all over everyone" come the circuit race. I'm not sure he succeeded in his quest. As the C men lined up, my judicious lack of preparation paid off and the battery in my camera died just in time for the sky to engage in a pissing contest with itself (the sky won, we lost). This is the best way to describe this cold, relentless, medium sized droplet rain that went all over everything and ruined an otherwise very promising day: pissing. We D guys set up the easy up while the C men and Intro ladies got a delightful sprinkling, each coming back to the Mole Van a shivering morass, but morasses with points as Peter and Amanda scooped up a gross amount between them and Sam tossing a couple on to the pile as well.

As the skies had gaped open and had not seen fit to close, we D men resignedly made our way to the line, bitching, moaning, whimpering, petitioning the sky to stop for just 30 goddamn minutes, I mean seriously. After some commiseration at the start line, we launched off at a rainy day race pace, hitting dirty bits and getting wet pieces of road on our faces and in our mouths. At this point I would like to point out that the D field, despite being D and therefore not especially good, is all business once the race starts. Any attempts to discuss weather, course condition or political economies of developing nations just gets blank stares and kinda ruins the whole fun aspect of everything. Naturally, I find it up to me to banter, even if nobody will banter with me, but at least in this race some friendly fellow told me to "shut up and ride my bike," which is better than the usual, "On your right...Oops, I mean left," or, as is especially helpful in a circuit race, "Left turn ahead!" Either way, I dropped a record amount of F-bombs during this race and had a nice screaming match with myself over the finish line, landing me just out of points but having helped Jason eke one out and close enough to watch Jake turn on some afterburners.

The intro ladies once again brought the heat (and some points), and they told us as much while we shivered, mostly naked, in the Mole Van, though they complained about being freight trained by a group of young ladies indiscriminately dressed in blue, which could be any number of schools. In C, Peter finished well, which is the only nice thing to say about that race. Will, in his C road race debut, dropped a chain and then was given the wrong instructions by a marshall, ending his race early, and Jesse managed to put a major ding in his rim, ruining his wheel and flattening his tire. Like a true Awesome Guy, he went back to the start, pumped up his wheel and rode the slowly deflating contraption up to the top of the mountain, managing to not finish DFL.

Lunch was had at a pretty snazzy Thai place with good food, good portions and good prices. Some of the less adventurous went to subway and then sequestered themselves out in the rain while their wider palatted brethren enjoyed the remnants of their southeast asian cuisine. At this point, the ladies split off to Urban Outfitters and we of-age men beelined for the package store. When we got back to the hotel, we tried every permutation possible of hanging clothes up in a desperate attempt to get them dry: leaving them on the AC unit with it on cold, with it on hot, hanging stuff from drawers, hanging stuff from lamps (this works well), hugging things to let body heat take control, even disembowling the yellow pages for use as stuffing to wick the crap out of our shoes. During this time, we discovered channel 80, home to 24/7 pornography of the most grotesque, artless variety. We later watched Red Light Go and pretended we were all people who rode fixed gears and got yelled at by cabbies.

Dinner landed us in Little Italy for another $16-a-plate place, but we don't complain because we're the Fine Dining Club and also the bread was excellent. It however brought to light that Yelp.com can no longer be trusted to accurately describe the price structure, especially since it cannot be overstated that the Fine Dining Club is incredibly cheap. The place across the street from us, an Apizza joint, had a line snaking around the block, but we were all too full to figure out what Apizza was. I later discovered that it is New Haven pizza, a dish my roommate back at school expressly warned me about eating because it is "nasty."

The next morning was mercifully dry but plenty chilly. We snaked a spot by the finish line and got ready to go. In the D race, I was bent on winning a prime because the prize was candy and that is pretty much what I run on. Unfortunately, when I told Jake that we were going for it, he didn't come along and I was hung out to dry, left at the mercy of the Millersville kid who first ran me down and the West Point kid who eked his wheel out for second. At this point I was done and the RIT D riders, mysteriously, failed to get any good finishing positions, but Don made up for it by Donning after the finish line. On the subject of talking in the pack in D, the prize goes to a (I think) BC kid who screamed "STOP BEING SO FUCKING SKETCHY!" to someone ahead. Words to live by. Brandon showed up for his Men's Intro debut, falling into the by this time all-too-familiar trap of pulling for three or four laps and then falling off the pace hard. A learning experience, every time. The more experienced and shrewd intro ladies held excellent positions in the front, just getting beat out for third place by some girl from UNH. The C Men also had a good day, with Peter scooping up a ridiculous amount of points (and some easter candy) with a second place and some primes, another step in his inexplicably meteoric rise to Really Good Rider, Jesse having a solid race and Will showing that his move up to C was not, in fact, a bad decision.

After toying with the thought of sticking around for the open races, we suddenly realized that we had a very, very long way to go, so we went about finding a mexican place and instead settled on China buffet, which was an excellent place to go on Easter. On the way back, we stopped at a gas station where I picked up some homemade beef jerky that kept me awake all night and, upon returning home, my roommate asked me where I had been all weekend. You think he'd figure it out by now.