Hi Mike- Thanks for your note regarding the new East Bay 50 ride.  I have one little expose about the ride that is just begging to be told.   I, too, would like to give all the people who worked the ride this past weekend a pat on the back, especially the ride manager, Laura Fend.  I'm not sure I'm willing to give Laura’s husband Gary equal billing, since he rode the event, and especially after he tried to bump me off during the ride.

 

     Yes, it's true- I think Gary is out to get me.

 

     I’m pretty sure it all started at the Gold Country ride 2 years ago.  It was here, only a couple of miles before the finish, he sent me off into the wilderness, lost and cold, when he could have saved me, just so he could get 7th place instead of 8th.  I thwarted him by finding my way back to the trail, with Shatta only missing catching him at the finish by a minute or so.   Then at the Lakeside Classic, I tried to help him by giving him directions when he was not sure where the trail went.  I pointed out the trail to him, but for some reason he didn't believe me.  Just because the trial I pointed to went down the mountain and directly into a lake, didn't mean I wasn't trying my very best to help him. 

 

     One of my jobs this weekend at the Pac South ride was to hang out all day at

the Stone Bridge, taking numbers, and providing water for the horses. The

morning of the ride, I put six of these huge, 55 gallon barrels full of

water in the back of my truck.  These barrels had two plastic screw lids on

the top, for filling (and supposedly emptying) with water, that were about

three inches in diameter.   Being a novice at water truck exercises, I asked

Laura how we should get the water from the barrels to the buckets for the horses.

She told me Gary had this system that he used, and to check with him.

Okay, I go find Gary and ask him about the distribution of the water from

the barrels to the buckets.  "Oh, it's easy.  You just put the water buckets

on the ground under the tailgate, lay the barrels over in the truck, and

fill them that way."   Okay, thinks I.  I guess in retrospect I should have

wondered, but hey, he's the expert.  He told me they used to have a fancy

rig with hoses and such that no-one ever used because it was too

complicated. 

 

     I trundled out to the Stone Bridge with my sloshing cargo of six behemoth

water tanks and got set up.  My riding buddy Sally, who was out there to

help for the day, asked how we get the water out.  I told her what Gary

said.  "Are you sure?" was all she said.  "Sure, Gary told me so," was my

reply.   She set up the water buckets on the ground, right under the tailgate of

the truck.  I wrestled the first barrel into position, and probably should

have wondered about it at that point, since I had enough trouble even moving the stupid thing two feet.   I screwed the two little plugs in, so I could lay the blue

monster over on its side, then I’d remove the plugs and fill the buckets.   A quick calculation (math was never my strong point) showed that my eight buckets should handle most of the water in a single barrel.  Okay- we are ready. I was standing up in the back of the truck, ready to lay down the barrel, while Sally's job was to fill the buckets.  She got ready as I "attempted" to lay the first bucket over.

 

     Right.  You think I'd have learned to use my brain in the past.  Sort of

like when as a kid, I rode my sting-ray bike off of a ten foot high dive,

thinking I could just jump right off the end, and into the pool.  There's

this neat set of rules in the universe called Physics that govern how things

will react to certain actions.   In the case of my bike, the board flexed

down as I rode down it.  As I neared the end, it was bending way down.  As I

rode off the end, of course it came springing back up, flipping the rear wheel of the bike straight up, over my head.  WHAM!  I hit the water on my back, with a

bike in my face.

 

     Okay- so how's this relevant?  What do you suppose will happen when a 55

gallon barrel of water gets "laid over?"   What does water weigh, anyway?

About 10 pounds a gallon?  That makes this barrel weigh something like 500

pounds?  Picture this- I do all I can to lay the barrel over.  Sally is down on the ground, waiting for me to set it down, then I’d hop down and open the plug, thus

filling the buckets with the nice, cool, water.   As I set the barrel on

edge, of course it starts to fall over.   Like I'm going to be able to stop

it?    "KAWHUMP!"    The barrel hits the bed of the truck with the force of a small scud missle, and of course both plugs come flying out from the pressure of the water, shooting through the

air, ricocheting off of the stone bridge like demented Frisbees.  The impact

of the fall sends me crashing to the bed of the truck, knocking the ice

chest, our 2 bottles of people water, cups, carrots, our lunch bag, and

everything else flying onto the ground.  Sally's eyes get as big as saucers

as a torrent of water comes gushing down from the truck.  The flash flood hits

without warning, knocking her to the ground, along with scattering all the

buckets and debris from the truck, everywhere.  Poor Sally is soaked as she desperately tries to scramble to her feet, grabbing buckets and trying to salvage the water that is now gushing out on the ground.  Here I am, trying like a fool to stand up in the water and lift the barrel back up?  Right!  There's that physics

thing again.  Sally gets a bucket under the huge stream of water, but as it

fills, the pressure of the stream knocks it over, getting her even more wet.

We both just stopped, feeling a little helpless as the remainder of the

water gurgled out of the barrel, onto the ground.  The scene was one of

horror- water buckets strewn everywhere, poor Sally soaked from head to toe,

the ground all around us now five inches deep in mud, the little barrel

plugs lost forever, our lunch officially wet, and 55 gallons of water gone. 

 

     The aftermath of the episode resembled a car accident, or a battle scene.

We just stood there, watching and listening as the last of the water sloshed

and dripped to the ground.   Bicycle riders came by, horrified at the

carnage, wondering if I had rolled my truck.   We just looked at them with

glassy eyes, shaking our heads and muttering vague words under our breaths.

It took us a while to clean up the mess, all the while pondering what we

were going to do to Gary.   We had visions of sending him down the wrong

trail, but he knows the area too well for that.   Maybe we just toss him

over the stone bridge, to be eaten by the trolls that live down there.

Sally thought we should water his horse, I mean REALLY water his horse.  We

would make him get off the horse, have it lay down on its back, open its

mouth, and then we would "lay down" a barrel of water for the horse.  That

would get the beast hydrated, all right!   But I remembered he was riding

Laura's horse, so we couldn't do that.  Maybe if Gary was really thirsty, we

could offer him a "drink?"

 

     We drove back to the base camp and picked up a nice garden hose that we used to siphon the water out into our buckets for the rest of the day.  It worked

perfectly, and we never spilled another drop.   Sally eventually dried out,

and even decided to drop the lawsuit and forgo the dry cleaning bills.  We

spent the day greeting riders and giving them water, but secretly planning

our revenge on Gary.  There must be some way to get him.  We will come up

with a doozy, and when we do, watch out, Gary.  You will most likely become

VERY wet!

 

Nick