"The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men.....

Team Ride Red Mouse
(image from istockphoto.com)

"I gotta warn you.  There is a mouse in the Rider RV."  Thus the warning of Dolores after spending three days driving the RV out to Oceanside for the start of RAAM 2011.  Pete and Dolores had endured tire blow outs, forest fires, and apparently rodents to take the RV out to RAAM.   I didn't worry to much about the rodent.  I figured it would ride out in the RV, arrive in sunny California, find a nice condo to occupy on the beach at Oceanside, bless itself for having the common sense to move from Austin in the summer to California in the summer and it would do all right.  If I had known what was coming, I would have made sure it got out in California, as the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals might have gotten me on the way to Annapolis.  

In 1785 Scots poet Robert Burns wrote the poem ""To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough" Probably the best known part of that poem is as follows.....

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,

An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
Our team did an immense amount of planning for the RAAM.  Every event,  anticipation attempted - every contingency planned for, an every solution readied.  However, it is impossible to plan for every scenario that life will throw at you.  You will always run into something that you could not have anticipated happening.  With an event the magnitude of RAAM, it will happen.  The ability to handle issues as they arise, and not as they were planned for calls for flexibility of character, measured thought, a willingness to consider multiple options, to problem solve without thinking about the process of problem solving. All of these characteristics change with changing amounts of sleep, food and rest, some people simply find it hard to make decisions, and decisions must be made, actions taken - sometimes with limited opportunity to evaluate the situation.

No one gets on their bike and thinks.  "OK, I'm going to put one foot on the peddle and push down and forward with enough force to clip in my cleat, then I am going to push down on that peddle to get myself rolling at 2 mph, or at least enough speed to stay upright while I put the other foot on the other peddle and push down and forward with enough force to clip in my other cleat, then I am going to push down on that peddle with enough force to keep my momentum up and building to maybe 10mph..... etc. etc. ad nausem."  You just get on your bike and ride. If you stop and think each step out you will fall over.  What if your cleat doesn't clip in? Well you problem solve that as it happens. 

RAAM requires that you solve problems as they come at you.  If you stop or hesitate at every unforeseen event, you will stall and not move forward.  This is tough for people who need to think things through completely before acting.  It is a very uncomfortable place to be.  You can see the pain in their faces.  You can hear the frustration in their voice.

As Burns said in his poem, something unforeseen is going to happen no matter how much you plan for it.   Your ability to decide how much analysis is warranted before you act is part of how rapidly you can move across the U.S. during RAAM.

The mouse stayed in the RV.  It went to ground, building a quick but comfortable nest out of TP paper (2 ply I'm sure), stocking a few power bars, and watching the drama unfold around it.  It came back out last night while the RV was parked in our drive way.  Probably wishing it had avoided the heat and gotten off in California, but unwilling to miss the drama of RAAM unfolding before it.  I felt the same way.

   It really wasn't this bad, but it could have been.

HOA Nazis

Do HOAs really work? Can you rule a subdivision by fear?

I have new neighbors who moved and built next to me because my Homestead has a very limited, and informal HOA.  We like it that way.  They were basically "driven" from south Austin by HOA fears, and into the arms of the anarchists in Bee Cave.  Welcome you refugees of the Lawn Nazis! 

Do these types of set ups really help sell homes?  I do understand the need for some regulation.  Lawns can get out of control.  Patios can be a blight. If we don't edge the lawns what will the yard workers do for a job. I had a friend get in trouble in Katy because he didn't have curtains up on his windows.  So he hung up seismic lines.  No one seemed to care that the neighbor had a wooden cut out of some bent over woman's butt with her drawers showing, or another with a water hose coming out of some unspeakable portion of the wooden painted overalls crotch.  Apparently such things are considered "cute yard art".   But I guess the thought that Gerald (my friend in Katy) would run around and do his daily functions in a Glass House so to speak, was just too much.

It is good that I don't live in a lawn nazi area.  I would drive both myself and them crazy.

In addition, Home Owners usually PAY for the privilage of being harassed.

“First they came for the failed lawn waterers, but I was a lawn waterer so I did not care. Then they came for the failed lawn edgers, but my lawn was edged so I did not care.  Finally, they came for the landscape code violaters and there was no one left to help me.”

Food in a Bag - Just like the Astronauts

RAAM food is food in a bag.  We generated an immense amount of FIBs, as I call them, for the RAAM.  Sweet potatoes with cinnamon, butter, sugar; Crack peas (sauted onions and butter, mash potatoes, frozen peas, organic meat; pasta and sauce packets; rice and eggs.  Gotta love it.  Clip the end, put it to your lips
and squeeze it like yo mama.

In addition to FIBs, we produced about 257 burritos. They are "dinner in your hand". Anything you can wrap in a tortilla you can function with. Burritos are mobile, whether you are driving the get away car or running across the border or swimming a river. You can move with a burrito.  It ain't pretty but it is functional.

Duct Tapers

Duct tape has always been around, since the dawn of time - like fire, like the wheel.  But it took man a bit to learn how to USE duct tape.

It takes a certain type of person to survive on a RAAM Crew. To survive RAAM you gotta have a duct tape kind of attitude.  When things begin to crater, no time to whip out the welder or the soldering gun. No time to wait for the drying of the glue, just pull that "duct tape" attitude out of the hoister and fire away.  When you get finished, it is never pretty, but it is working, functional.   Some people hate duct tape.  They think it is messy, it is ugly, it is cheap looking.  It might be all of those things, but those who have a duct tape attitude will be sitting on the East Coast enjoying a scotch when others are trying to stitch, glue and solder their way across West Virginia.

A DEATH IN CORTEZ - NOT A DEATH IN TUBA CITY

We made our way across Arizona, through Monument Valley, up into southern Utah, then over to southwestern Colorado where our Soccer Mom van promptly died. Really, completely died in Cortez. Apparently the van decided that 48 hours of continual abuse was enough and it preferred death over the prospect of being abused for 7 more days. I can relate. If dying were an option, I might go there. But with RAAM dying is not an option.

Take for example our fellow cyclist with another team who apparently was hit by a semi in Tuba City, Arizona, suffered broken bones but, thank god, is alive.  Cycling is dangerous no matter how you cut it.  I am always amazing about people who "got hit by a semi".  I mean give me a break!  Cyclists must be like Superman.  A semi whacks a person on 20 pounds of bike and the person comes away with few broken bones.  I think that is amazing.  You should have seen the semi!

I'm Talkin' Traffic

I mean how can these Californian's talk about green this and green that and justify all these cars on the road.  Every time I have come here I have been struck by the incredible amount of people here.  This is my first view of San Diego/Oceanside.

RAAM - The Topographic Profile of America

RAAM is officially underway.  Our Crew Mate Kevin headed off on his pre-ride with his partner.  They are team Texas Flyboys and their race finishes in Durango, Colorado, probably on Friday and then he will fly down to Arizona with his wife and he will go with us BACK up to Durango and finish with the team in Annapolis, MD.  Animal.

The ocean is great, but it is cold and overcast, lookin' perfect compared to 105.   I was down at the start to RAAM and there was this team from German and they were talking in a animated fashion to a couple from Ohio who were here on vacation I think.  The couple had stumbled into this bizarre scene of cyclists, crews, people from all over the world who where doing something, but the couple could not figure out what was going on – an international convention of some type.  Anyway, there guys were so friendly with this couple and the man said “where are you from” and it was apparent that Rolf, Gunter and his buddy were German.  Anyway, these guys had rolled out on the pavement about a 20 foot by 12 inch roll of paper that showed the profile of America, all the sections of the race laid end to end.  I gotta tell you the Appalachian Mountains look minute compared to the mighty Rockies, and basically  it is downhill all the way from Trinidad Colorado to Ohio – really.  I found it fascinating.  I am a geologist, but I don’t think that I have ever seen the Profile of America quite laid out that way.  The Rocky Mountains are impressive, the Sierras are impressive.  The east coast looks --- old and worn down.  I'm sure it will look more impressive when we get there.