Month: May 2006

  

  

  

  

  

OK, can you stand another post about driving? I mentioned that our
car is a daily-rent-a-car which means every day, Jeremy goes on line
and reserves it for a day and every night he comes home and asks, “Do
you need the car tomorrow?” Ummm, yes! So then he books another
day at an outrageously high rental rate because we are renting this
car from a car-share, basically for people who need a car for an
afternoon once-in-a-while while we are negotiating a year-long
rental. But it takes time and I need to drive 60 km a day –
but I keep telling myself that tomorrow I’ll give up the car and take
taxis again until we have our long term rental, but I’m addicted. So
we’ve rented for 4 days in a row when we promised ourselves only 2
days – just to try it out… Yeah, right, like you can only
eat one Dorito. Tonight, I told Jeremy that I’d like the car again
tomorrow, but tonight we went on line and found out someone else
rented the car! Grrr. So we returned the car today. What am I going
to do?
Driving one’s own car in Singapore is extremely expensive. If you
think that driving in the US costs and arm and a leg, in Singapore,
it’s basically 10 arms and legs. I’m going to have to chop off
everyone’s appendages (including Ruby’s) to pay for this. So even
though I’m shelling out all this money for my car (my beautiful, very
desired car), I still love to save money and I have a game I play
everyday in the car to save moolah. (You know, when you save money by
spending money… right…) My idea is to save money on parking! You
pretty much have to pay for parking everywhere in Singapore. I’m
lucky I don’t have to pay for parking it in the basement of my
apartment building, but I do have to pay for parking to drop off and
pickup Vincent at his preschool which is a bummer. But I have
discovered that if I do the pickup and drop off in less than 10
minutes, it’s free! Free! Free! It’s tricky because I have to take
the elevator from the basement to the 4th floor, which
doesn’t seem like much, but the elevators are aggravatingly slow and
stop on every floor and then you have to make small talk with the
teachers/parents and then you gotta wait for the teachers to take
Vince’s temperature to make sure he isn’t suffering from
Hand/Foot/Mouth disease and then crappy…
It’s not free.
Also, my parking nightmare is coming into focus. At Edda’s school,
the parking is free, (Free! Free!), but the space is tiny and there
are buses and parents dropping kids off, so there are a million
people/vehicles coming and going and I have to do the butt-in parking
in 3 seconds with everyone waiting and watching. Talk about nervous
and performing under pressure. Today, I actually had to get a (very
nice) teacher to park the car for me. (Maybe he’ll do it everyday for
me?) He was very competent and did a fantastic job (maybe he teaches
driver’s ed?) and then as soon as we were in a space, another mom
promptly blocked me in. So while I waited for the other (Mercedes
minivan!) mom to move her car, I watched some construction workers
tear a building down across the street. Vince would have loved that.
Oh, the best thing yet, I went to a gas station for the first time
in a year, I put some gas in the car. It was a nice full service
Mobil station, where a very cheerful teenager filled my tank up and I
went inside to a the convenience store and I ogled the snacks, they
had very nice snacks – much better than the ones in the US. I
had no idea what I was missing. I did not purchase any –
sometimes those kiwi pandan rolls can taste weird.

I have put over 300 kilometers on our daily rent-a-car in 3 days. How did I go from a practically non-driving person to someone who drives over 100 kilometers a day? I really didn’t think the island of Singapore was that big. It doesn’t look that big on a map, it looks like a speck of a place and it looks like you could drive from one end of the island to the other in 30 minutes. Wait, you really can drive from one end of the island to the other in 30 minutes! I’ve just been driving around in circles. Dropping the kids off, picking the kids up, and what else? Oh yes, dropping the kids off and picking the kids up. I’m having a tough time with the names of the freeways here. I’m really good a remembering numbers – I love Interstate 95 on the Eastern seaboard, 270 in Maryland, 280 in the SF bay area, 35 running through Austin, Route 9 in upstate New York. And I love numbers, there are only 9 of them (whoops, there are 10. My bad. I forgot zero.) and they have such easy to remember tendencies to look for…Even? Odd? Prime? Pi? Interesting pattern on a phone? Birthdays? But the freeways here don’t have numbers, they are acronyms of which I don’t know the meaning of, but I suspect are the initials of very wealthy people. The PIE, SLE, KJE, BKE and something else I can’t remember. Anyways, these names are all the same to me! All the same! Where are my numbers? I want my numbers! The driving is easy here, everything is labeled very well and every drifts in and out of their lanes without signaling, but without the insane need that some Americans have of cutting off other drivers in a quick and aggressive manner which makes me all jittery and nervous. But the drifting is very casual and slow and everyone drifts with everyone else, so really, there is no need to check in one’s blind spot ever. Ha ha, just kidding – don’t freak – I check my blind spot every time.. Um, yeah! That’s right! But the parking, that is a whole ‘nuther problem. I love parking in suburban US. Big parking lots, lots of room to swing doors open and get ornery kids in and out of bulky car seats. The only time I have ever parallel parked in my life was my first driving test when I turned 16 in 1988! I haven’t parallel parked in over 18 years! Here, the spaces are tiny and everyone backs their butt into the parking spaces, which I have never done in the years 1972 – 2006. Today I parked (head in) at Edda’s school and I sat there for a while wondering how I was going to open the doors because we were 4 inches from the cars next to us. Ummm, so I sat there and sat there and I decided that I was going to do my best not to ding the car next to me and I slithered both me and Edda out of a 4 inch door opening while sacrificing my hand to use as a wedge between the two cars so no paint would be chipped from the Mercedes minivan parked next to me. Yikes. Don’t you get the impression that Mercedes owners care more about their paint than a person driving a sub-compact Toyota? Don’t want to mess with those Mercedes drivers and their paint jobs. It could get ugly.

I have been avoiding my mailbox for the past few weeks. It’s in the basement of my apartment complex and there is no need for me to even walk past the little box in the wall, so I’ve been ignoring it. I have to say that normally I love getting mail.

But during May, I knew I was getting goodies that I didn’t deserve. I knew that my sock pal had finished my socks and had mailed them out (she emailed an update to me!) and I had not yet finished my own pair of socks that I had committed to sending out. Now, normally I am a finisher. I love deadlines and I love to meet them. However, knitting to a deadline seems not to be a strength of mine. I missed my Olympic medal and I also missed the May 1st deadline for sockapalooza. By May 1st, I had 1.15 socks done and I have to say that it did cross my mind not to finish them – we were all incredibly sick then and I just didn’t think I could muster the will to finish 0.85 socks. (How much willpower does this actually take? I think much less than mountain biking for 24 hours. I am so lame.) And so I didn’t work on them on May 2nd or May 3rd, which was OK and I was slunking about – tucking the unfinished socks somewhere out of my sight.

But then I realized that I had to finish my socks or else I couldn’t pay my bills. I basically couldn’t even bear to open the mailbox. So the mailbox wasn’t opened from May 3rd until I mailed out my own sock pal’s sock on May 14th. When I finally opened the mailbox a few days ago, there were uncashed checks and unpaid bills and unread gossip magazines – but no socks until TODAY!

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Look what I got in the mail today! My sockapaloooza pal, Rebecca, sent me the most beautiful socks and I got them today. They fit beautifully and I have to say that the craftsmanship is superb and that the colorway is just perfect. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! (Rebecca – did ya have to use about 47,000 stamps? I almost fell over laughing when I pulled the package out, I hope you didn’t have to lick them all. Do they still have lick-able stamps? Or is that old fashioned now?)

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Well, look who else is happy with the extra goodies in the sock envelope!

(this is the long post. the short post is below if you want to read that instead.)

Wow.

It was an intense 24 hour period.

On Friday, Ted and I went up to the campsite to setup first. We had your standard problems of setting up someone else’s tent – namely, you have no idea where any of the poles actually go.

We also got a preride of the course in about the time that ted was scheduled to go. That was the good part. The bad part was that during the ride, we found out that Ted’s fork was broken. Not good. You could pump up the shock, but after 5 minutes of riding, the air would leak out of it and the fork would compress all the way down and stay there. So in effect, Ted was riding on a rigid fork that was 3 inches shorter than normal which also sucks since, well, it changed the geometry of the bike. There was a mad scramble to see if we could replace it. In the end we couldn’t swap the forks very easily due to certain issues, and Ted basically had to ride the bike the whole way. Sucks rocks.

After the preride, we just hung out at camp. It started to get hella cold around 8pm. It was windy and nasty. I was wearing all my camping clothes, fleece, jacket, beanie and it was still chilly. We both retreated to the tent which was much much warmer, and took a nap. We both hoped it wouldn’t be this windy come race time.

Don, Josh, and Josh’s gf, Janelle came by the campsite around 10:30. They were a bit pissed off, because we were sent them to the store to pick up a bunch of stuff, and made them late. Jason and his gf, Emily, came down about 30 minutes later. Arif and Tahera wanted to come to hang out with us, but I made them go to the hotel, since nothing really was happening at camp, and it was still really really cold.

We settle on the our rotation at about midnight. The order was to be, 12345,21345,43521,21453,21… where 1-me, 2-Jason, 3-Ted, 4-Don, 5-Josh. We thought we’d average about 1:05 a lap, and complete 22 laps. so that meant I’d go at 10am, 3pm, 1am, 3am, and 9am. We decided to pair up at night, to give people a long time to rest in between laps. So Don and Josh would go 2 laps each in 4 hours. The same with Jason and me. Ted would only get 1 night lap, since he hasn’t had that much night time riding experience.

We went to bed after that. Ted had brought a feather bed that we had crammed in to the tent. It was heavenly. I got up on race day at 7am.

10am was the start time, and I had the first leg, which meant i got to take part in the LeMans start. What a LeMans start is, is that they make you run about 600m to your bike before you can take off on the course. Of course, you’re in your helmet, cycling shoes, on concrete, running uphill to your bike. It was interesting. It had sort of a stampede feel to it. You’re trying to elbow people next to you to get some running space. I noticed some people were running in Vans. I had my cell phone with me, in case of emergencies, so I called Arif in the middle of the run. I was amused. 😛 ha. I managed to hold my own on the run, and came out of the start gate in the top quarter. I Just couldn’t for the life of me remove my bike from the rack. My handlebars were too high to clear the bar that everyone had put their bike on.

The rest of the lap went pretty well. It was slow thru the first section since it was all singletrack, and the run, really hadn’t spread people out at all. I had to force my way around everyone in the first section. The last 3 miles are all uphill on a fireroad, called The Grind, or The Long Climb Home. I encountered a solo rider there. We chatted for a bit. He was trying to “not blow up” on the first lap. I was at at about 90% of my race pace. A train of about 5 rider blew by us at this time. I latched on to them and they carried me up the hill. It was great to do a paceline on the mountain bike. I came in at a pretty respectable time of 57minutes.

Jason, took off. He came back in 55 minutes. Ted took off.. About this time Don and Josh were looking at our times, and thinking that were were off to a really good start. Our times were better than what we were expecting. I think it amped up both Don and Josh to start putting in good times. Ted came back in 1:02 – which was pretty respectable considering that he hadn’t trained much for the race. Don came back in 55. Josh took off like a bullet and turning in the fastest lap time up until that moment – a 53 minute lap. Jason was off again, and got abotu 57 minutes.

It was my second lap, and I had decided that this was going to be my fastest lap. I had felt fine after the first lap, and Jason and I had swapped places, so I had an extra hour of rest, and and the end of the 2nd round of the rotation, we’d be going into our paired rotation, which meant i had like another 6 hours of rest before my next ride. So I pretty much went all out on the second lap. I pegged myself to redline. It was a ton easier to navigate since everyone was pretty spread out by this time. The first single track section, i went much much faster. In the end I turned in the fastest lap time of the nite at 50 minutes. I was really really happy with myself.

By this time, my whole cheering section had arrived, Arif, Tahera, Ronnie, Diane, Choon and PS, Rich, Shwe and Xin, Ghim Hong. It was all sorta embarrassing. There’s one bridge that has a flight of stairs on both sides. You ended up riding down one side on the way out, and the other side on the way in. of course, on the way in, you came down the stairs, hit a platform, made a left turn, and came down another flight of stairs, and then promptly turned around 180 degrees. The cheering section setup camp right at the bottom of the stairs. They were loud, and supportive. It was really great to have everyone out there.

We went into our night round, and people were still putting in sub hour laps. and we were about 3 hours ahead of schedule, and on pace for 26 laps. We also found out, that we were in 3rd place at the time! It was pretty exciting, but the bad news that there were only 3 teams in our age group, and we were pretty far behind the 2nd place team. But looking at the next age group up, we would have been in about 8th place out of 22 teams, which was pretty damn respectable in my opinion. I think that was a big morale boost for us, and we started planning out our strategy for the extra laps.

My cheer groupl, broke for dinner, and left us. I tried to get some sleep in the tent, but it wasn’t happening. I got up and mulled around, and took a shower after lap 2. I helped Ted setup his lights after he got back. He made his second lap in 1:01. Don – 58, Josh – 56. We were at 7:30 pm right about then, having completed 10 laps. Night was about to come down on us. Don went out for his 3rd lap at dusk, and managed a 1:01.

Ted got his full on night lap here. I forget what his time was, i think it was around 1:10 and Josh went out again, and did like 57 or so.

Jason and I setup for our double shift at night. The cheering section had come back and they were getting to be pretty loud. It seemed like they were the only ones around. since it seemed like most of the spectators had gone to bed by 11:30. I pulled in a pretty good time of 52 minutes. I wanted to save myself a little bit for my next lap at 1:30am. After that lap tho, I was still pretty pumped, and I was totally ready for my 4th lap. I went out again, and pulled out another 52 minute lap. I was pretty happy, since it didn’t seem like i was slowing down all that much at night. The full moon was out too, and I was feeling pretty good. No cramps or anything.

My cheer section left for the comfort of their hotel rooms and we entered the crap ass period of the race. the 3am-6am shift. Don, Josh and Ted were up for our 18th, 19th and 20th laps. Josh at this point was on his 4th lap, and was really really suffering. He’s super competitive, and I think when he saw everyone pull in good times, he just went out that much harder. Of course, on his second night lap, he had to use his crappy halogen light and was tired, and grumpy. He put a slow time, i think around 1:13 and he was done.

We were definitely slowing down, but on pace for 25 laps now. We had vaulted into 2nd place, after one fo the teams ahead of us, took 3 hour rest break and we were 2 laps ahead.

At this point, we were thinking about the 23, 24, and 25th lap. Josh was done. I figured Ted was done after his 4th lap also. Jason and I were up on laps 21, and 22. But I found out that Jason’s knee was getting all weird, and so he was done for the night after lap 21. So in the end, we had Jason, me, don, me, and Ted as the final rotation for laps, 21,22,23,24,25. We would give Ted, the slowest rider, as much time as possible to come before the cutoff time, which was 11am.

Jason, put in a 1:02, I put in another 52, Don put in a 1:02, and I put in another 52 – for my sixth lap of the night.

Ted left the gate a 9:37am. Offically the race ends at 10am, but as long as a rider goes out before 9:59am, and returns before 11am, the extra lap will count. So Ted had to do his last lap, his 5th lap in 1:23. No problem, since his slowest time was 1:15. We all went down to the finish line to see him in. we thought he’d come in at about 10:45am. Slowly the clock ticked down, and 10:45 came and went but no Ted. 10:50 came and went and still, no Ted. We were starting to get worried. It takes about 3-5 minutes after we see a rider for him to finish. He has to climb up the bridge, come down, and do about 800 meters around the finish area. 10:52 nothing. 10:53 nothing. and at about 10:54, we see him and we were pretty relieved. We were screaming at him to finish and he managed to finish with 3 minutes remaining on the clock.

Apparently he had a flat at the bottom of the long climb home. And he was the last person to finish the race. He was super super lucky cause the second to last people stopped to help him fix his flat for him. So yeah. it was good.

I was totally pumped that we made 25 laps. I wanted that 25th lap really really badly. We ended up holding onto 2nd place. I was really happy with my lap times. 57,50,52,52,52,52. 6 laps, 60 miles, average of 52.5 seconds and the first lap probably was about 4 minutes slower because of the run and the crowded singletrack in the first section. No cramping, and I’m only a little sore this morning.

It was a lot of fun, tho I was awake for 30 hours straight. We had lunch and I was falling asleep, and my food tasted disgusting.

now, I’m off the bike for at least a week. I’ve already had jack in the box, and mcdonalds this morning. I’m looking for a good pizza eat tonight. mmmm…..

Thanks for reading if you’ve gotten this far.

Woo hoo!

We did it! 25 laps in 24 hours. Well technically 24:56, since the you have an extra hour to complete the last lap. Enough for 2nd place in our age group!

I did 6 laps, 60 miles, in an average of 52.5 minutes. I did the first lap, with a 600m run, in 57 minutes. My second lap was the fastest lap posted by my team at 50 minutes. and all the rest of my lap came in at 52 minutes. I was really stoked since those last 4 laps only had an hour separating the first 2 and the last 2 and also my night laps were as fast as my day laps.

Ted did really well too, grunting out 5 laps. he did it in 1:02, 1:01, 1:5 (at night), 1:08 (at night), and 1:23. The 1:23 lap he had a flat and was really really lucky. He was the last person out on the course, and the second to last people stopped to help him change his flat for him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have made the cutoff. He came in 3 minutes before the cutoff time of 11am.

Otherwise, i think our team did pretty well. We were expecting 21-22 laps and an average of 1:05. we got 25 and averaged just a hair under and hour per lap. We lost 2 people at the end tho. Josh blew up and was done after his fourth lap. Jason’s knee was feeling weird and he was done after 5. Don did really well, and grunted out a 5th lap that we needed badly.

So yeah like i said, 2nd place in the 149 and below age group!. of course there were only 3 teams in our age group, but we would have placed 8th out of 22 in the age group above us.

I’m tired, but not too tired right now. I stayed up for all of it and then some for a total of 30 hours of being awake. I feel asleep around 2ish, got up to eat for about 2 hours and went back to bed. for a total of about 15 hours of sleep. I’m feeling pretty good, tho i’m jonesin’ for some pizza right about now.