Adventure race

The trip started with a plane ride.

Airplanes are amazing, but I can’t help it. They scare the bejeezus out of me. Even looking at this picture makes me a little queasy and nervous. I am working hard at getting better, though. I love to travel so plane trips are something that I’m just going to have to suck it up and work at!

i forgot what paleo is.No, really. I ate total crap pretty much the whole weekend. I am climbing back onto the bandwagon now…

Here is a view of the Hudson River at the New York/New Jersey state line:

When we finally got to the “resort”, the view from out room was amazing.I use quotation marks because it was really just an old creepy hotel. And it was dirty. Hudson Valley Hotel and Resort in Kerhonkson, NY. There was some sort of line dancing festival going on at the same time we were there… it was comical/entertaining/bedazzled.

If you order a “cobb salad” at Gourmet Pizza, this is what you’ll get:
Pinwheels of meat and cheese over lettuce. Yes.

Here are some pics from galavanting around near Kerhonkson in our rent-a-truck:

Pre-race meeting. This is where we found out about the different checkpoints, transitions, rules, etc.

Pre-race carbage-garbage. Yes, I coined that term…

Chronologically, this is where I need to talk about the race. I have no pics because phones weren’t allowed… well they were, but only for emergency and picture-taking purposes. Mine didn’t come along, though.

Here’s a super tight synopsis because i’m actually very busy at work today:

I basically threw all my teammates shoes in a stream.
It got down to 20 degrees and snowed. Our camelbak straws froze.
I cried a lot.
We completed the whole race with no altimeter or bike computer. Or fancy paddles/clip in bike shoes.
Carried our rent-a-bikes across a river.
We saw coyotes in the dark. Kinda freaky.
We got to have hot soup at about 2:00AM. It was amaaaaziiiiing!
Toward the end of the race, we got super lost for about 3-4 hours and stumbled upon a creepy abandoned Ukrainian Village.
We missed the cutoff by 12 minutes and therefore sacrificed 12 checkpoints.
My left knee is useless.

The hotel was so janked that this was waiting for us in the elevator as we took our luggage to the lobby. Had to leave at 5:00 AM (4:00CST) to return the car and catch our flight from LaGuardia.