(Postblogged on Sunday, 10/9)
Woke up super early, very tired and not looking forward to what the day was going to unfold - so I guess I'm a total glutton for punishment. Here it was 5:45am, dark out and raining like a mo-fo, winds picked up. I went out onto the deck and was slapped in the face with wind and I could see all the palm trees and dune grass whipping around like footage of a hurricane newscast. I thought to myself, this is gonna be bad, this is gonna be shitty, this is gonna be crazy. That inspired me. After I showered and put on my cycling gear....I gulped down 2 Red Bulls, a cup of coffee, 3 bananas, 2 power bars, 4 Enduralyte tablets, grabbed my shit and I was off. The drive to the staging site was just a repeat of the night before - dark, rainy. I was driving with thousands of cars with bikes - all heading to a day of wet reconing. We all filed into the various parking lots - 8,500+ cyclists were registered, I'm not sure how many actually arrived - but there were thousands of us. This is the largest single organized cycling event each year - I was going to do this whether I liked it or not. Hell, I've endured worse I thought - huge ass hills, thousands of miles of training, heat, cold, wetness, all for the love of the sport. I'll do this even if I curse at myself the entire time. A great aggression/stress tool.

By the time I got all my other cycling gear on, gloves, shoes, helmet - I was already soaked to the bone. My feet squishing around in shoes, the parking lot was flooded with about 3-4" of water. I met up with a few people from my cycling club and we said - let's do this....FAST, SAFE and let's only stop 3 times - paceline the entire thing. We headed out in a large herd of about 40 of us - there were thousands of cyclists out there, comepletely miserable. The rain never EVER let up - and then once we got out into the open flatlands, the winds picked up. I was glad I had a crew to pace with, made the wind situation less. We took turns leading for 100 pedalstrokes, then switching - we made excellent time for such a shitty windy/wet conditions. There was soo much water being sprayed in my face ("rooster spray", aka "road juice"), I couldn't taste what was my own sweat, rain, gatorade, spit, road juice. It was utterly nasty.

We stopped only 3 times, to keep up the fast pace - and to avoid hypothermia. The conditions were soo nasty - it was almost too much as to not laugh at it, so as a communal experience - we were definatly all in the same boat, misery in numbers. At about mile 76, we had an unfornunate thing happen - the third guy leading the paceline accidently clipped the front tire of the dude in front of him (it was difficult to see, rain splatered cycling glasses, fogged up, raining hard). The middle part of our paceline went down - and hard. I was fortunately in the rear after my frontline pace duty, was able to steer around. But we had to stop and assess the situation - make sure no one was hurt. 6 dudes got a lot of road rash, 3 others got their bikes messed up. We called the SAG, they sent a car and an ambulance - which arrived within minutes....the group told us to go on. (I'm suprized we didn't have more crashes - given the shitty conditions)

At this point I was ready to just FINISH this goddamned thing. Enuff already. I've never felt this wet in my entire life - with two exceptions, doing the Heart of Virginia Century in Ashland, VA last year in Hurricane Ivan...and once when I was in Boy Scouts on a 3 day canoe trip down the Shenendoah River. The surving group from the crash, we started yelling off the miles as we got closer - we were all ready.

Then it happenned - we finally saw the finish line area, and just spun down and rolled in. We all said quick farewells, there was little to do at that point but just go into the damn Maggs center pick up t-shirt, patch, and get the fuck outta dodge - it was still raining like crazy. The parking lot was completely flooded. I only managed to take a few pics all day - it was a hurried and harrowing event. Fuck You Tammy!

I got to my car and managed to take off all my clothes IN my car (I didn't give a fuck if anyone was looking), and changed into some dry clothes. I turned my car on, and the damn windsheild wipers in sonic uber fast mode and made my way out of the flooded parkeng lot. The drive back to the hotel was equally nuts - rain, flooding, grrr....

I stopped by a place on the way to the hotel, got me some crab cakes, shrimp, scallops - and a steak. I was sooo farking hungry. Came back to the hotel, unpacked, took a very NICE hot shower (not that I needed any more water on my body that day), then honched down the food. Then sat out on the deck and watched the funny traffic on the Coastal Highway (just a 2 way strip) - there was a huge Hot Rod Convention that weekend, hundreds of old hot rods out there doing their shit. The rain finally stopped. I went out on a walk to stretch out, and walked on the beach for about an hour. Came back to the hotel, packed up my stuff to leave in the morning. Then hit the hay. Uhhhhggggg... What a fucked up day.
Seagull Century 2005

photo by d. scott gregory Rainy start, Seagull Century 2005 click on photo to enlarge	photo by d. scott gregory Seagull Century 2005 click on photo to enlarge
photo by d. scott gregory Rainy finish, Seagull Century 2005 click on photo to enlarge	photo by d. scott gregory Seagull Century 2005 click on photo to enlarge
photo by d. scott gregory Seagull Century 2005 aftermath click on photo to enlarge	photo by d. scott gregory Seagull Century 2005 shirt click on photo to enlarge
photo by d. scott gregory Ocean City, MD at night click on photo to enlarge	photo by d. scott gregory View from hotel, Ocean City, MD click on photo to enlarge

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