Driving for the Cherry Blossom

“Hey, you wanna volunteer for the Cherry Blossom?”, asked Elaine.
“Sure. What do they need?”
“Probably drivers….”
“Yeah, I’m in”, I replied.

Since, I’ve done a few events on a motorcycle, things like The Twilight Criterium and Triathlons, I thought being in a car would be a piece of cake. Hummm, not so fast there buddy. I didn’t know the routes and was pretty much going to fly blind, but a Sorella, Linda, loaned me her Garmin GPS that had the route loaded in already. Cool, I’m all set.

GPS? check.
Food? check.
Water? check.
XM radio? check.
FRS radio with roof-top antenna? Check.
Full tank of fuel? check.
Urine bag? Uhhh, going to have to hold it.

I drove the lead both days for both the Masters men and the Category 4 women. That’s four races total. The trick to this lead driving thing is to be far enough ahead so as not to affect the riders, but close enough to provide protection and warning for oncoming vehicles and give our caravan a "heads-up" of what might be coming around the corner, things like: cars, trucks, stray dogs, oncoming bicyclists, and riders that have blown off the back of the race in front. I would also call out the numbers of riders that would be absorbed into or passed by our group.

Most of the time, I would just drive at 15-25mph, take in all the beautiful scenery and continuously watch my mirrors. I came down Kelly Cut-off and here is this horse pacing me for about 90 seconds. Long enough to shoot some photos and also a small movie with my little point and shoot. The fun begins in earnest, however, when we got to descend. Some of the technical descents are slow for vehicles but extremely fast for the bikes, so this is where the awesomeness of 240 Honda horsepower comes into play. The all-wheel drive Ridgeline was perfect in the dirt sections and I got to pretend I was Colin McCrea or Sebastian Loeb in the World Rally Championship.

Every once in awhile I’d get to see some of the Sorella ladies and as I’d go past, would shout encouragement….hey wait a minute, that’s Anne up ahead. Yelling encouragement out the window, she yells back something like, “I’m saving myself for the Crit.” What?

Outside of the races themselves, I had a blast with everyone on Friday night. There was this delicious dinner prepared by Katy and I got to spend some quality time with Kenji talking about his SV650 motorcycle. I had a great time with Christine, Anne, Jan, Alanna, Matt, and Rhonda, Sage and Tessa. I got to be an honorary Sorella, if only for just 3 days.