The Dirt Field

The Race: Nature Valley Grand Prix Cannon Falls Road Race
The Course: 74ish miles, or so I heard
The Field: Pro 1/2 women
The Finish: The parking lot

Thursday morning dawned cold and wet, but ever the optimists, the women of the Nature Valley Cycling Team prepared diligently for the road race scheduled to begin at 5pm. This included fretting, checking the weather obsessively, and eating everything in the host house that was not nailed down (excluding the cats, because life here would not be the same without those assholes precious little bundles of joy).

Can we talk about the cats for a second? On the whole, I don’t mind cats. They’re fascinating; while I’m told they have bones, personal experience suggests this is a lie. One minute a cat is sitting on the floor and the next minute he’s on top of the refrigerator. No matter where he is, he’s silently judging you. The problem with the cats at our host house (other than the part where I’m allergic) is that one of them is so annoying that I would dream about turning him into a pair of gloves, except that he will not let me sleep. His favorite game is called I’m Going To Lay Outside Your Door And Bang My Paws On It Rapidly So That It Rattles Until You Wake Up To Say Hello. When I woke up around 4am today (for the third night in a row) to hear rattle rattle rattle, I was instantly enraged. I threw the door open, roared at the cat, grabbed him, and chucked him into another room. A minute later he was back, so Bri (my roommate) took her turn and yelled “BAD CAT!” Seriously. Bad cat. I think it hurt the little bastard’s self-esteem because after that, he went away. It may also have had something to do with the massive suitcase Bri dragged out to block the door. Now whenever I see Bad Cat trying to sleep, I poke him and laugh vindictively.

So that was kind of a lot of talk about cats and not a lot about cycling, but since the race was cancelled, there’s not much to say on that front. We piled into the team van, drove to the venue (eating the whole way there like we were about to start RAAM), huddled around to avoid the driving rain and awaited news of the race. News came that the road race was to be shortened into a crit on the original finishing circuit, but since that was a terrible idea that nobody liked and the skies were spelling more doom, the race was called off entirely. I used my excessive pent-up energy to pick up the team mechanic and carry him around the parking lot while my teammates found alcohol and got the party started.

Then I went home and rode my bike on the trainer because that is what you do when you are neurotic.