Stuff I Learned This Weekend

1. My team is awesome.  I asked them to be down on campus at 6:00 AM to help set up.  They complained a lot, but no excuses were made and they were there, tossing straw bales like regular cowpokes.  After that, they all went out and crushed it!  As a team, we had 7 individual top 10 finishes and our Women's B time trial team (as in Beth didn't have to ride around with boys this week) took 2nd despite Melissa flatting out and Savannah dropping her chain, twice.  These kids are legit.
2. 50 straw bales is a whole lot o' bales.  It took 2 loads in the big Bob's trailer (I'm going to send a 50 bale-sized thanks to Vern and the Bob's guys for being awesome and letting me steal the trailer whenever I need it, as well as to Zamzow's for lending bales to us for the weekend free of charge) to get them down to the school on Friday afternoon.  Apparently, loading, unloading, and distributing those around the crit course is not the best thing for the legs.  I went from a fifth place last week to rapidly off the back in both races.
3. It is possible to have a cross wind for 100% of a course.  It was annoying.
4. 700 square feet can hold 14 cyclists.  I had a slight housing emergency on Friday afternoon and had to put as many Oregon Ducks as I could fit onto my floor.  Beth got her parents to take 5 of the 19 (again, my team is awesome, as are their parents) so the other 14 were with me.  We had to move the coffee table and a couple of chairs out to the deck, but we got everybody in.  The UO guys have some spacial planning skills as they left me a path to the fridge and out the door.  They're also really good at backing a trailer.  They got it up my ridiculously steep and narrow driveway that I wouldn't back up without a trailer.
5. The officiating crew is really good at what they do.  I already knew that about Bill, Joan, and Miles, and had a strong suspicion about the Welshimers, but this weekend really drove the point home.  Tyler was helping me with all the normal official duties, then going above and beyond by offering his assistance on everything from finding volunteers and bales to media relations.

This was a great weekend and I want to thank everybody out there that made it possible.  Team, officials, volunteers, parents, you're all super cool.