In July I also got to go to Chicago to visit Neringa. It was a nice trip and it was nice to hang out with some people I met couple of years ago. I got to catch up with my cousin Lina over morning Starbucks, finally have some Lithuanian food at Kunigaiksciu Uzeiga as well as attend Darius’s birthday/ and Neringa and Darius housewarming party.
In August Derrick participated in a 70 mile mountain bike race in Slatyfork, West Virginia. The trip itself was one of those that they only show in a road-trip-type of comedies. I have to admit though that after several similar trips that I experienced in recent past I accept it as the norm and am just happy that we both remain safe and alive.
So, to summarize our adventures, I will start at the beginning.
We were late to leave Columbus. It takes about 7 hours to drive to Slatyfork and we did not leave until almost 6PM Friday night. As we were getting closer, I passed the exit, so we had to take ‘a small’ detour getting to the campground at around 2AM. Same morning Derrick had to get up at 5AM to register for the race, eat a quick breakfast and start the race.
'Minor' details- with everything that had been going on he didn’t have much time to train for this race. His bike only arrived the day before the race so he really didn’t even get a chance to ride that bike. So, that early and bright morning Derrick experienced some troubles getting his bike unlocked but this obstacle was soon removed by a small set of bolt cutters.
By the time I woke up it was noon, which I soon estimated that once I have my brunch, then walk with Dante (what a nice walk with all the beautiful nature out there!) and read my book, Derrick would be back and we could party with all the racers.
Several hours later, as I was enjoying my book, Dante made a friend- a cute dog and his owner, a girl named Erica, a wife of one of the other racers. We soon came up with a plan to go to one of the checkpoints and show some support to our husbands. A volunteer at the checkpoint informed us that based on the last checkpoint’s stats our husbands were about 30-40 minutes apart and should be passing us in about half an hour. Erica’s husband showed up shortly after and I was happy to know that I only had 30 minutes, well 40 minutes max to wait for Derrick’s appearance. Sadly, 3 hours later Derrick still had not passed by and I decided to head back to the campground in case he ended up quitting the race early. To my surprise he was not there and I ended up taking a quick afternoon nap.
I woke up and it was already dark. I wondered if Derrick had come back but could not recall him giving me a kiss (there was no way he would have come back and not checked on me in our tent and if he had checked he would have definitely given me a kiss, so I knew he was not back). I got up quickly and walked to the car to see if his bike was there and it wasn’t. There was a big party going, everyone seemed to be back from the race. I went straight to the organizers and asked about Derrick. They told me not to worry adding that they ‘thought’ the last two racers who weren’t back yet were ok. ‘We think’ was simply not enough for me but I think I did a great job not panicking on the outside while on the inside I was a mess. Derrick had not trained for this race, had not slept enough the night before and was now on the narrow trails in the pitch black forest! Erica and her husband (I wish I could remember his name) were nice to keep me occupied with the conversation while we were waiting for Derrick to come back. I kept checking with the race organizers when they thought Derrick was going to be back and how long they would wait to begin the search. But that was not necessary as about an hour and a half later he was back! He was worn out by 14+ hour race and I don’t remember ever seeing him THAT exhausted!
The next morning as Dante and I got back from a walk in the woods we were ready to drive back to Columbus. One more thing I needed to do before taking off was give him some water. As I poured water in his bowl I noticed that jeep’s tire was completely flat! No big deal, we had a spare full size tire (which, by the way, was fixed before), but unfortunately, as D was changing the tire a lug broke, and then the lug wrench we were using broke as well. Let’s not forget that we were in the middle of nowhere on Sunday early afternoon with the closest city about 1- 1,5 hour away.
With some help of some nice people we were finally able to change the tire and drove to the nearest town (about 15 miles away) to get the flat fixed (in case something happened on the way home)- the campsite owner’s arrangement. As soon as we got there, I noticed that bike’s almost-$200-wheel was no longer on the bike-rack on car’s roof. So, we had to head back in search of a lost wheel, which of course we never found (remember, these were the mountain roads and anything that was not on the road was 500 feet below on the mountainside).
Disappointed and exhausted by the course of unfortunate events we decided to finally head home only to find out there was an accident not even 5 miles away from Slatyfork. An older couple riding a trike (a gigantic motorcycle with three wheels) hit a deer and flew off the vehicle approximately 50 feet down the mountain. The accident must just had happened as the emergency vehicles were not there yet.
Derrick, a medic by profession, felt obligated to help, so we rushed down to assist injured couple and ended up staying there until EMS arrived, helped them to take injured couple to the ambulance and then drove with them to the nearest golf course where helicopter picked up two victims.
The rest of the trip went well and adventure-free.
