Behind the scenes at Georgia

right: Timmy looking for his next feed.

It’s always entertaining to hear about the lengths that the Slipstream staff goes to behind the scenes to keep us on time, happy and ready to race. Our soigneur Kim was filling me in on the recent events today during my massage.

Apparently Kim and Jen, our other soigneur, had a run in with Johnny Law en route to the feed zone yesterday. After just missing the correct turn, Jen flipped a U to go back. Shortly thereafter a sheriff, not unlike the one in ‘Dukes of Hazard,’ pulled them over in a small town. ‘Oh good,’ they thought, ‘This nice officer is gonna tell us which is the right way to the feed zone since we are quite obviously a bit lost.’

Instead they were informed that they had been clocked at 60 in a 40 zone, subject to a $210 fine payable immediately in cash since they were not Georgia residents. They politely informed the officer that no way had they gone that fast, as they had just turned around. Besides, they only had a credit card. ‘Ok then,’ he says. ‘We’re gonna have to take you to jail.’ What?!?! Sounded kinda fishy right? A trip to a broken ATM and a call to the lawyer ensued. Somehow they got the cash to pay the disgruntled cop and made it to the feed zone in time. All this unbeknownst to us, as we were just happy to get our Cokes.

The mechanics are not without trouble either. On the long trip from Colorado to Georgia last week, Daimo was driving the Sprinter with a loaded trailer and had it break down at 2 am in the middle of nowhere. As it wasn’t possible to get a tow to a place that fixes Sprinters at that hour, and he wasn’t about to leave the rig with all the bikes on the side of the road, Daimo rounded up all the clothes in his bag, made a warm little nest, and bivouacked in the freezing van for the night. Morning came, along with a tow, a new truck was rented, and he was off…only to have a tire on the trailer flat an hour later. Despite it all, he still arrived on time for the team’s airport pick up.

Oh, yeah, there was a race yesterday too. We made a big effort on the circuit, a lot too early in retrospect, to set up Tyler for the sprint. He narrowly missed gaining the leaders jersey by one place! I’m sure we will get it tomorrow though!

Thanks for checking in, Timmy

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 1:18 am and is filed under Features, Home Page and tagged with Georgia, Timmy Duggan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.