Riding around and around

Accidently took a day off on Tuesday due to some unforeseen RV troubles. We spent 4 plus hours waiting on the water heater, generator and side mirror to be fixed, which in all actuality isn't that bad...but when you're on a tight deadline for race readiness-it's not so good, Al.
I ended up splaying myself across a wicker loveseat in the lounge area while we waited, and falling fast asleep to the amusement of many passers-by (I was also right next to the bathroom, which insured a constant stream of onlookers).
Needed to dump the tanks, get propane, do laundry... all of which cut into the time to arrive at the race site and prep. About 2 hours till the time I needed to be there, I suggested we bag it.
Dad agreed.
We stopped at a Mexican laundromat (I think all laundromats are Mexican at this point), put in a load of assorted race clothes, jeans, boxers and whatever else was dirty. After an hour of telemundo and reading, we headed out to the best dinner I've had in a long time at a place called Houlihans. I had an incredible chicken parm sandwich on focacca bread with pesto, marinara and mozzarella and some wicked desserts.
We drove to the race site for the next day, which was in a park and spent the night.
I got the damned satellite working!
I watched Bonanza, Sanford and Son, Hogan's Heros (I can't get all the channels in and TV Land was the best of the rest).
Racing the next day was a joke...at least for me. We were actually on bike paths.
Let that sink in: They put a pro-level crit on bike paths in a park.
Needless to say, the race was sketchy. There were two turns that incorporated curb hopping, one down, one up (one of which featured a sewer grate in the middle of the only line through the turn).
I raced for about 15 minutes, knew my legs were done from taking the day off and being tired and just pulled the plug. I took a slow spin around for the next hour or so, came back and took a shower, made some dinner and joined Dad to watch Gary Puckett of Union Gap fame parody himself for a crowd of 800 older folks.
It really was sad to watch.
He not only sounded nothing like himself, but also sang mostly other people's hits and relied on nostalgia to keep the crowd interesting as he repeatedly said, "Do you remember______? Man those were some good memories we all made together, weren't they?".
He opened and closed with "Young Girl"
The next day, we made the trip up to Wisconsin to race in Shorewood. The day prior, I finally figured out my rear brake was grabbing at random points onto my wheel as the nice folks at the local bike shop in Nashville had re-rigged my cable so that it caught the faceplate of the stem each time the bars were turned.
Awesome.
I rode around prior to the women's race; saw some friends from home: Annie, Hadley and Ted from Simple Green.
Crazy.
After a 30 minute spin, I went back to the RV and fell asleep until 5ish.
The girls were just starting...an hour and a half late.
10 minutes later, they were stopped again.
Apparently some girl had tanked it hard on the back straight away and needed to be carted off on a backboard, which no one wants to see. Annie had run right over the top of said downed rider and landed square on to top of her helmet.
When she rode up to Ted and I (We were warming up and chatting...he was as nervous as I was the first night and had all sort of questions) she seemed a little dazed, but was headed to redeem her coupon for free beer at one of the local pubs.
Our race started around 6:30 and they shortened it to 40 miles.
Long story short, I made it through on a bit of smarts and guts, moving up whenever I could take the chance and riding near the front. Still haven't made it off the front again, but we're trying. One or two funny things happened, like a guy hooking my hip with his handlebars coming out of one of the fast turns and both of us riding as one conjoined rider for 150 or so meters (a long time). Finally I got my hip turned enough, and he pedaled hard enough and we split, the both had a laugh about it for a minute as we went up the front stretch.
There were a few big crashes. By big I mean that 3 people went down and 15 took the opportunity to get a free lap. The only problem I had with it was that the officials were putting them back at the front of the main field each lap we came around (2 consecutive laps of 15-20 riders coming back on course). Normally I wouldn't care, but this put me at the back of what was now a fast moving field, and meant I had to do some serious shake and bake to move back up...and burn off some matches I still wanted.
The last 15 laps seemed like an eternity, and each lap being 1.2 miles meant it really was long.
Finished and was very, very happy to be done.
Took another day off yesterday-this time planned (the course was too much climbing for my tastes, along with my back being blown out from the night before, and it was 90 miles one-way to get there only to come back here today).
Awesome rest day. We went to the brand new Harley-Davidson museum and saw a bike basically from every year of production, plus some awesome historical bikes like part for part reproductions of the Captain America and Billy bike from Easy Rider (the real bikes have been MIA since the movie), some paraphernalia from the Boozefighters (the riding club that was the inspiration for The Wild Ones and was basically the precursor to the storied Hell's Angels club)-throw in some board racing video, ton's of old bikes, custom bikes, race bikes, military bikes and bike you could actually climb on and it was great!
Ate dinner down by the lake and took an hour spin on the lakefront, including some time riding on the docks and checking out sailboats.
While we were eating dinner next to the main road/a big intersection, I saw a Ford Escort slam on the brakes and turn completely perpendicular to the road before stopping perilously close to the cars already at the light-still sideways no less.
Wheels finally came in today, which I was pretty stoked about. Got the nipple I needed to finish them off last night and now they just need a few turns of the spoke wrench to be good to go!
Last nights race was blah. I realized my cranks were doing something weird day before yesterday, but I couldn't get any slop when I tried to check the tightness. Kept pedaling on this strange little course with no flow and tons of turns and it was just getting worse. Took it to SRAM, who diagnosed it as a blown bottom bracket and told me I could race on it and he didn't think it would explode, it would just probably feel really weird.
It did.
Only took about 3 laps on the course to realize it wasn't going to work. I was totally freaked out by the shifting of the cranks (3 mil either direction lateral play) and all I could think about was the cranks.
I pulled out.
I'm not sure it really mattered, because everyone I was riding with in my crappy starting spot got pulled after a gap opened.
Took it over to another mechanic, turns out the SRAM guys forgot to put a spacer back in when they pulled my cranks the first night to check on the noise. Wasn't a wasted trip, though, as I got the nipple I needed and a new pair of gloves to boot.
Headed to Evanston, Il now, home of the college I wanted to go to, Northwestern.