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patrickautissier.org |
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SPONSORS 2005 |
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Good evening,
It’s 7pm, and I’m still writing this daily report from my hotel room in San Diego, CA. But don’t think I didn’t move since yesterday evening. After a good night sleep, Herve and I picked up the rest of the crew (Corinne, Deb and Rob), at the Long Beach Airport. Then, we picked up the RV, and drove down to San Diego. During that time, Jerome, Joel and Olivier took care of all the bikes stuffs that I will need and put in the van. After lunch, Deb did a great massage on me during one hour, and worked more specifically on the legs and the neck. The neck will need a constant care, because after 2 to 3 days of almost constant ride, lots of solo riders have their neck’s muscles like dead. And they need to find a way to solve this problem. So, prevention of this kind of issue is going to play a key role in this race. During my massage, the rest of the crew prepares the vehicles for inspection. It took 3 hours to put the logos on, set up all the bikes stuff inside of the van, checked the bikes, checked the van and the RV, etc…Finally, after lots of work, we passed successfully the inspection. The whole crew is very happy, the van and the RV look great, bikes are ready, and everything is under control. They even set up a place inside of the van where I would be able to sleep if we are too far from the meeting point with the RV.
After this first day where all the crew (except Steve who is still in LA!) worked together, I have to admit that I’m extremely happy. Everybody seems happy to be here. They work well together, have fun, and despite the fact that the crew is the mix of French and Americans people, there is no communication’s problem. Rob takes his role of crew chief very seriously, and everybody respects him. We are all rookies on RAAM, but we are doing great, and I have to say that I’m very proud and happy to have them with me.
Finally, I prepared a table that will be filled along the journey (every 24h), to give you more information. You will get the number of miles done, the number of miles left, how much time I stayed on the bike, my sleep time, the amount of calories intake, the rank, the number of cumulative miles ahead of the goal, that is 250 miles per day, and last but not least the number of visitors for my website. You’ll get also some photos, and maybe some interesting scientific data.
FYI, I receive more and more emails of support from you, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
Talk to you tomorrow,
Patrick |
