It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve blogged. A bunch has happened….but it’ll come up in chunks.

Worked as an official at the Fort Ritchie Criterium on May 10. Very nice venue. Started out rainy and chilly but got nice later in the day. All the racers raved about the course. But what a long day! First race at 8am, last race finished at about 5:45pm. And it was almost 2 hours to drive to the race, so that meant on the road at about 5am. McDonald’s doesn’t even serve breakfast that early! By the last race of the day I was brain dead and hard pressed to function fully. I’m not sure how many crits I will want to work in the future because of the fatigue factor. It was a good crew – me, Lisa, Jim Patton and Lew Strader, with John K. on the moto. Lots of fun over all. Technical issues arose from our attempts to be fully digital with results. The promoter used an algorithm to assign bib numbers, so when we tried to sort for results, things got all out of whack. And they were bringing us files that didn’t have the race-day entries. Jim handling the typing side of things. I guess eventually I’ll get a notebook computer so I can have it along with me for doing similar work.

As a woman racer, I was definitely annoyed by the fact that there were lots and lots of men's races (many with relatively small fields) but only one women's field. More races need to be like RFK!

Lisa & I stopped in Frederick for dinner. Nice brew-pub with decent food and good beer. Then we strolled around the historic downtown and checked out a couple of galleries before driving home. Didn’t get home until after 10pm. It was an exhausting day.

My original plan for the 11th was a bike ride and then make a nice dinner for mom for Mother's Day. Instead my brother and his clan came over for a few hours. I think we all enjoyed the visit - good to see the little ones as they change so fast when they're toddlers. But I had really been hoping for a quiet day. Not that cooking wouldn't have been demanding in its own way, but it would have been low key and a different kind of fun. Oh well.