Racing
The races were in Dacula, Georgia. Robert's road race was first, at 10:45 AM on Saturday morning. That meant that we didn't have to get up terribly early - about the same time as a weekday morning.
It was great to see some of my Sorella cycling friends, particularly Jennifer, who was one of my RAAM teammates in 2015.
Jennifer won the women's Masters 50+ road race! I wasn't surprised a bit. Even at 62, she is one of the strongest female cyclists in Georgia.
Soon after that, it was time for the men's Masters 50+ road race. I watched Robert start and then set out for my own warm-up ride.
I started doing interval training once a week toward the end of January. I do so much long, endurance riding that I knew I needed to work on intensity and speed to get ready for TT season. Although I'm not currently at my peak TT fitness, my interval training over the past few months definitely has helped.
I've been doing my interval training on my road bike so I don't have to constantly switch my power meter back and forth between by road bike and my TT bike. I ride in a fairly aggressive position, and so specific training on my TT bike perhaps isn't as critical for me as for some people. Still, ideally I would have ridden my TT bike for this first time this season sooner than this past Saturday. Fortunately, it was in fine working order thanks to my soigneur (i.e., Robert), and it felt as comfortable as if I had just ridden it last week.
Using Garmin Connect, I found a 22-mile route right at the race venue that didn't interfere with the race course. I had a good tempo ride that also helped me get ready for my TT.
When I finished my TT pre-ride, I Googled nearby restaurants. I brought back some Blimpie sandwiches. They wrote on the outside so Robert and I would know which sandwich was whose. As if there were any doubt...
Robert had just finished his race when I got back with the sandwiches - good timing for him but a little weird for me. My TT start time was 2:11 PM. I needed a little fuel for the race (I hadn't eaten since breakfast at around 7:00 AM), but a whole sandwich would be too much to race on. So, I ate a few bites before the race and saved the rest for afterwards.
The person in front of me didn’t show up. Therefore, there was a “ghost rider” in front of me, and everyone after that kept their originally scheduled start times to avoid confusion. The guy lining us up knew about the ghost rider, but he didn’t get a chance to tell the other official counting us down at the starting line. I told her, however, and she was glad I knew protocol. I said, “This isn’t my first rodeo,” right before I rolled out.
During a TT, my thought processes aren’t quite normal because I’m riding so hard that some of my brain circuits feel like they’re starting to overheat. Generally, all I can think about is what’s right at hand: this climb, this turn I’m making, etc. However, I did have at least one tangential thought during Saturday's TT. It occurred to me that I should have said, “This ain’t my first rodeo” instead of “This isn’t my first rodeo.” That made me think of John Kerry’s quote: “Who among us doesn’t love NASCAR?” (which, by the way, he never actually said). I’m glad I wasn’t coherent enough to laugh at this whole sequence of thoughts until after the race.
I rode well. I kept my focus throughout the race, putting out as much effort as I could and giving it all I had as I crossed the finish line. Can you believe that Jennifer beat me by 12 seconds and had the overall fastest women's TT time? And she was on a road bike!
I don't think I could have ridden 12 seconds faster. So, I'm satisfied with my performance, and it was enough to put me on top of the women's 40+ podium!
With the toughest part of the weekend finished, Robert and I headed out for even more fun.
Relaxing
A few weeks ago, I had suggested to Robert that we go to a nice restaurant on Sunday evening for our anniversary. When he considered that we would be racing in Dacula the day before, he came up with a much more intriguing alternate plan: have Sunday brunch at a cool Midtown restaurant we discovered a few months ago and spend Saturday night somewhere interesting.
Thanks to the Google, I found a great hotel deal for us: the Ellis Hotel in downtown Atlanta. The website describes it as a "boutique hotel." I didn't know exactly what that meant, but it sounded pretty good (more on that in a moment...).
It's a little over an hour's drive from Dacula to downtown Atlanta when traffic is good. Traffic was not good on Saturday afternoon. Google took us on several detours, but that turned out to be a good thing.
Ultimately, we approached downtown from the east, on DeKalb Avenue. DeKalb Avenue has all kinds of wonderful murals along the way. I couldn't get any photos of those then, but while we were stopped, I did get one of this building with the scraggly bit of vegetation. Note the middle sign:
We soon arrived at the Ellis Hotel and opted for valet parking - simple, secure, and not much more expensive than trying to find a public parking lot on our own. Besides, we planned to walk everywhere during our time downtown.
I had assumed that the "boutique" description of the Ellis Hotel meant that it would be rather small (a la European hotels) and not part of a chain. Those were certainly true of the Ellis, but later I learned other characteristics of boutique hotels. They don't have many rooms (fewer than 100), they tend to be in the city, and they have a one-of-a-kind atmosphere. These describe the Ellis, too. It was clean and elegantly comfortable with a definite contemporary vibe.
To be on the safe side, Robert and I took our bicycles to our room. The hotel staff didn't mind a bit, but I don't think that's something they see every day. A little quirkiness, however, fits right in with a boutique hotel.
 |
| Robert at the elevator with his bicycle |
After getting clean and fresh, Robert and I were ready for an evening in the ATL! We started at the restaurant at our hotel because our timing was perfect for their $2 Wine Down. It was a beautiful, warm spring evening to enjoy their patio and take in the downtown sights.
This carriage looked just like Cinderella's coach that was on top of my birthday cake when I turned 6:
As we sat on the patio at the hotel, we discussed where we wanted to go for dinner. We thought about Der Biergarten, an excellent German restaurant we've been to a couple of times. However, particularly with so many choices, all within walking distance, we wanted to try something new. Google to the rescue again! I quickly discerned where we had to go: Trader Vic's.
I probably heard of Trader Vic's while I was growing up in metro Atlanta, but it really captured my attention several months back when I read an article about it in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Asian-inspired cuisine - heavy on the seafood - served among kitschy Polynesian decor: that sounded like just the ticket.
Robert and I walked the few blocks to Trader Vic's, located in the basement of the Hilton Atlanta. A hostess led us past bamboo covered walls, faux tropical vegetation, and miscellaneous South Pacific decorative items. Maybe Trader Vic's recycled the sets from Gilligan's Island. I pretended that Robert and I had won a reward challenge on Survivor.
Because Trader Vic's is home to the original mai tai, there was no question about which adult beverage to order:
 |
| One must always wear one's Cinco de Mayo chile peppers to a Polynesian restaurant. |
I had a good salad and some delicious macadamia-crusted mahi mahi. Fish/seafood is my favorite type of meat. Robert had bacon-wrapped scallops cooked in a wood-fired oven:
Following our most satisfactory meal, I stopped on the way out to read this comic strip posted near the entrance. (I love comic strips!)
The sun had not yet set, and so Robert and I walked around as twilight descended. A number of people were enjoying the fountains at Centennial Olympic Park:
The fountain jets spray intermittently, apparently randomly. It was particularly fun to watch an Indian family at the fountain. It looked like three generations. The grandmother, spectacular in her sari, had made her way to the center of the fountain without getting wet. She was ready to come back out and wanted to stay dry. The family and various onlookers laughed in delight as she watched the jets, waiting for just the right moment to dash to dry safety.
Some coffee (Robert) and tea (me) sounded good, but, alas, all of the nearby coffee shops had closed. So, we walked back to our hotel. We read the historic marker next to our hotel, which originally was the Winecoff Hotel:
It's terrible that tragedies like this often seem to be required before we humans take appropriate safety precautions. On the other hand, the technical side of me is impressed with the success of fire safety codes since the Winecoff fire.
Robert and I certainly are habits of creature, as our friend Dale would say. Compared to the dozens of people we could hear on the streets below our hotel room, we went to bed much earlier and got up much earlier than they did.
It was nice not to have to get up to an alarm clock, but we still didn't sleep that late. By the time we packed up, got our car back from valet parking, and drove to Babs for brunch, we still arrived a few minutes before their 9:00 AM opening.
Babs is such a great discovery. Robert and I found it a few months ago when we stayed overnight in Atlanta for the Georgia Engineering Awards. At that time, we thought we might go to The Flying Biscuit, which is locally famous, but when we saw a line stretching out the door there, we turned to The Google for other options. Babs was close, sounded good, and didn't have a wait. The food was outstanding - good enough for us to use our anniversary weekend as an excuse to go back.
This past Sunday morning, Babs was busier than it had been when Robert and I were there in February, but we still were seated right away. The menu is seasonal. Given our particular affinity for Italian food, I love the current theme of La Dolce Vita.
Knowing Robert as I do, I correctly predicted that he would have a tough time choosing between the Italian Holiday and the Pisa-Pisa Omelet. I recommended the Pisa-Pisa Omelet because how often do you get pepperoni at breakfast? He took my suggestion. I ordered one of the specials, poblano pepper lasagna. The Sweet Life, indeed.
It was a beautiful morning - bright blue skies, warm but not hot. Atlanta really is a nice place on Sunday morning when traffic is light. Because we didn't have to rush to get home, I wanted to revisit DeKalb Avenue and check out the murals more closely.
First were the pteranodons flying above power poles.
Thanks to my friend Hunt Kelly, I learned that these are pteranodons, not pterodactyls. Pterodactyls don't have a crest. What we usually see in pop culture are actually pteranodons. Furthermore, it's scientifically incorrect to refer to either of these creatures as flying dinosaurs. A separate order from dinosaurs ("terrifying reptiles"), pteranodons and pterodactyls are types of pterosaurs ("winged reptiles"). Pterosaur: isn't that a great word?
As cool as the pteranodon mural was, I was even more eager to go back to another mural we had passed. It depicts many of Georgia's major rivers and their native flora and fauna. As if that's not amazing enough, the mural is physically located on the Eastern Sub-Continental Divide; water that falls north of the mural flows to the Gulf of Mexico, and water that falls south of the mural flows to the Atlantic Ocean.
I started at the east end of the mural and took pictures all the way down, 33 in all. Later, I created a looping slide show in PowerPoint to show during breaks in my erosion and sedimentation control certification classes. I hope my students find the mural as inspiring as I do.
Because 33 more photos would be a lot more pictures to include in this write-up, here's a small sample:
 |
| This section of the mural represents approximately where Robert and I live within Georgia's watersheds (also see next photo). |
 |
| These three rivers converge at Jackson Lake, which borders Jasper County and marks the beginning of the Ocmulgee River. |
"I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers."
- Langston Hughes
Robert and I made it home earlier than I anticipated, before noon. As we drove by our church, I joked that we ought to stop and get the flowers we had provided for that morning's service. We always do the flowers on the first Sunday in May in honor of our anniversary. Although I didn't snag the flowers then, I did go back later in the afternoon to pick them up. The florist did a nice job with the white and green color scheme that I had requested.
This has been a whole lot of stuff about our anniversary weekend, but then there's been a whole lot of love in our 23 years of marriage. Ride on!
No comments:
Post a Comment