Wednesday night out-of towners started arriving. Roly and Cory came in from D.C. to stay at Roly’s mom’s house. They took advantage and went to the Orange Bowl where they got to witness history with the highest scoring bowl game in history.. though I’m not sure it was an entirely watchable game… I do enjoy seeing defense being played from time to time myself. Crissy also came in to stay with her aunt (from her mother’s side; we’re related from her father’s side) Wednesday night to get herself ready for Thursday’s team meeting. Javier and Erica were going to be coming in Thursday and driving straight to dinner. It was this very Thursday around 5 pm that I get the text from Javier telling me that he’s looking forward to seeing me “tomorrow” for dinner. Tomorrow? I knew that Javier was a kidder, but I was in the middle of tutoring a student and didn’t have time to play along… so I gently reminded him that he BETTER BE no more than two hours away. “Isn’t the dinner tomorrow, and the race on Saturday?” Look, I’ve lost enough hair dealing with four kids and 150 students on a daily basis. I was just NOT up for this. I gently reminded Javier that I needed no more stress, and he was nice enough to send me a picture text of Erica chucking it up in the car at my expense. HAHA, Jav! You won that round. In a couple of hours we were all going to be gathering as a team for the first time. It was going to be interesting.
I finished tutoring at around 6 and headed off to go pick up my cousin. Dania rounded up all the kids from all their different activities and began making her way to Chicky and Nicole’s to meet us there. The majority of the Miami team members was bringing their entire families to the dinner, so this was going to be an all out reunion here. Luckily Nicole had planned accordingly and made more than enough food for everyone (close to 40 of us). This girl’s a badass!
Dinner was meant to carb us up real well for the race. Nic made two different types of pasta, we brought garlic bread and salad, and Nic finished everything off with a healthy dessert consisting of banana pudding with cocoa powder (I think). It was all awesome. But the best part of the night was getting to meet our new teammates once and for all. I took everyone their tee shirts and the foam fingers that had been delivered to me upon being ordered by Roly. After some mingling we all made our way outside to take our first pictures sporting the fingers. The next day we would all be sporting the tees. We couldn’t wait! We came inside, said a little prayer over the great food and for a safe race and dug in to the food. After eating rather quickly, I made sure everybody had been introduced and we did some last second planning. I was still amazed at how smoothly everything had gone to this point. Something was bound to go contrary to plan. Truth is nothing REALLY did. Only one thing went contrary to what I pictured… I would have to deal with it.
In my mind, I had figured that the entire team would be at the start line to begin the race. The year before I found it very disheartening that #1) half our team had never even MET the van 2 inhabitants until exchange 6 (we had already averted this), and #2) that there was absolutely NO camaraderie among those in our two vans. I figured all of us starting together would set us off on the right direction. I had proposed this at an earlier meeting without objection from anybody (except for Chicky who had a valid excuse, needing to finish some work before setting off with us), and thought we were set. That is until 8pm on Thursday. A number of team members, particularly from van 1 began encouraging me to sleep in, along with my van mates. I was adamantly against this. I wanted to be there to start! They then told me that I shouldn’t expect the same of the others in my van. I started to realize that maybe I really should give them the option to sleep in contrary to my own preference. It was then that I realized that there were two teammates who wanted to maximize their sleep: Nic and Javi. Crissy and Pep, though decided that they’d join me at the start. I looked at the big picture and decided that maybe it was best for each person to prep however they needed for the race… there would be nine of us at the start, and 3 saving their energy for their trek.
It was settled then. I’d be sending off my van 1 teammates after what would hopefully be a good night sleep. But just before everyone departed I got one more word of caution from Javier, “Sleep in, Wence. You’ll regret it later.” “I’ll be good… nothing will stop me from sending my team off!” were my famous last words. Everyone then began to head off home to sleep, but I had one thing left to do. I had convinced Roly to shave the Ragnar logo onto the back of my head… or better said, shave my head leaving the Ragnar logo behind. we went into Chicky’s garage and the art project began. Roly assured us that he was an “Artiste”, and that my head would turn out a masterpiece, and after a bit of work, I must admit that Roly had done his job well. The team was ready, the theme was set, my head was done. GAME TIME!
I dropped Crissy off and told her I’d be picking her up at 5:30-5:45 am. I headed for home to make last second arrangements figuring I’d be in bed by 9:30, so I could get 7 hours of sleep. YEAH RIGHT! Once home, the kids were going crazy and getting them down wasn’t easy. I, who am always paranoid about leaving something behind, double and triple checked everything. And Dania asked me to help her get things ready for the next day because after all I was leaving her at home with four kids on a school night, and the four kids, two of which I normally take to school, all go to different schools providing Dania with a logistical nightmare upon my departure. I got in bed around 11 but couldn’t go to bed. One reason is that I was wired. The other was that i wanted to find out the outcome of the Heat game that night that had gone into overtime. I had my phone with me getting updates every minute. And as the time passed I saw the game go into a second overtime… and then into a THIRD overtime, and by the time it was over, it was midnight. So much for a good night’s rest. No problem, I figured. I’ll just sleep when I get to Javi’s house in the Keys at 6:30…
5 am found me awake and getting ready to pick up Pep and Crissy. I wandered off to Pep’s house to pick up a guy I barely knew, but who I was going to spend the next 48 hours with in some form or another, 31 of which were going to be stuck in a van together. This would be as good a time as any to start bonding. I picked Pep up and headed over to Crissy’s aunt’s place. It was now 6 am and we were headed off to Virginia Key in Key Biscayne. As we drove there, I realized I had a live one with Pep. The closer we got to the start line, the more runners we came across, and as I started beeping at the runners, Pep immediately started yelling along with me at each one… “RAGNARRRRRRR!!!” This guy was going to be fun! We finally made it to Virginia Key and worked on locating our teammates. We parked and immediately encountered our competition (one of 500 other teams), The Marathon MILFS. We saw them getting ready to head off, and got a chance to wish them luck. we also got to meet the driver… the only male in a van with 6 women. We weren’t sure if this was a blessing or a curse, but something told me it’d be the latter. He wore a t-shirt saying Marathon MDILF (D for Driver). At least the guy had a sense of humor. We left our van and went in search of van 1. The race would soon begin!