OK so maybe this isn’t really about the first six legs. You see since I was in van 2 I was not going to be a witness to these legs… At least not most of them. So I guess I’ll be writing about what we were doing while van 1 was running.
Soon after Erica took off we headed over to our cars. Van 1 runners went off to their car to support and cheer Erica on. Pep, Crissy, and I decided to join them in doing so before heading off to find our remaining teammates. We decided to go look for her at the same spot where just one year earlier we cheered on Javi during his first leg. Upon arriving we were graced by the presence of our former teammates as they waited there to cheer their own comrade. Now I must state here that I, personally don’t have a problem with these dudes but I fully understand why my current veteran teammates do. You’d have a problem too if one of the guys started one of your legs because you were stuck in traffic, or if they ran in at the end of the race without you, OR if they took the champagne you bought for the post race celebration and chugged it without sharing. I get it. And now we’d have to be racing them. And we’d have to share space at the cheer zones. Yay.
Erica shows up suddenly and we all cheer her loudly. After passing Roly and I repeat last year’s stunt and try to beat her to another cheer zone by racing ahead on a parallel street. Last year it was a cinch beating Javi there. This year we barely made it. Erica can run, folks! (no offense, Jav). Van 1 came around to pick up Roly. It was then that I realized I left my two companions half a mile back locked out of my truck. Oops! I jogged back, letting them in and we decided it was a good time for breakfast.
The three of us headed to Einstein Bros. to eat a bagelicious meal. When we got there we decided to check on Javi so we could pick him up after eating. It was then that I decided to play a prank on him. Of course it always seems that these things backfire… And so it did.
I called Javi and he answered. Before even saying hello I tell him we have bad news… Will got hurt in his first leg and since Javi has the shortest mile total for the Ragnar he’d be picking up his remaining legs. I figured he’d balk at this and then I’d yell “gotcha!” but that’s not what happened. “No problem I’ll do it but I have another problem.” Oh oh! Javi proceeded to explain that his middle child spent the night throwing up and that he needed to be taken to the doctor. Neither he nor Carmen got any sleep. This is a problem because Carmen was going to be our driver during the race. Now it appears that she was going to be out. Fortunately Javi was still in though I had thought otherwise based on his initial response to my “joke”. So we would have to drive on our own. We could handle it. I hung up with Jav, got something to eat for myself and Jav and had a nice meal with Pep and Crissy. We ate quickly to see if we could catch one more teammate along the way before heading to Jav’s. Just as I was getting up to leave I hear a voice from behind me. “Good luck, Wency!” I turn around to find an old friend, Jorge, whom I hadn’t seen in forever but who knew I was racing thanks to Facebook. It was really cool not just running into him but also getting random well wishes for the race. I was psyched now as we headed off to see if we could catch Will before he finished his run.
We call van 1 and they tell us that Will is done and that Javi was now off from right by UM. We were just around the corner. We hopped on the truck and headed to cut him off. We got to Miller Drive and 67th Avenue and as we waited at the late the inevitable happened – Javier crossed right in front of us! What were the chances. We turned and caught up to him yelling our support. Then we stopped at a gas station to cheer him on. As he approached we noticed that the guy was booking! He was going fast. Our team was going strong! Just then we saw van 1 passing by. We all cause a really big raucous the way only Cubans seem to know how to do and we see our teammates off one last time before catching up with them later at exchange 6 when it’d be our turn to run. Now it was off to Javi’s.
Criss, Pep, and I arrived at Javi’s house and we found him loading the van.. OUR van, Van #2. We quickly started grabbing our stuff from my truck and started packing our stuff into Javi’s van also. It didn’t take long for me to realize that our stuff was taking up a lot of space. I didn’t remember having so much stuff in the van last year. In fact, apparently we didn’t. This year, as opposed to last year, it appeared that Javi and I came extra prepared. Last year we were not UNprepared, but apprently we took extra precautions just in case. We only had packed for four runners so far and already we were fitting a bit tight in the car. We got the update from Javi on his son. Carmen was at the doctor with him and was working on securing babysitting for when they came back from the office. She would do her best to join us before we started making our way into the Keys.
Once we knew we had our driver back we started doing the van decorations. We pulled out the window markers and started showing off our mad drawing skills! On one side of the van we decided to write our leg lengths so we could cross them out as we completed them. But instead of writing our names next to the legs, we decided to adopt names for each one of us… fruit names… SPANISH fruit names. We named Nicole “Uva” (grape), Pep was Pina (Pineapple… I can’t find the squiggly think to put on the n, forgive me), Crissy was Quenepa (Mamonsillo to us Cubans… no idea what it is called in English) because it’s a Puerto Rican fruit name, Javi was Mango (mango… I know, lame if you ask me…), Chicky would be Guayaba (guava), and I was Guanabana (again clueless as to what it’s called in English… I just love saying that word… GUANABANA!) We figured that now that we had adopted names, that they could become our alter egos and that we would start referring to ourselves by these names! And we could do the same with Van 1, but with vegetable names like Quimbombo, and Boniato, and Zanahoria! Yeah, that never happened… alas, this is the last you’ll probably read about our adopted names. I just had to give a bit of print.
On the back window of the van we drew the Cuban flag and the Puerto Rican flag representing the countries of origin of all 7 inhabitants in our van… Javi was born in Cuba, Crissy and Carmen in Puerto Rico, and Pep, Chicky, Nicole, and I were all of Cuban descent. The flags would show we were representing! Of course we drew some fingers all over the van, and made some finger pulling comments all over. It had to be done, you know. We finished our masterpiece with plenty of time to finish packing and get over to Zoo Miami to meet up with van 2. In the process Javi asked Pep to finish putting his (Javi’s) stuff in the van. he pointed in the general direction of some stuff in the garage, to which Pep figured, it was an invitation to put EVERYTHING he could find in the van. Jav came out of the house to find the van packed with stuff, most notably a rather large wet-vac in the back (supposedly a reminder that van 2 “sucked”… feel free to slap your knee NOW). We finished the real packing, and we called Chicky to make sure we’d find them at the zoo. Upon doing so we realized that they hadn’t left their house to meet us at the zoo yet, so we decided to save them a trip and pick them up. Just before leaving, I checked to make sure I had everything and realized that I could not find my camera. I could have sworn I had it. One of my teammates was kind enough to point out where I had left it, and we all packed inside the van and headed out. Little did I know that this camera theme would repeat itself numerous times throughout the weekend.
We arrived at Chicky and Nicole’s and packed their stuff. we were really going to be tight. And that’s considering that Carmen hadn’t joined us yet! How were we going to fit once she met up with us? We’d have to figure that out later. We all climbed in and headed for Zoo Miami once and for all. We got to the zoo with plenty of time to spare as we waited for Roly to arrive. He still had about 4 miles to go when we got there so we knew we had a bit of time to relax and stretch out before we began our first part of this trek. We headed on over to the van 2 check-in area, made our presence known, and headed for the safety course (which 3 of us had already attended that morning) and then picked up our van two goody bags from the Ragnar people. This included gel shots, clif bars, body glide, toilet paper, temporary tattoos, and some other miscellaneous stuff. We also grabbed ourselves a complimentary box of a dozen doughnuts… and then another. We were a hungry bunch. That was when we got the call from van 2. They were parking and looking for us. Roly was probably less than 10 minutes away. We found the crew and did a little catching up with them about how their legs had gone. Apparently they had all run very well. It was only now that it was getting warm that Roly was starting to labor just a bit. We took some pictures of the group, and headed over to the exchange point. Nicole got herself mentally ready for her first run there. She would have no problems. This girl’s a warrior! We watched for a bit and sure enough we saw a red t-shirt coming in. He had given up his finger with about 3 miles left because of the increasing heat, but we were ready as he got close to the finish. The finger was transferred to him, and waving it up in the air he strode quickly to his first finish line. There he took the slap bracelet/baton, and slapped it on to Nicole. The exchange had been made. Van 2 was now on course…