tent city

ok, so more about BRAN last week. it started in trenton this year, and being a ways out west the only difficult part about BRAN is getting to the start. there is a shuttle available but usually you can just bribe some friends to drive you, your camping gear, and bike(s) out to the start town. i was lucky because i was hitching a ride with my friend brent and his parents volunteered for the job. after a stop in brent's home town of aurora for a delicious lunch, connie & greg drove us to trenton and helped us unload. on the drive there i asked connie to help me name my corsa. being a native of bogota, she suggested cochise (but pronounced in spanish... 'co chee say'), which was the nickname of the colombian cyclist martin emilio rodriguez. we even share the same birthdate, april 14th, so cochise it is.
on the way there we stopped in lexington because connie and greg (and myself included) insisted that brent have a tent. he didn't want one, as he was just going to use a rain fly held up with twine between two trees and use twigs or whatever he could find for tent stakes. he likes to rough it, in the spirit of george nellis (of an american cycling odyssey, 1887, which i plan to read soon) he said. i admire anyone who goes the minimal route, but there was a good chance we were going to get a lot of rain that week so connie bought him a kid pup tent at wal-mart. it's not a bad little tent for $20. after setting up camp we headed over to the grandstand for the opening meeting. it was a good crowd, i had heard there were around 635 participants this year. i was rider #614.