in ur Kansas, rockin ur osm!11!!! (hahaha)

We've almost made it to the half-way point, and I think it's fair to say the crew is handling it a lot better than we expected. No one has attempted homicide, nor has anyone seriously declared they were defecting to another team (though we've joked about it; Team NUBS might appreciate an extra hand, after all...)

For a bunch of rookies, we're kickin' butt. In spite of losing about two hours of racing time, we're in third place. We didn't really start out to compete, but the competitive streak has been surfacing in the racers and in the crew.

You're probably wondering about those two hours. About an hour and a half of it was due to an RV navigational error early yesterday morning (...Yeah, my bad. Though I hear the van missed the turn, too; Kristy was the only one paying attention to the GPS, and thus the only one to tell the rest of us where we messed up). We had a very irate pair of cyclists and an agitated crew chief as a result of that one, though Bernie and Tim were patient enough to not strangle anyone for it. The remaining time was due to a bike problem last night/v. v. early this morning. I don't know the specifics; something about the wheel wobbling in a dangerous way while Bernie was descending.

Otherwise, things are amazing. The crew has been getting along fabulously well, and no one has threatened to kill each other (except me and Kristy, but this is normal.) I keep forgetting I'm crossing the country with -- quite literally -- a bunch of strangers.

Tell everybody: Team Strong Heart is rockin' hardcore.