There is always at least one day of this race that tests the riders more than the rest. Not really a fun day but more of an experience to be conquered. The forecast for the area was flash flooding and thunderstorms. The storms were still a couple hours to the west at the start so there was a chance that if the riders were fast enough, they could come home dry. Any delay would compound as the storms arrived. Soaking the rider and the bike, and generally adding negatively to the experience.
Team T3 was out front early and started to report rain around 12:30. At 1:00pm Maitland took the first rain related failure as his bike stopped sparking. Shortly after, Chad also lost spark from a downpour. Maity spoke a little Italian sign language to the v1, it’s native tongue, and it started back up. While Chad just took the whole ignition off to dry. Both must have exercised the demons successfully since they eventually made it to the end with no more major failures.
Team *checks notes* Kwik Seedy Bear Rinks More Pet Cup Team Bye Bye Pie laughed off yesterdays troubles and finished first with a finish time of 3 hours and 48 minutes. Not far behind was Team T3 just eleven minutes later. Three minutes after that the Team Family Clark Bamd (*checks notes* yep, that’s right too) finished for the day. The Tylers plus a Travis have now built up a formidable lead over the second place Chad. But word is they might tune down to a 50cc kit to make it an even fight with Chads 50cc motor. Would I do that? Of course not, but they seem to have a wilder orbit than me.
Jose, for the third day in a row, needed the frame rewelded by the end of the run. He also lost some time fighting a short to ground on the ignition system. Opting to just swap the whole thing out and get going again. Sill, with all the setbacks, he managed a final time of 5 hours and 5 minutes. Fer, one of the three people running chase in Asian Amigos, along with Rica and René, contacted me to say they enjoyed the daily updates but didn’t really know much about mopeds. You know what, I don’t believe that’s true. From what I can tell they know everything about mopeds anyone will ever need to know; they break a lot so just have fun.
Now for those that haven’t realized yet, I’m not actually at Bakers Dozen Run. In fact I’ve never done it. A great shame I understand I will have to face at some point. But until then I’ll just be at home smashing F5 on Glympse. And as I did I kept seeing Jordan in the same spot, fairly south on the route. Was the app misfiring? Did his phone go down? Was there something seriously wrong? Well, I’m not sure, but he didn’t start moving again until 4:45pm. By that time the rain had been falling for hours. Some of the other riders also noticed that he was heading to a particularly steep, one lane road, that Chad had to push his bike up earlier. All the people at base camp threw the glympse tracker up on the big screen and just watched as Jordan hit the hill strait on then stopped. There was nothing they could do but try to cheer so loud that he could feel the spirit in the air and conquer that hill. He did make it to the top of the hill, of course he did! But he had a lot of ground to make up. Just to really top off the day at 8:30, in the dark and the pouring rain he pulled a little pork. Everyone sat around fixed to the moving avatar of Jordan on the tv as he finally pulled into camp at 9:38pm, barely avoiding the 12 hour mark and setting the single longest day for a rider of the race so far.
Two more days to go, and word is that Friday is the longest of them all. The weather doesn’t look any better either so I hope the teams get a good nights rest, it might be another long one.