Experience the Event - 2004

Donna's Journal

Sunday, June 13

I wanted to sleep in this morning, really I did. But I'm just not made that way, especially after the early wake-ups of this past week. Plus, I still have stuff to do.

After Closing Ceremonies, some of the Mumfords piled into our passenger van for the last time and I dropped them at the airport, at a friend's, with family. We left Dodger Stadium at 6:15 but I didn't get home until around 9:30 . Now, I've got to do one last sweep of the van, put things in storage and take it back to the rental place where it started more than a week ago. I always find things that don't belong to me when I do this. Extra hats and pillows, balls, tarps, books, chairs, beads, things like that, they all just go into storage for next year.

Everything is tucked away and now I'm driving the van for the last time. I'm still exhausted and my mind easily drifts across the schtick and events and people and images of the past week, the bits and pieces coming in no particular order.

The Mumfords, an eagle feather on the grass, the captains and our meetings, fire dancing sans soundtrack, Ginger, "It's not a jellyfish," Einstein's water bottle, Sherry's wardrobe malfunction, Big Daddy in a Gilligan hat, Elvis, Pat white-knuckling it in the back of the van, an intimate concert, that damned forklift, the mechanical bull, Supergirl, Princess in a Sophia Loren bathing suit on the beach, mindless gossip, cookies and coffee with the boys from route marking, a warm breakfast, my friends Ken and Beth, shopping at the lost and found, my sponsors, Eric passing out ice-cream on a hot afternoon, the joy of a good shower, fleece, car games in the van, Pat's ovation and her tears, tired voices, allergies, a nice massage, a smile, hugs for no reason, bikes in a row, bubbles on tables, Groadie hats, red dresses, Craig in drag, bad hair, Tommy, Cal and Jeff, last year's wedding couple now pregnant, a kind word, a dead battery, feeling dirty, stinging lips, big hats, the cowboy showers, a talking buffalo head, laundry in Paso, snoring strangers, candles on the beach, seaweed where it shouldn't be, a funny story, an instant tent city, butt balm, Leslie, never knowing where the gas tank is, baptism by fire in the really big truck, the Remembrance tent, Mark, Morro Bay and the Madonna Inn, artichokes and onions, fields of flowers, rows of lettuce, a sunrise, a sunset, a good tired, a nap, a laugh, yes, people are good, God is there, we are a community.

I get to the van place and make one last check for stray stuff. Good thing. There is one item. I grab it and head to the city bus stop for the ride home. It's L.A. and it will take awhile, but I won't mind; the ride is just another way to rest. Before long, the bus heaves to a stop. I climb aboard, toting this last item. It gets its own spot on the seat beside me as I settle in.

The bus lurches into traffic and me and my 50-pound bag of onions head for home.

Day 7

Closing Ceremonies are today. But that comes later. Now it's morning. The crew is still sleeping and I'm sifting through the contents of our gear truck.

There's a lot of stuff in here. Most of it has nothing to do with setting up camp. Baseballs. Old frisbees we haven't used. New ones we bought to supplement the old ones. A coffee pot. Broken tent stakes. Hanging towels. Water bottles half-full. Wind socks. Lasagna, eww. Kites. Lots and lots of lounge chairs. A floral curtain.

And that 50-pound bag of onions.

Right now I'm reflecting on what's to come. We'll break down camp this morning, collect our personal things and head down to Dodger Stadium. There, we'll cool our heels awhile, exchange hugs and hats and beads and things. We'll sort ourselves out and everyone will enter into Closing Ceremonies, triumphant.

It's really moving watching all those bone-tired cyclists as they take that last hill. It's really moving being there, feeling another kind of bone tired and walking in behind them. We're all too tired for stoicism, so tears will come. They always do.

When it's over, we'll hold each other a final time, but then we'll drift off to return to the worlds we came from. It's odd to me, that last part. The drifting off part. After a week of being inseparable. After days and days of intimacy, the spell is broken and we become, not strangers, but some less familial version of the people we've been all week. We'll all promise to return -- why wouldn't we -- and we'll vow to keep in touch and we'll say we're lifelong friends, but only time will tell us whether that's true. Still, the experience of this week is not diminished, nor are we, if the friends we've known this week do not become the friends of our future.

But that's later. Right now, I've got to figure out what to do with these onions.

Something else: Adrienne is 24 today. The most important thing on the Mumford Family agenda is to celebrate her birthday. We've already set up an extra tent -- we've told Adrienne it's Mark's -- and we've filled it with balloons, a card, some decorations and of course, the monkey-covered foot stool from Big Lots. Actually, it's Sherry who's done the lion's share of the decorating. But we're all in on it.

The kids rouse and shower and eat and start to do what I'm doing. Personal items go here, tents there, gear stuff somewhere else. It's the first phase of the separation we'll know later, but we don't feel it so much right now.

Once everything's where it's supposed to be, I ask Adrienne to break down "Mark's" tent. "Open it up and check inside before you do, just to make sure he hasn't left anything in there," I tell her.

Adrienne slogs over to the tent, the rest of the clan trailing ridiculously behind her. She unzips it and there it is: birthday in a can. Or in this case, birthday in a tent. She likes it. We sing happy birthday. For me, this is the Closing Ceremony.

Day 6

It's funny what counts as rumor. But in camp, it's important to be able to know the difference between rumor and fact since rumors fly, most of them dopey.

This is an actual exchange from the other day. Me: "This is Kate. She's a member of my crew. Also, she's my sister." The listener: "Yes. I heard that rumor."

In this example, fact and rumor are one and the same, despite the fact (or maybe the rumor) that there's virtually nothing newsworthy about the information to begin with. Still, it all goes into the rumor mill.

Anyway, today really marks the end of our official duties. But we still travel with the event, helping out where we can. I try to give my people a free day on this day, since they are on day #7 of the event, while everyone else is only on day #6. As a result, requests for the use of members of my setup crew aren't exactly ignored, but we don't jump to respond to them either. We all seem to have a lot of malfunctioning walkies, if you know what I mean.

That's the rumor, anyway.

So we wake up a little late, dawdle on our way out of camp, just a little, and take our sweet time getting to the event's final camp in Ventura. When I go to the breakfast line, I still wear my pajama bottoms. It's that kind of day. After helping clean up the camp in Lompoc, we hop in our big big cars and make an all-important stop at Big Lots.

Rumor has it that Adrienne's 24th birthday is coming up. And we know just what she needs to enjoy next year's camp in style. A foot stool. But this isn't just any foot stool. It's got green-faced monkeys on the fabric. Playing in the trees. And it opens at the top, revealing a secret storage place for all her in-camp personal items. You can put a comb in there, or some money, some makeup or a copy of the Bible. And it all comes for not much more than ten bucks.

In the store, members of the Mumford family distract Adrienne by taking her on a mock shopping spree in the Barbie section. Meanwhile, Kate, Sherry and I buy the foot stool and enlist Pat's help to stow it in our van. After that, we're off to Ventura.

We arrive, the Mumfords head out to the beach and I am once again off to the very important high-level captains' meeting.

A captain: "Donna. Did you hear? So-and-so has a hickey." Me: "Hockey? Who said anything about hockey?" Another: "I HEARD about that monkey. It's living in someone's tent…"

There is some mention of minor items like breaking down the camp and the plans for closing ceremonies. Then: "One of the cyclists gave birth to a calf." "A cat? I thought it was a monkey…" "Who gave so-and-so the hickey?" "The cat of course. Or was it the monkey." "The one from the tent?"

Who needs The Weekly World News when you have the captains' meeting?

Before long, the rumor mill spills out into dinner. There, those of us who MAKE THE EVENT HAPPEN cool our heels outside the dining tent, waiting for the moment when we're all acknowledged from the stage. When we're acknowledged, we're really acting as proxies for the members of our respective teams. But it somehow always takes forever before we're actually trotted up there.

More time to gossip.

All the chatter stops when we're led to a candlelight vigil on the beach, a moment of clarity amid the hours of rumor and innuendo. There, I stand in a circle of light and silence, watching my candle flicker down, melting wax teardrops on the sand.

Day 5

Today is our last day of really hard work. Not only that, this camp's on-site forklift is more tractor than forklift to accommodate the bumpy, grassy terrain we have here. I eyeball it and determine it is beyond my capacity to operate. Woo-hoo! Forklift Girl is liberated.

"Donna. I need you to get your forklift and move some toilets…" It's Mark, our fearless and highly competent site manager. "No can-do. It's beyond my training…" I'm really not certain that the forklift is beyond my training, I only assume it. Better to be safe than sorry.

Anyway, liberation from the forklift means I can actually get down and dirty with my crew, which I like best of all. And since today's ride is a short one, some of the route crews are available to help us and things go fast fast fast.

Time for a shower. There, I meet Kelly, a cyclist and ride leader who inquires about the work of our setup team. I tell her a thing or two about the things we do and how we do them. She asks me how many members are on my team. "Six, plus me is seven," I tell her.

Her mouth drops.

"I thought you were going to tell me 40 or something. That is unbelievable." She then starts to tell the people around us about the amazing feats of the setup crew. I like it. I like people to know that we work as hard as we do and I like for my kids: Sherry, Lauren, Adrienne, Ralph, Pat and Kate to get the credit they deserve. Thank you Kelly and thank you crew.

And since we're taking care of loose ends, I have a few little pieces of business I need to take care of. For one thing, you must know that, thanks to something Kate spotted in a local newspaper in Paso, the members of Setup A have started to refer to themselves as The Mumford Family.

Go Mumfords.

Another little thing has to do with being resourceful. Did you know that a passenger van is also a hotel? So many people are using the Mumford Family van for napping these days that I've taken to checking it for bodies before starting it up.

Speaking of starting cars, the Mumfords did overextend their truck battery and had to get a jump. This while Tommy and Eric were dealing with a bigger truck-related problem that called on them to slide under a truck and do some kind of boyish tinkering that left them feeling greasy and very manly.

Also, there are a number of wonderful people who I see in my travels and who I must mention in no particular order: the Beths, Walker and Koeneke, Tina, Jeff, Cal, Mark, Eric, Fred, Dave, Fran, the Tims, Garis and Irvin, Ginger, Ernest, Craig, Ken, Virginia, Devon, Leslie, Tommy, Alisa, Mike, Rachel… It does go on and on and I don't want to miss anybody but I know I have missed some people. Lots of them. But know that if I could write the name of everyone in camp here I would.

Really, that's all for today. Tonight's talent night. I love talent night.

Day 4

It’s quirky day. Have I told you about Adrienne? She’s new to our little crew and a friend of Princess’. Adrienne is a blast and has many talents. She’s very fashion-forward, even when she’s sleeping on the ground or lugging a table across a cement floor. She wears great hats and likes scarves. I suspect she’s crafty, but in that cool way that’s funky and phresh. She’s fun and funny and about to turn 24. In a matter of weeks, she and Princess will be college roommates.

While working on the grid today, Adrienne turns into Supergirl. She attaches a trash bag cape to her fashion-forward casual wear, thrusts one fisted arm out in front of her and assumes a determined crime-fighting face. She wants to look like she can leap tall buildings in a single bound but she kind of looks like she has to go potty.

I collapse on the grass, laughing.

The best thing about this moment is that Adrienne does this Supergirl thing without a hint of self-consciousness. It’s great.

Meanwhile, Kate’s nearby, calculating the math required for today’s grid. ON THE EINSTEIN WATER BOTTLE. I should mention that we’re starting to collect her Einstein water bottles and display them in a cluster in the truck.

Today is also the day when Ralph and Pat get to see the Madonna Inn for the first time. I insist on it in spite of Ralph’s initial ambivalence. We stop to take the five-minute tour. We do a quick spin around the dining room and bar, poke our faces into the informal café and check out the room photos in the inn’s elaborate lobby. Then I command Ralph to go downstairs and relieve himself in the hostelry’s famous men’s room. He does. After, a flushed Ralph returns and thanks me for the tour. He’s almost apologetic about his earlier ambivalence. “If you ever tell me I’ve got to see something, I will never question you again.”

Good. That’s how I like it.

In other news, rider #2308 graciously agrees to give a live performance at Camp #4 in Santa Maria . I won’t name names, but suffice to say that if I’m the camp’s Forklift Girl, she’s the camp’s Guitar Girl. Anyway, this performance of hers is not one anyone wants to miss. Unfortunately for us, her short concert happens in a camp Setup B manages, and not in one that belongs to us. On the up side, strings are pulled, we work our brains out to finish our day’s work in time and I’m able to send the kids back to Santa Maria to see this very special concert. And thanks to the kindness, quick thinking and generosity of Setup B’s captain Tim, we get the best seats in the house. Thank you Tim!

That’s the one advantage of being on the team that actually pulls the seats off the truck and places them in the house. You can put your own damn seats anywhere you want and nobody can do a whole lot about it. “Get out of my seat. I didn’t see YOU slogging these chairs off the truck this afternoon.”

Day 3

Today is a day of simple pleasures. It starts with a late wake-up at 7:00 a.m., moves to a hot breakfast and then on to work that goes smoothly.

The tent grid is ready before 9:30 and we’re all very proud of it. Wide aisles, clean rows, a giant aisle that opens in the middle. It sounds simple and it is, but as the week wears on, it is those simple things that come to mean the most.

Once our team’s work is done, the crew gets a break and I turn into Forklift Girl. Lately, I’ve begun to worry that Forklift Girl is my new identity. The forklift and I are now permanently attached in everyone’s mind, like a family heirloom or a fine bottle of wine. “Donna, report to Sports Med. Don’t forget Grandma’s teapot and that nice merlot. Also, bring the forklift.” “We need Donna and her forklift to Water and Ice!” And then there’s my personal favorite: “Donna, we need you to move some porta-potties. Bring the forklift.”

I have to confess that moving toilets is no big deal, except when people are actually inside, using them. For kicks, I like to wait for someone to go in and then position the forklift in front of the in-use toilet. Then I wait, anticipating the startled reaction of the potty’s user as s/he exits. Passive-aggressive and infantile I realize, but still incredibly entertaining.

Anyway, the problem with being Forklift Girl is that you never get a break from it. “Donna and your trusty forklift to the Remembrance Tent! Toot-sweet!” “Roger that. THE SECOND I GET OUT OF THE SHOWER.” I wonder if people are starting to think that the forklift and I are an item. Perhaps they think we’re showering together.

And speaking of showering… Showering is one of those simple pleasures I was talking about before and despite the Forklift Girl interruption, today’s shower does feel incredible.

During one of my many forklifting runs, I bump into Princess, Adrienne and Eric. They’re on their way to Big Bubba’s Bad Barbecue to ride the mechanical bull. “Are you coming?” It’s Eric, one of our fearless site managers and the guy who bailed us out by driving a big truck that first day. “Nope. Can’t. Forklift.” “Take pictures!” They trot off, and as I drop a load of tables and chairs at a location where they will not be used, I dream of the festivities I’m missing at Bubba’s.

Dinner is another simple pleasure. I sail through the chow line with my friend Tim the rest stop captain. We give a shout-out to Craig the catering guy and I plop down for dinner and a visit with Kate, Sherry and our Big Daddy Ralph. When we’re done, Kate and Sherry leave to put on sarongs, gather Mardi Gras beads and greet the day’s returning cyclists. I head off to file two days’ worth of these journal entries.

Remember, today is about simple pleasures. And as the day goes on, the pleasure of simple things just gets sweeter and sweeter. So as I’m sitting here in the webcast tent clattering away on the computer and shivering in the wind, Alisa from Sports Med and one of my captains’ meeting buds, offers to take me to the Sports Med tent and give my tired back a massage. I take her up on it. What’s best about this to me isn’t the free bodywork; what’s best to me is that her offer is entirely unsolicited, typically kind and characteristically generous. It turns out to be a short massage, one that’s interrupted when the tent is suddenly deluged with regular customers, but it’s a chance for us to visit a little anyway. That’s what I like best about it.

The day ends when Beth, our staff logistics queen, spots me cleaning up our team’s gear truck and stops for a chat. Beth’s an old friend and she used to be our site manager, but she’s been promoted so we don’t see as much of each other as we used to. I adore Beth, I miss having her around and I say so. We start to blab about the events of the week and our lives in general when we’re interrupted. Really, that’s the way the whole week is. Most conversations are interrupted for one reason or another.

Anyway, the new conversation spins off in a new direction so I call it a night and settle in under the fleece lining of my cozy sleeping bag. It’s a simple thing, that fleece, but it really keeps the bag warm.

I go to sleep and dream of forklifts and mechanical bulls and quiet conversations.

Day 2

Today we’re on the move. Which means that people will have to drive. I’ve alluded to it before, but now I’ll say it plainly: I have an ongoing interest in finding people who are willing to drive our small fleet of large vehicles. Whenever someone new joins the crew, the first question I invariably ask is, “How do you feel about driving a 24’ truck? How about a 15’ truck? What are your thoughts on a long long passenger van?”

If the person who hears this starts to babble and shriek, I scratch them off the list of potentials. If someone says, “I’ll have to see the truck/van first,” I’m hopefully pessimistic. That’s because these vehicles are always somehow bigger in life than they are in anybody’s imagination. And the bigger they are, the less anyone wants to drive them.

This all brings me to the subject of Ralph. Ralph is new to this year’s crew and everybody loves him. I mean it. Everybody. Everybody on the crew, all my many bosses, EVERYBODY. I love Ralph too, and for a special reason: he has been born again as a driver. When I asked him the opening round of vehicle-related questions, he was hesitant. Now, he tools around in even the biggest trucks like he’s been doing it all his life. Mind you, he didn’t drive on Saturday but today he does. He really does. And it’s only Monday. Amazing what can happen in just a handful of days.

“Everybody get in the van. We’re going to Paso Robles. Ralph, drive.”

I should also mention that Ralph is the only man on our all-girl crew. Plus there’s the driving thing. That’s why we call him Big Daddy.

“Big Daddy go south. And not so fast this time.”

Once we get to Paso Robles and we eat and set up our tents, it’s time to set up the tent grid for everybody else. The tent grid is one of those simple things that’s oddly complicated. You may look out at the neat rows of tent addresses and say to yourself, “Anybody can do that.” And if you said that, you’d be right. Probably anyone can do it. But doing it requires a strange collection of math skills, common sense, and creativity.

That’s where Kate comes in. Kate is also new to this year’s crew but she comes with a sweetness and a willingness to do pretty much anything and that’s always great. She’s fun and quirky and everybody likes her. She’s a great addition to the team. I should also mention that she’s my sister.

Anyway, creating the tent grid involves stretching long long tape measures across vast expanses of grass, then calculating exactly the number of boxes, the feet and yards, the distance between, etc. required to cram every single tent onto that particular stretch of grass. If you were to pass us while we perform this task, we’d look to you like farm workers bent over dental-floss crops. Anyway, the important thing here is that math is involved. I am bad at math.

Kate, however is good at math. So I’m not at all surprised that she turned out to be very handy at calculating the many equations that go into creating the tent grid. What does surprise me today is that, while I am away from the grid thing performing yet another forklift-related duty, she makes all her calculations on the outside of a water bottle. For this, she uses a Sharpie.

I return from the forklift to find the gridding begun and the water bottle in the middle of it all. “What’s in the water bottle? Plutonium?” It’s a reasonable question. The bottle is tagged with numbers, division symbols, other math-related items I don’t understand. It looks like something Einstein would have in his refrigerator. That’s why Kate is now sometimes known as Einstein.

Overall, today is a pretty standard day, but there is one controversial moment. Sherry decides that her gridding costume should be a sarong and a bikini top. That isn’t what’s controversial. What is controversial is that… well. Let’s just say there was a wardrobe malfunction. And we ALL saw. So much for Sherry’s costumes.

The day ends with a trip across the street to Big Bubba’s Bad Barbecue for dinner. There, the team members throw gnawed ribs bones into a bucket with the best of them, chatter with a talking buffalo head, and take turns deciding who will ride the mechanical bull. Afterwards, we all head back to camp where we’ve found a way to whip up a dessert of coffee, tea and leftover lunch cookies. Tom and Ed from the Advance Road Marking team join us, and we all kibbitz like old neighbors over the fence. It’s a great way to end the day.

We all go to bed but one question remains: Who will ride the mechanical bull? And will there be photos? Tomorrow may bring the answer.

Day 1

Today we have to do the grunt work of setting up. Most of all, we have to remove and distribute the contents of yesterday’s scary trucks throughout the camp. It may not sound like much but it’s a lot of heavy lifting. Literally.

I must say that I’ve done my fair share of these events and there’s always a lot of grunt work. I like that. Lots of exercise, a good tired. That’s pretty much it.

But I’m not getting any younger. And last year, it occurred to me that I could make my life -- and the life of my crew – a whole lot easier by learning to drive a forklift. So I did that. I went to forklift school and now I’m a forklift driver for a week. Not only is it practical for me to do this job, it cracks me up. It just makes me laugh whenever I get on that forklift and drive it and move things around with it. It’s funny to me.

There’s a problem, though. Once I’m on the forklift, everyone needs to have something moved somewhere, so I become Forklift Girl. Today, Forklift Girl moves giant barrels of water. Weird, but she does. I do. Then I move giant pallets of water. Then I drink water. At least I don’t have to move a porta-potty. I’ve done that before, though. Moved a porta-potty. Somehow that makes me laugh most of all.

The crew works really hard today. When they’re through, they enjoy a well-earned afternoon at the beach while I go to the captains’ meeting.

The party line says that the captains’ meeting is a high-level gathering of hugely responsible people who MAKE THE EVENT HAPPEN. As such, we chat about the events of the day, assess our progress and gossip. Okay, gossip. Mostly just gossip. But it happens at a very high level. On that note, a shout-out to our deputies, who are the bosses of us: Francine, Beth, Tina. I’m missing someone but my brain is fried. There’ll be hell to pay for that.

And a special thanks to Rachel, whose Pack-Up team helped us out big time today. I know we’ll return the favor before the week is out. Tomorrow, we clean up, pack up, and do it all again. Next stop for us: Paso Robles.

Orientation Day

Today is Saturday but I’ve already forgotten that. For me, it’s just the first day. Period. Just the first day. I pray for a smooth week, for patience, for the ability to solve problems and to stay nice, even when things are not so nice. I look at my watch. It’s 6:15 a.m.

The phone rings. It’s Jack. Jack’s a returning roadie from last year. I like him for a lot of reasons. For one thing, he looks great in a hat and he brings a hammock that we all enjoy. Most of all, he was the only man on an all-girl crew last year but he was the perfect man. He was patient and kind and came up with some really good car games whenever we traveled from place to place. We loved him and I was excited when he told me he’d be coming back again this year.

“Hey, I can’t come on the LifeCycle. After I left orientation I blew out my ankle and now I’m useless. Will my not being there create a big hole in the team?” I assure him that we’ll all feel the loss of his company and that we’ll miss him, but that the rest of it is perfectly manageable. We talk about it all a bit and I get off the phone.

Now I go into manager mode. Jack was one of my truck drivers. He was going to drive one of two very big, heavy trucks along some very steep, curvy roads. Now he’s out of the picture and nobody else on the team is willing to drive that truck. As it is, I’m driving one of the other ones, something I’m not crazy about either.

A quick set of calls to the ever-ready roadie manager Leslie and to our totally sarcastic but unflappable logistics manager Tommy, and we’ve got staffer Eric to drive the truck. As for losing a team member, we’ll adjust. Roll with the punches, that’s how it all works.

An hour or so later, our team is a caravan, and it’s winding its way – and I mean winding – toward Camp #1 in Aptos. I’ve got Pat, a returning roadie but a first-timer for Advance Setup, in the car as my copilot.

I’ve got to hand it to Pat. She’s a nervous driver but God bless her, she’s volunteers to get in the giant truck and ride along the challenging obstacle course of Highway 17 with me. Not only are we driving with a full load that constantly wants to tip the truck, but the truck moves (barely) under the power of the Little Engine That Could. After what seems like hours of uphill driving the truck slows to 15 miles per hour, the oil and engine light come on and I think about my Plan B. I cast about for a turnout and call to my fellows on the walkie-talkie. “I’ve got an issue with the engine. The light is on. Heads up.”

I’m proud. After all, I’d conjured the blasé business-as-usual voice of an airline pilot or someone from NASA. Well, I think so anyway. To my listeners, however, it sounds more like this: “Mayday MAYDAY! The truck is going to STOPPPPPP! Holy crap, I’m bailing OUUUUUUTTTTT!”

Through it all, it’s Pat-the-nervous-copilot who really DOES have the poise of someone whose middle name is danger. Props for Pat. Pat’s rocks. I’m glad she’s along.

Anyway, we all get to Camp #1 in one piece. It’s empty and quiet and nothing that anyone else will see tomorrow is set up yet. We kind of like this part when it’s just us. Right away, we start in on all the things that we do to get the camp set up. But I won’t bore you with the minutia. Suffice to say, it’s a good day and we all go to bed tired and happy.

Tomorrow, this emptiness explodes with activity and our small corner of Earth becomes a city.

Friday, June 4

The big news today is orientation, or rather, early orientation. In contrast to the crowds and busy-ness of general orientation on Saturday, this orientation is a small gathering of advance teams, roadie captains and deputies. A boutique orientation, if you will.

Right away, I see Leslie, our fearless Roadie Manager. Leslie is remarkable. She spends the months before the event finding the hundreds of roadies who collectively make the cyclists’ adventure possible. She talks to virtually all of them at length, gets a sense of who they are and what they can contribute and places them on a team. It isn’t simple. It’s like a chess game of skills, people, needs, a giant human resources job that involves a lot of big personalities, including me. And once she’s found us roadies, she’s got to manage us all. That’s the really tough part. Trust me. But she’s great at it and does it with a lot of poise and a load of class.

Anyway, Leslie is there, getting it all together. And in short order, my roadies begin to arrive. Sherry is first.

Sherry and I started as roadies together on ALC1. She was on my crew that first time and was the first to arrive on our first day. Despite some frustrations during what proved to be a weeklong immersion class in Advance Setup, she’s stuck around. And she’s great in pretty much every way you can be great. She’s fun and adventurous, sensitive, kind and patient.

Oh. And Sherry loves to dress up. She’s been known to produce a real cheerleader uniform out of thin air. I’ve seen her do it. Also, she decorates things. Lots of things. Like our tents and ourselves and our campsite. If you’ve enjoyed the little tops or bottles of bubbles that appear on the dining room tables, you have Sherry to thank for it. Or if you’ve gotten to the finish line and been greeted by a woman in a grass skirt, giant sunglasses and Carmen Miranda chapeau, that’s Sherry. Now when she gives you Mardi Gras beads or a wrist-sized lei for your bike, you can thank her by name.

Before long, the rest of the crew piles in: Jack, Ralph, Kate, Lauren, Adrienne and Pat. You’ll meet them later.

Next stop, the safety video.

Every year, I actually think the safety video will teach me something about safety. “When lifting, use your legs.” “If you cut yourself, prevent blood loss by applying pressure.” “Here’s what to do if you fall out of a truck and then your arms go numb…” I mention this because it’s happened to me. Twice. No. Three times.

I’ve learned a lot about road safety but nothing about roadie safety. But when we’re lugging tables, we’ll at least know to do it in single file and to signal if we turn. Plus, we’ll be sure to clip in. Or is it clip out? And if I’m driving the forklift, I’ll absolutely make sure I don’t “draft.” But no worries. We know how to take care of ourselves and each other.

So that’s the dish on orientation. Tomorrow, the real journey begins.

Thursday, June 3

Today I leave Los Angeles for San Francisco.

Last night, I picked up a brand-spanking-new Dodge Caravan – an event car – and today I’m driving it north so that it can take its place in the fleet of AIDS/LifeCycle 3 vehicles. But there’s a glitch. As I approach the car, I notice that last night’s pristine automobile has a giant splash of paint scraped across one of its fenders. This morning, it’s damaged, probably by a really bad parallel parker who has obviously sideswiped it.

Oh well. That’s what insurance is for. And this is a good first lesson in rolling with the punches. Hopefully, this little incident will be the only problem in an otherwise incident-free week.

I hop in the car and ten minutes later, I’m picking up Lauren, a returning Roadie from last year’s crew and today’s copilot. We drove to San Francisco together last year and already our drive-up is a tradition. As I approach her place, I see the now-familiar sight of her dad, her sister and her belongings as they all wait with her for my arrival.

I also see a 50-pound bag of fresh onions.

A word about Lauren: She’s a farmer’s daughter. She’s amazing when it comes to identifying roadside produce while it’s still in the ground. And she knows a thing or two about the secret language of farmers. Last year, she chatted up the guy at ALC’s favorite artichoke stop and scored 20 or so fresh free artichokes from his farm. We ate them during one of our advance days in camp. Just us, a vast stretch of open park and the artichokes. It was a great night.

Last year, her dad gave me a lot of wonderful fresh, sweet onions from his farm. Now we have 50 pounds of them. I know the eight of us aren’t going to eat all those onions, but I’m wondering to myself if the catering guys might want to make something special with them. Onion rings on Day #3? It’s a thought.

One more thing about Lauren. We call her Princess, probably because she has a poise and confidence far beyond her 20 years. I know I wasn’t like that when I was her age. She’s someone I look up to, even though she’s half my age. Anyway, she’s just returned from a college year abroad in Italy. I’m wondering now if we should call her Principesa.

We hit the road and before I know it, I’m hearing all about her Italian adventures. We catch up on the gossip from last year’s crew and I learn a new thing or two about some of last year’s Roadies. Nothing sinister, mind you, but not for public consumption, either.

The trip goes quickly and is fairly uneventful. We play Elvis, a tradition. We stop at Andersen’s, not for pea soup, but for a trip to the bathroom and a lap around the gift shop. We buy some crew coffee there, purely for entertainment value.

We also buy gas, and while Lauren chatters away on her cell phone, I watch the pump and obsess on that damned sideswipe. "Look at that paint on fender. Disgusting…” The tank is big and it takes awhile to fill, so I’ve got several long minutes to stare at it and stew. Finally, I can’t take it anymore. I grab a wiper towel, dip it in squeegee water and start to rub. Miraculously, the ding disappears.

Turns out it was old wax. I hope every problem is that easily solved.

Before we know it, we’re on the bridge, enjoying an absolutely stunning late afternoon view of the City and swinging the Caravan to upload on Treasure Island.

We have arrived.

May 26

A week from tomorrow, I'll leave Los Angeles, head north to collect the members of my advance setup crew, and set out for my third AIDS/LifeCycle.

I'm the captain of a Roadie team that leaves before everyone else, works a day longer and is one of the least known, least acknowledged and most self-sufficient volunteer crews on the event. I say "one of" because all the Roadie teams work hard and every crew task comes with a unique set of challenges and opportunities.

Here's how it works for us:

We arrive in San Francisco two days before the event, on Friday. That's when we go through Orientation. The next morning, we leave town and in a matter of hours (depending on how well we navigate) we're pulling into camp #1. When we arrive, there are no showers, no catering trucks, no service tents, no ceremony, no fanfare, just us. And the guys who put up the big tents. And maybe, maybe some toilets.

If we're lucky.

But for all that isn't there, what IS there is usually a wide stretch of open grass and fresh air and lots of quiet before the coming storm of ALC's first tent city. More on that later.

Today, I'm obsessing. I'm going over a giant mental checklist of things that may or may not need doing, that may or may not be done, that may be necessary, that may be frivolous, things for my crew, things for the job, things for fun, things for me.

"That car adapter/coffee pot idea is really good. But will somebody plug a blow-dryer into the crew car and kill the battery? If that happens, Who will help us?"

"If I get my hair fixed before the event, will it make me cuter?"

"Some of my roadies still haven't given me their contact information for Friday June 4. Should I pester them about this and make them lose heart before we leave or should I just trust that I've given them everything they need to be where they're supposed to be so we can leave on schedule?"

"HAVE I given them everything they need to be where they're supposed to be so that we can leave on schedule?"

"Does the cat have enough medication?"

"Do I have my site maps? Do I NEED my site maps?"

"Boogie-board for Ventura, yes or no?"

My head is spinning with a million stupid details. Amid the din, there's calm when I think about the members of my crew. Some I know. They're returning from past years. We've worked together and they're the best. Not only that, this event brings out the best in them. As I think about the best of the best, I simmer down. Then there are the new people. I've spoken to them over the last several months and they're all great. I know everybody will get along.

And I have no doubt that every one of them will bring something special to our week together. And to the event. And to each other. They always do.

Suddenly the spinning stops.

Who cares about the car battery? If it dies, we'll call triple A.