Malibu, Part 2

For Malibu, I like to park my car along the race route and put signs on it for my tri-teammates. This is the 3rd year I've done the race so I thought I knew the routine. But when I arrived at the beach, the traffic lane I was in was being redirected to a remote parking lot. When the Traffic Nazi refused to let me cut over to the "normal" lot, I was thinking "um, excuse me? Do you have any idea who I am?! I'm 'Member of the Year' for my tri team!" I obeyed her temporarily but then made a couple of illegal U-turns and got to my proper parking space. After all, why would anyone want to hide this?



I don't think the body-marking lady had her coffee yet. She put my race number on my arm and then put an "R" on my leg for "Relay". I have no idea why she thought I was part of a relay team. First she tried to turn the R into a 3. That didn't work. So she just scribbled it out and put my age underneath with a big circle around it so people could see it clearly. Yes, that helped.



This race is normally very well-organized but something broke down regarding the food. The refreshment tent had... pasta salad. That was it. I saw empty boxes of oranges, but no oranges. I saw empty boxes of chips, but no chips. Either they ran out of food or just weren't restocking properly. The mere thought of eating pasta salad at the time made me sick, so I skipped it completely.



They have a fenced-off area for the "celebrity brunch" which you need a special wristband to get into. I had a band so I figured I could eat there. When I arrived, the "buffet" was pretty much just 6 tables of empty trays. They had some freaky guacamole rolls or something left over. I ate 2 pieces of soggy bread about the size of marshmallows. I don't know what happened this year, but the food situation was completely unacceptable for an event of this magnitude.

I ran the race wearing Mickey Mouse ears. An editor of Triathlete Magazine saw me and took my picture. Nearby was Andy Baldwin, "The Bachelor". I admit I don't watch the show and I wouldn't recognize him, but I have heard about him being a star triathlete. The Bachelor is an ABC show, so he raced for the (parent company) Disney Tri Team. The magazine editor called Andy over to me so he could take another picture. That's right, I don't go to celebrities, they are summoned to me. So to be clear: this is not a photo of me with The Bachelor; this is a photo of The Bachelor with ME.



Why couldn't it have been the year Jennifer Garner raced for Disney?!