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Ft. Lauderdale and NO SLEEPNovember 12 
Mr. Perry here tried to plan a little mini vacation out of this racetrip. I have a few friends that live in the north Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area,biker buddy Mike's parents also live in West Palm...So there really wasn'ta problem as far as finding a place to snooze. Took that Friday off andmade the big hike down. The first place of snooze was West Palm. Went toa V-ball tournament early that evening, and later that evening found a placeto shot some pool and foosball. Woke up the next day and went down to checkout the course in Ft. Lauderdale with the rest of the guys.
You folks ready for this one? Kevin (buddy rider) was pedalingup a hill on his bike and *SNAP* his crank arm breaks on him. In the courseof all this, his leg drops to the ground and gets a nice cut on his leg.Ummmm, guess what...he ended up having to find an emergency room and hadit stapled up. WONDERFUL. Guess he's not going to race the next day. So Kevin and Mike mozy out to go back to West Palm (about a 45 min. drive)and find a Hospital ER. I pack up, went to find some food, went back tothe V-ball tournament, and drove back to West Palm. The rest of the day was spent trying to coordinate the rest of the weekend.I ended up running over to Ft. Lauderdale for dinner, and afterwards drovedown to Miami to catch up with some other friends. After which, rode withthe group all the way down to Coconut Grove further south of Miami. WHOAH!What a blast. Was thinking that I had to race the next morning. DOH! --smile--Danced all night, went to Denny's...and I can't believe it, I ended up drivingall the way back to West Palm that evening/morning. When I got back, I didn't want to disturb anyone, so...I ended up crashing in my car. UGH! 6:30 thatmorn I see Mike's face staring at me in my winshield yelling, "HELLO!?!?!?"Ugh, I change, clean up, and pack up to drive back down to Ft. Laud forthe race and we're outta there. The race conditions were nice. It wasn't very hot and we had a nice breeze.The course was mainly all single track and was for the most part prettypacked and compared to say Ocala very level and very fast. The most technicalof sections showed to have alot of twists and there were a few nice placesto catch some air for the daring. But when it was all over, I still wasn'tsure I was ready for the drive back at the end of the day.
Click here to go back to my home page. ©2005, Perry C. Palacio / perry@perry-palacio.net
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Now here's a trip. UGH! Most of the other races
were in worst cases onlya 2-2 1/2 hour drive. This trip!?!? Whoah...someone
please drive for me!The drive down was 'round 4-5 hours. Give or take all
the wasted gas andtime from playing leap frog with the cars and throwing
candy at each other.