Maternity Leave (27 page)

“Mother fucker,” Danny replied.

I opened the door, ran out and got into Danny’s car and told him the story as we drove to my house. He said, “So let me get this straight. You were hit by a car, David thinks you killed your kid, Sarah thinks you’re going to a mental institution before marrying Quinton, your parents think you’re on a work trip and you think you’re just going to go race your bike for three months and get away with it?”

“Don’t forget that I just skipped out on what is probably going to be a fourteen-hundred dollar ambulance and morphine bill.”

“Oh, yeah. You’re golden. I’m thinking of letting you out right here to walk. I think this is called aiding and abetting.”

“Just take me home. I won’t involve you,” I said.

“Please. Like I’d leave you on the side of the road.”

“Don’t worry, I’m Ferris Bueller.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Are you okay to drive? Did you just say you’re on morphine?” Danny asked.

“No, the guy tried to give me morphine but couldn’t find a vein. I think he was new. It took him a while to figure out I wasn’t pregnant, too. Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if he billed me for it. He took it out of the case and tried to inject it.”

“So why the hell are you claiming to be Ferris Bueller?”

“I’m invincible like Ferris Bueller. No matter how fucked up this situation gets, it keeps working out for me. I’m embarking on a pro cycling career, subsidized by my office. My parents are watching Sonny, Quinton is in jail, and Sarah is my biggest advocate. I’m starting to think the world actually does revolve around me.”

As we neared my home, Danny said, “I never thought of you as a ‘the glass is half full’ kind of girl, but your assessment of this situation is overly optimistic. This is the calm before the storm. Enjoy it, Ferris.”

“Thanks for everything, Danny.”

I got in my car and headed north to Pennsylvania.

My car was filled to the brim with two bikes, helmets, shoes, pump, spare wheels, tent, sleeping bag, books, a laptop and a laundry basket full of clothes, both cycling and regular, for any type of weather. With one of the rear seats removed from my Honda Element, there was plenty of room for everything without having to pack strategically. As I do for every race, I placed my bikes in the car then dumped my cycling clothing in between so the bikes wouldn’t chip the paint off one another during transit.

The first race destination was the Pennsylvania mountains near Altoona. The plan until the August thirtieth start date of the Tour de West was to become stronger, faster and braver on the bike. To pump myself, I decided to travel all the way to Pennsylvania listening to nothing but the theme songs to
Chariots of Fire
,
Rocky, Rudy
, and
Hoosiers
. If I could accomplish that, I could accomplish anything.

I planned to attend six professional stage races and eight professional one-day races prior to the Tour de West. During these races, I had to be “discovered” to secure a spot in the Tour de West. In addition to riding strong, I had to learn to race confidently. No team would want a rider that raced squirrelly, which is to say, all over the road and unpredictably. Granted, my Bike Tourette Syndrome had improved since my crash, but I was still far from easy going yet. During the first leg of my journey north, I visualized sprinting and descending like a daredevil. By the time I rested at a camp ground near Atlanta, I was confident in my ability to race under any conditions.

The next morning, I drove two hours north to test my newfound ability in the mountains of Dahlonega, Georgia. Riding on a new road is always exciting. I’m told golfers have the same sensation whenever they tee off on a new course. That it was seventy degrees and sunny in the mountains at the base of the Appalachian Trail was a bonus. I rode eighty miles over four mountains and felt great. I flew up and down each mountain. Then again, there was no one around to freak me out on the downhill. While the pack generally thins out during a climb, particularly a steep or long one, there is still a group of five to twenty riders at each summit depending on how fast the pace is pushed on the way up. These lead riders descend in one long line, following the wheel of the person in front of them. Essentially, you’re trusting that the person ahead of you is taking a good line, and keeping an eye out for traffic and other road hazards. During my inspirational pep talk to myself on yesterday’s seven hour drive, I became more and more comfortable with the idea of trusting someone else. After all, I’d only been racing seriously for a year and a half, so it made sense to put my faith in seasoned professionals rather than myself. I was convinced of this wisdom as I rounded a corner at forty-five miles per hour and passed a bicycle hanging from a tree; no sign of the rider. Best not to think about that.

After the ride, I showered at a campground: fifty cents for three minutes. The three spiders in the shower didn’t chip in. I hit the road and was soon in South Carolina. After leaving the long state of Florida, the states ticked by relatively quickly. A few miles into South Carolina, I saw the first South of the Border billboard since I was a kid.

When John and I were young and Jason was a baby, we took many vacations by car to visit family up north. Our parents made up a game for us. The first one to spot one of the South of the Border billboards and yell “Beaver!” got a point. The first person to see the giant sombrero that dominated the South of the Border amusement park got ten points for saying, “Big Beaver!” The beaver game, as we called it, was tough because Howard Johnson’s billboards looked remarkably similar to a South of the Border billboard from afar. If you called beaver for a Howard Johnson billboard, you lost a point. I always won the beaver game. I thought it was my superior intellect, but in hindsight it was most likely because John didn’t give a shit and wasn’t playing.

Danny called to shoot the shit as I passed the second South of the Border billboard. I said, “Beaver!” and explained the rules to Danny. He started laughing hysterically.

“What?”

“You seriously don’t get it?” he asked.

“It’s a stupid game my parents made up, there’s nothing to get.”

“Beaver. South of the border. You don’t think there’s perhaps a double entendre here?”

“Holy shit! What kind of parents do I have? Who plays the beaver game with their young kids?”

“Sounds like a good way to pass the time with annoying kids in the car. They must have really loved that you actually kept score.”

“Now that you mention it, I think they did get a kick out of it. Beaver! It’s a fun game. I’m winning.”

“Good for you.”

“Hey, I’m going to concentrate on the beaver game. Can I call you in North Carolina, Virginia or Maryland when there’s nothing to do?”

“Sure. I’d rather play beaver than talk to me too,” Danny said.

“That’s the spirit.”

I called it a night at Shenandoah National Park. It was slightly out of my way, but had a good campground, and more importantly, would provide me with a beautiful but challenging bike ride the following morning.

The next day I rode decently through Shenandoah National Park though my legs were a little dead from sitting in a car for two days. My descending seemed to improve, literally overnight. I passed a few cars on the way down each of the mountains. This feat should be an automatic since road bikes travel between forty-five and sixty-five miles per hour down a mountain and cars drive a more conservative thirty-five to fifty-five miles per hour. But, this was the first time I managed to overtake a car. After four hours of riding, I showered with one spider and a dead roach for a dollar-fifty before commencing the final leg of my journey.

Just after dark, I pulled into a campground near Altoona. I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and pulled the curtain back to check out the insect population and the cost per minute of water. New highs on both fronts: four spiders and a shitload of mosquitoes at a rate of one dollar for every two minutes. These accommodations were particularly frustrating because I have family in Altoona whose lavatory is both free, and bug free, with whom I could stay. Unfortunately, as far as my family was concerned, I was working in Charlotte, North Carolina, not riding my bike near Aunt Lauren.

At that moment, my cell phone rang and I saw it was my Mom’s number.

“Hey.”

“Hi Jenna, it’s Mom and Dad. We’re on our walk and wanted to see how your first day of work went up there.”

Mom and Dad walked together for an hour every night and called me during walk-time to catch up. They put the phone on speaker which was fine for Mom, but Dad, who has been hard of hearing since his stint in the artillery unit of the army, needs constant translations. “It was okay,” I said.

“What’s the office like?”

I’d never really been a liar, especially to my parents. Granted, the fake pregnancy was quite a whopper, but as far as small details, I had always been pretty truthful. Inventing a day of work would involve some details, but I tried to stay vague. “It was good.”

“What did she say?” I heard Dad ask in the background.

“She said ‘it was good.’ How are the people?”

“Good.”

“What did she say, Geri?”

“‘Good,” she repeated. “Is your office nice?”

“Yes.”

“Huh?” Dad said.

“She said ‘yes’ Michael. Jenna, what’s wrong with you? Usually we can’t get a word in edgewise.”

“Sorry. I pretty much just met with the new partners today. There’s nothing to tell.”

“Is David there?”

“No, he’s there with you in Tampa,” I said, praying my parents didn’t run into David over the next few months where they’d be sure to talk about my pregnancy, the trip to the hospital or my business assignment in North Carolina. “Basically I just met everyone and set up my office.”

“What exactly are you doing there?”

“Good question,” I said, then paused to let the bullshit accumulate for a moment. “Basically, we have a lot of cases throughout the southeast. So when we opened our Alabama office, we moved all of our Alabama cases there and someone went there to help with the transition. I’m doing that for the Charlotte office. That way, we have lawyers licensed in North Carolina to handle these cases.”

“What?” asked Dad.

“She’s helping to transition the Florida cases to North Carolina.”

“That makes sense.”

“Where are you staying Jenna?” Mom asked.

“Holiday Inn.”

“Did you bring your bike?”

“Of course. It’s pretty here.”

“Please be careful. You don’t know where you are, you don’t know the roads, you’re by yourself,”

“I’m being careful,” I said, cutting her off before she went into all the ways I could die riding a bike in North Carolina by myself.

“Any cute guys there?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

“What?” Dad asked.

“She hasn’t met any guys yet.”

I used this language barrier as an excuse to get off the phone. “Can I talk to you later when we’re not playing Pete and Repeat?”

Dad helped my cause by saying, “I missed that last part, say it one more time.”

“She said you’re annoying her by not hearing her and she’ll talk to us later.”

“Bye. Love you Mom, tell Dad I love him after I hang up, I can’t listen to him say ‘what’ again.”

“Huh?”

I hung up before the translation and started setting up my tent for the third night in a row.

The entry fee for the Tour of Pennsylvania was two hundred per person or nine hundred per team. A team consisted of nine riders, so racing for a team was a helluva bargain and yet another incentive to turn pro. I paid the entry fee, picked up my race packet and took off on an easy two hour ride to spin out my legs and view the course for the following morning’s prologue, which was three miles long, ending on the track at Penn State.

I rode my time trial bike to reacquaint myself with the position before tomorrow’s pain. On a road bike, a rider’s body has flexibility; they can sit up or lean down and move their hands about the drops, tops and hoods, the three different spots of a road bike’s handlebars. On a time trial bike, a rider bends in half, putting all of the weight of their upper body on their crotch and taint instead of their taint and ass. While neither position is particularly comfortable, the latter combo is far superior.

There were at least one hundred male and female cyclists scattered throughout the prologue course checking out the route when I showed up. I tried to avoid wearing a completely dopey grin as I passed by the professional cyclists that I recognized from Velonews and Cyclingnews, but I was very excited and probably not hiding it well. My excitement evaporated when I saw Brenda coming my way in a kit I didn’t recognize. I asked around and found out that Brenda was on a composite team sponsored by a chain bicycle store out of California, Sunshine Cycling, that was looking to be competitive at the Tour de West.

After the ride, I took my laptop to a Starbucks to see when and how Brenda’s new team formed. As it turned out, three days ago, the first time in two years that I was not sitting at the desk in my office checking cycling news on an hourly basis, Sunshine Cycling posted an article regarding the creation of a women’s team to race the remainder of the National Race Calendar (NRC) schedule, starting with the Tour of Pennsylvania and ending with the Tour de West
.
The sponsorship no doubt came about because of Sunshine Cycling’s desire to advertise its 158 California bike shops by having nine women wear their logo each day of the Tour de West.

It was not uncommon for teams of CAT 1 riders to form prior to a big event. The typical women’s stage race permits approximately 120 women to participate. Because there are only about seven professional women’s teams in the United States, there are vacancies prior to most races. Individual CAT 1 racers such as myself often seek out other individual CAT 1 racers to create a composite team for these stage races because even when entering as a team is not required, which is often the case, it is cheaper to enter a stage race as a team rather than individually. These CAT 1 racers hail from all over the United States, so finding a matching kit is tough. Cycling shops, bike companies or local businesses often offer to “sponsor” women by letting them wear a kit with their logo on it in a race. It’s free advertising for the business and the women all match as required.