Planning

A ride like RATS requires a crazy amount of logistics. Everyone has to know the route. (its actually really easy, follow route 2 all the way to Burlington!) Everyone has to have lights for riding at night. Everyone has to have enough food. People have to drive the support cars. Hotel reservations have to be made. Spare tubes have to be brought. The planning that goes into this ride takes some serious effort. I mostly benefitted from Jim’s planning, as I only arrived in Orono two days before we were to leave. Still, I helped to get all of our food together and into the support cars. We went on a massive shopping trip, brought the food back home and each divided it into portions. For the first six or so hours there would be no support car, we would have to bring all our own food and water, as there are no stores open in the middle of the night. A camelback was necessary to bring enough water. I divided my food into six portions. The first, night portion that I would bring with me when we started, four resupply bags each with enough food for roughly four hours, and one “bonk bag,” with the kinds of food that would help me to get over a bonk. This one had mostly potato chips, other salty things, candy bars and cans of coke.

Food for the ride

All the bags were put in the support cars the day before we left. The two cars were driven by Justin’s wife Marliesse and RATS alum Matt Cote. (http://www.mainebikesandboards.com/ , its a great shop, check it out if you're in the Skowhegan area and Matt will show you around.) I really can’t say enough about how awesome Marliesse and Matt were. At every stop they had food ready, filled our bottles, fixed our bikes, encouraged us and generally made the ride as smooth as could be expected. Without such excellent support, both physically and emotionally, RATS would be completely impossible.

Amidst all the chaos of planning RATS, something very unusual happened. While at the bike shop on Friday afternoon, mere hours before we were to leave, I overheard one side of a phone conversation. It went something like this:
Corey: Tandems?...Recumbent Tandems?... Ha ha Matt, I know its you…. Yeah, the Friday night road ride is still on for 5:30… Well, Jim’s not going, because he’s doing his ride to Vermont… Tonight… Midnight… Well, I guess you could…
Matt McEntee, former Rose Bike employee and weirdo extraordinaire decided that he wanted to do the ride. At first I dismissed it as a joke. But then he showed up with a backpack and his bike, ready to load into the support car. Matt is one of the coolest people that I have ever had to pleasure of meeting, working with, riding with, and generally just interacting with. There is no way that you can understand the Matt experience except through direct personal contact. He may be completely insane. Around the bike shop he is commonly referred to by his nickname, “Grundle,” a name which he encourages the use of. With all of the planning that Jim puts into RATS, it was a real shock to everyone when Matt decided to join us in a spur-of-the-moment kind of way. Being a naturally athletic person and fairly interested in biking though, we agreed to have him come with us. I was seriously, seriously impressed with Matt’s dedication throughout this whole strange experience.