Bend, Part 1

The day of the Race!
Aaron was on a team of OSP Swat guys competing in Bend's Annual Pole Pedal Paddle! There were 2 teams, two guys competing for each leg of the race. It was every one of their first time's competing!! Unfortunately it was a bit cold and off & on rainy that day, which is no fun for the racers and not terribly fun for the Mom's of small snotty children who got to his finish line extra early just in case...

Audrey was cheerful for as long as patiently possible..a few times begging to go back to "our little blue house" (the rental)

...and Ellie held on long enough until the food ran out. I thought I was told a certain time that he'd possibly be finished by, but it turns out that was the time he began...so we were way earlier than we needed to be, like by an entire hour.

(these next few pictures were taken by one of the other wives who went up the mountain to the start of where Aaron began and her husband finished his leg of the race.)

Hi Guys!

Almost ready! Gearing up!

Ready. Set. Go!!!

The Girls did a great job waiting. For the most part they were easily distracted by either food or "Is that Daddy coming???" comments I would make to keep Audrey on the look-out...

We watched all the silly bikers who began way earlier come in with silly wigs and costumes, and a few die-hards with all their bike gear. We sat, we stood. We cheered for racers. We ate crackers and bananas and thought every red shirt biker must be Aaron coming. We tried to see our Daddy...until there he was!!!

As a spectator of this race, one of my observations was that it seemed as if the longer you waited for racers to come in the slower they must have been in the competition. That was not true. And I have to say that because it would look to most like we waited and waited for Aaron because he was not one of the fastest when in reality his team was one of the last to have a start time....but once they got going they were passing people left and right! (well hopefully only on the left, as that is biker courtesy I learned in my childhood years...) So all that is to say is that our Red Shirted Daddy was Fast!!!! And we were very proud of him!! :)

Yay for daddy! All done!

...walking to official finish line of entire event.

I wished I would have taken a picture of the crowd both where we were waiting for my biker hubby to finish and also at the official end to the race. These pictures don't do it justice. There were 962 Teams. 3130 people participated. And a whole lot of us regular folk who munched on potato chips while watching them all sweat and cheering them all on!

The entire (2) Teams of Red!

Great Job Guys!!!!!