Sat was spent preparing the aid stations as the racers arrived @ the school. I was assigned to aide station 3, the furthest and most remote station. Jason and Misty were the aid station captains, they have worked all 15 years of the Puff. Many 5 gallon plastic jugs were filled w/ h2o for each aid station.
Sat before a community prepared meal a racers’ meeting was held in the school gym. Scott told how the deal works. He raffled off some stuff. I won a Club Ride jersey a really cool item. Good filling nutritious dinner.
Then I drove the 19 miles up mtn to the aid station location. A Ham Radio station was set up for contact w/ the outside world. Jason said 6:00 AM get to work time, first racers were predicted to arrive just after 7:00AM. We filled h2o bottles w/ GU2 and h2o and laid out a spread of food energy sources. The racers dropped off their used bottles for refills. We rinsed out and refilled bottles for next go round. Our station had a “appendix” loop out to the Chrome Toilet that added enough miles for a 100 miles that was ridden only 2X. Racers rode 3 loops and passed thru our station 5 times. On the first lap the racers were grouped closer together, as the laps added up the gaps got bigger. last rider thru our station was like 6:30PM. It took almost 45 mins to drive the 15 miles of gravel logging road down.
Made it back to school then over to the trailer park for a shower then back to race finish line @ Red Bridge at the bottom of the Alpine trail. Ate another racer paid for dinner. Scott raffled off goodies to racers only. He said that he will have a volunteer party where he will raffle off goodies to the volunteers, I will miss this party.
Overall I observed that the racers were really thankfull for the volunteers’ efforts. I gave back to the biking community.
So today is clean up and maybe riding parts of Alpine to pull down all the course markings.
I parked my van in full view of the racers. Several racers said Hi and commented they have been reading about me.
Web site w pics from Aide Station 3 where I helped.
http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=723394