Ragnar – The 2013 Wrap Up (Part II)
Continued from Part I…
Me: The second legs were when everyone really started to hate me for talking them into the whole ‘running 200 miles as a team’ thing. I have to admit, I kind of hated me a little bit when I had to get out of the van at 3:20AM in 30 degree weather to run uphill on a BLACK AS THE SOUL OF SOMEONE REALLY EVIL night. Like it was kind of scary and horrible.
You: ‘Black as the soul of someone really evil’? You couldn’t come up with anything better than that?
Me: I was going to say ‘Sarah Palin’ but I thought I’d get hate mail. And I’m pretty sure I already lost readers after the last post.
You: Got it.
Me: So after my miserable second run, my team met me at the exchange and sent Will off. I was already near tears of exhaustion and then Lacey said, “So we have good news and bad news. The good news is the next exchange has inside sleeping and pancakes. The bad news is someone hit our van at some point and there’s a fairly substantial dent in the back.”
You: No, she, didn’t!
Me: Yes. And then she slammed my finger in the cooler as hard as she could.
You: Wow, that chick like sincerely hates you.
Me: Well, she said she didn’t actually mean to squish my finger. And it was really my fault for trying to put my finger in it while she was trying to shut it with as much force as she could muster.
You: So then you cried a lot, right? And your team kicked you out of the van because there’s no crying in Ragnar?
Me: Nah. They actually made the dent sound worse than it looked to me, and whatever: INSIDE SLEEPING AND PANCAKES. My standards for joy were far down there at that point. So we moved on to the next exchange.
You: Were there beds and stuff for you to sleep on?
Me: Please. We rolled sleeping bags out on the floor of the Fountain Hills High School gym.
Lacey said, “It’s like the zombie apocalypse!!” And IT TOTALLY WAS. I always like to think I’ll kick ass at surviving the apocalypse, but who are we kidding? I’m sort of a rule follower. I’d be huddled in the gym with the rest of the ‘it’s gonna be ok’ people when the zombie herd broke down the doors and started gorging like at a chinese buffet.
You: That looks miserable. Why do you do this again?
Me: It’s like a slumber party! When it was light out and we’d gotten a couple of hours of sleep, we all got up and sat on the floor of the hallway and charged our phones while Blaine and Will told dirty jokes.
After that Lacey and Blaine went to get their promised pancakes, which inspired maybe my favorite text conversation ever:
Lacey: They’re out of bacon!!!!
Me: Bastards!!
Lacey: That’s what I said when I threw my pancakes at them.
I don’t even think she was kidding.
You: Haha, don’t eff with Lacey. She’ll slam your finger in a smelly cooler and throw pancakes in your face.
Me: I know, right?
Leg three went pretty well for everyone, I think. Although Van 1 was done, so they showered and ate and texted me pictures of their adult beverages. Because they’re assholes. So I kicked them all off the team because I’m the team captain and I’m allowed to do that. And what the hell did we need them for anyway; they were done running.
You: Magnanimous of you.
Me: Just kidding. Will finished up leg 36 strong and we all crossed the finish line together.
12 Day Drinkers and a couple of offspring.
Van 1 voted my dad The Best Van Driver Ever On Earth. Which is surprising to no one who knows him. We were lucky to have his support. Additionally, he gets extra accolade for his assist on the return of the vans to The Shadiest Rental Place Ever. We cleaned those suckers up, buffed the paint transfer off the back end dent and the rental agent guy didn’t even notice. (Of course this is possibly because my dad was standing in front of it and chatting the guy up while he did his super swift van check, but I’ll never admit anything in a court of law. Also the guy wrote our milage ON HIS HAND. So… it’s also possible they’re lax on stuff like that at TSRPE.)
Good job, Day Drinkers. I love you all and I officially now know way too much about each and every one of you (especially Blaine. Who I have like 5 stories I’d really like to tell about. But each and every one of them is too inappropriate even for this website. Which is really saying something.).
Van 2, Before and After