Dubai Trip – Retrospect
Thinking back on it, it’s difficult for me to say what I expected of this trip. When I first conceived of it I was picturing a girl’s trip with Kim and Kate. I only needed my dad as a guide to help us figure things out. At some point, I decided we should bring our bikes (mostly so I didn’t lose an insane amount of fitness). The girls bailed one by one and I almost did too. So how did I end up here?
Well my dad got excited about the race. He was especially excited about the stage in Hatta (the furthest away from the city). At the same time, things got bad with my sister and my mom and I felt like I needed to find sanity in my life. I hoped my dad might give me that. These days, I find myself siding with him more than my mom on things; especially where my sister is involved.
But there were logistics to figure out. I still wanted to ride while I was there. Dubai has gone out of its way to build up cycling around the city and I was still concerned about losing fitness. Also, I thought it would be nice to ride with my dad.
I’ll start by saying the tour was awesome; so awesome that I will cover it in an entirely different post. As for the rest of it, I feel as though I am constantly reminded that things rarely, if ever, turn out as you expect. Let’s review things that went wrong and things that went right; as well as some things that just were.
Jet lag: I knew that adjusting 10-hours ahead would be tough but I did not expect to be sleeping in long naps for 6-days. I took this in stride because it’s not like I had to do anything. At any point I could have slept if I needed to. The thing is, I almost never needed to and still I couldn’t sleep through the night.
Race Access: As much as I told myself I was not going to be disappointed here, I completely lined myself up for disappointment. Early on, I just wanted to watch the race. At some point, Willis started talking about getting me VIP access with Castelli. This got me imagining a race expo sort of setup where I could get autographs and photos w/ racers. Well the VIP access didn’t pan out but I still had this image of hanging out w/ the riders in my head. This was only more exacerbated when Jana’s photographer friend Brian was going to get me access. Â Unfortunately, my data plan ran out at the worst time and we never met up. I did manage to get autographs from all the racers I wanted but I didn’t get any photos and I sort of felt cheated. The worst was when my dad was absolutely set on getting my photo taken with Taylor Phinney. To the point where he was moving me through a crowed of people, yelling at Taylor to get his photo with me, and yelling at me to “get in there”. All of this while they were trying to move him out to the doping control tent. It was incredibly embarrassing.
My Dad: After seeing him in August, I thought I could hang out with him. When I saw him in August had been 6-years since I’d seen him. I think it was a little much to think that we could just be friends. When it comes down to it, my dad’s world revolves around my dad and there’s no room for anybody else. Further, my dad got old. He, apparently, has some strain of herpes that he has no problem talking about in public. He rides his bike w/ his underwear on and while we were riding he had a ton of spit on the side of his mouth that he didn’t clean off.