Visit to HQ

A room full of officials. The symposium was surprisingly well attended. Most of these people are more serious
about officiating as a career than I am.

So it's been almost a week since my unfortunate encounter with a car, and about 24 hours since I got back from Colorado Springs. It was a good thing that this broken collarbone and associated bruises and such haven't been as painful as those from the last collarbone fracture, although my back and neck have been increasingly achy. It's funny how you initially focus on the most obvious injury, and then over the following few days you start to notice all of the other stuff that was initially overshadowed. Wearing the X-brace helps a lot, although it does of course restrict movement a bit and certainly gets uncomfortable, but if it lets the collarbone heal up without surgery and other complications I guess I'll just have to live with it for a few more weeks. At least I've been through this before and already know how to get into a T-shirt and do a bunch of other things without raising my left arm.  Meanwhile my shoulder, left arm, and left hip have turned a nice shade of purple and yellow as the bruises and pooled blood start to show up more.  I'll spare you the photos.

USAC HQ still hasn't changed the logo on the building
to the new version, which I like much more

I had been registered to attend the USA Cycling National Official's Symposium, held last weekend up in Colorado Springs, so I felt lucky that I wasn't so much in pain or under the influence of narcotics that I'd have to cancel. Even though I wasn't looking forward to all those hours sitting in an airplane passenger seat and knew the collarbone and everything would make that even worse, I got up at 4:15 Friday morning so Danielle could drive me to the airport anyway. Under the circumstances, I thought  it best to pack really light for this little two-day conference, so all I had with me was a nice little rolling backpack with a couple of shirts and changes of underwear and little else. It was a good call. The first leg of the trip was to Houston, where I switched planes to one of those neat little ones with one row of seats on one side and two on the other.  The flight attendants were of course going crazy dealing with all of the carry-on luggage that wouldn't fit and had to be gate-checked, but they let me through with my one bag.  That when I realized two things.  First, there wasn't enough room under my window seat to stow the backpack that had easily fit under the seat of the larger plane. Second, I couldn't lift it high enough with my broken collarbone to get it into the overhead bin. Luckily the girl behind me saw me try and immediately offered to help.

The Race Caravan Training Certification session was interesting. It's a totally different world
than the "one follow car" world we usually work in.

So I get off the plane in Colorado Springs and it's something like 70°F and sunny. I had to wait half an hour or so outside for the shuttle from the Marriott to arrive to pick three of us up, and by then I was pretty warm from the temperature and achy from the collarbone and five or six hours of sitting. This was my first Official's conference, although I'd been to maybe eight or ten of the Local Association conferences in prior years. I really didn't have anything to do the rest of the day or evening, which was fine since it allowed me to lie down, take some Aleve, and veg out watching TV.

USAC CEO, ??, UCI Technical Director,
USAC Technical Director

Saturday morning I was up at my usual time, which was unfortunate since my usual time was in Louisiana and not in Colorado. In other words, I was up at 4:30 am. Oh well. Lots of time to delicately slide off the brace and T-shirt, take a shower, and cinch down the brace again over a fresh T-shirt and button-down shirt. The meetings themselves were pretty good and covered a lot of the things I wanted to find out about, especially the new IT system they have been working on.  A lot of the people there were also Local Association representatives, so I knew many of them and of course most of the USAC staff who were on hand. Sitting for so long was more tedious than usual, so I spent a couple of sessions standing in the back of the room, but mostly I was taking notes to share with the other officials. Saturday evening they had a happy hour at USAC Headquarters, where the meetings were, prior to a buffet dinner.  Under the circumstances I thought it best to limit myself to just one glass of wine and a light dinner since I hadn't gotten any exercise in days and probably wouldn't for a few more to come.  I headed back to the hotel a little earlier than usual, took a 12-hour Aleve, and got in a little sleep. It's been a little uncomfortable to sleep, which is pretty typical for a collarbone break.  I tend to wake up, try to get comfortable, sleep for a little while, wake up again, and repeat.

Anyway, Sunday was pretty much a repeat of Saturday except that it had snowed overnight and the temperature had dropped into the 30s and everything ended at noon. I headed back to the airport with John Patterson from Georgia and Josie Strange from Florida. We were all on the same flight to Houston. The return trip was fine and I was glad that the plane was big enough that I could get my bag under the seats each time, but even though I didn't have a long layover in Houston, I was a bit uncomfortable. The plane for the first flight from COS to Houston was super cold for some reason. I had to fish out my vest from my bag just to keep from freezing.  Then the short flight from Houston to New Orleans was unusually warm.  Go figure. Anyway, it was a pretty good trip under the circumstances and I'm glad I went. I probably would have spent the whole weekend sitting in a chair in front of the TV feeling sorry for myself at home anyway.

Races start next weekend with a collegiate race in Texas. Don't know if I'll be needed for that one yet, but I guess I could help with the driving. I had been looking forward to riding the road race myself because they were combining the Collegiate A men with the non-collegiate Cat. 1/2 men.