It's not a safe sport

Note: I wrote this the evening of June 16, 2007 when I got home from the race, and haven't edited it since then. 

Crystal City Criterium, Arlington, VA

June 16, 2007

All to frequently we hear about death in cycling. We probably even knew someone who died in competition. Today, those stories touched me personally: I saw a man die right in front of me in a race.

We lined up this morning for the first Crystal City Criterium in Arlington, just north of National Airport. The entry fee was high, but so was the prize money. The course was exciting, and after the Master 35+ race, we could stay to watch the pros race after lunch.

The fifty-rider field contained most of the usual MABRA heavy-hitter masters: Superdave, Ramon B, etc.  The course was shaped like a backwards "6."  The top of the six went under the overhang of an apartment building, around a 180, a 90 and then down a 600m straight through the finish. 

I spent the beginning of the race groveling. I could ride in the field, fifteen guys back, but I couldn't imagine leaving the safety of the group. The pack dynamic wasn't particularly nervous, although my teammate did knock my bars once. The businesslike dynamic is one of the benefits of masters racing. We all know each other, and we've all raced for years: no surprises.

Little moves went all through the race, but nothing got more than a few seconds. With eight laps to go, coming out of the second turn, I'm trying to move up. I'm on Keith Mitchell's wheel. It's neither a good nor a bad wheel. He's a 50+ rider, riding way down in age today. Despite his slight build, he often pushes a huge gear. He doesn't tend to crash, but sometimes he goes through holes that I don't care to follow him through.

Suddenly, Keith looks to his left at the ground just in front of his bike. His bike starts to slide to the right, as he continues to look at the ground. There was no contact, and even if he had overlapped a wheel, I would have expected him to keep it up. I'm not panicking yet. But he's not straightening it out. The bike continues to the right as he goes to the left. I realize that he's going down. Now I'm panicking. There is no exit right or left--I'm right up on him and I'm full on the brakes. He slams into the ground right in front of me. Still no exit appears, and I'm frantically trying to figure out if I can ride over him and not crash.  Fortunately for me, the coefficient of friction between him and the ground matches the one between my brake pads and my Zipps, and I screech to a halt up against his bike. I unclip to avoid tipping over.

He's lying on the ground, like so many other guys after a crash, but he's not moving. Spectators are running up. What should I do? It's just a crash, I think, like so many other crashes I've watched, both from the sidelines and from saddle. I clip back in and bury it to try to catch back on. Before the next turn I see Keith's teammate Grant

Soma circling around and heading back to the crash site. But I'm already lost in an anaerobic fog trying to close the gap before the straightaway. I fail to complete the mission, and soon I can see the finish line. The group is receding into the distance. I think about giving up, but then I realize that the officials will undoubtedly neutralize the race, so I redouble my efforts.

Sure enough, I catch back on just before the second turn before the crash spot. I realize that the situation is bad. Keith is lying face down on the pavement, in exactly the same position he was in when I almost ran over him. Emergency personnel ring his prostrate body. I try to think the best, "He hit his head on the way down, and he's just unconscious." But as we roll past, a darker thought comes to mind: his crash was the symptom, and not the cause.

At the start/finish the officials neutralize us. Rumors circulate through the peloton. Twenty minutes later, the officials restart us with four laps to go. The quick restart is not a good sign. Serious accidents take much longer to clear, because the EMTs want to stabilize the patient. 

We finish our race. I never made it back to the front and chose to sit up in the sprint.

Keith Mitchell died of a heart attack. Apparently, the EMT's never found a pulse. 

I have raced against Keith for as long as I can remember. He was an enigmatic figure, for whom I had a grudging admiration. He could be a reckless rider, and he was more frequently on the wrong side of the rules than suited me. But we had a friendship of the sort that comes from competition. 

We tried to look at this sad occurrence positively. At some level, don't we all wish we could die doing what we loved? Better to leave this world coming out of the second turn in a $1000 criterium, than to have a massive heart attack sitting on the toilet, or stuck in traffic, or yelling at your kids.  

Monster Cross 2017

Summary

Conditions were fast, and the weather was astounding. I actually started the race in short sleeves, with only a base layer under my kit.  I staged poorly. I wish the promoter would stage by class and not just one giant wave after the elites go.

I rode conservatively for the whole race, since I didn't know how I would respond after not racing for nearly seven months. I didn't feel like my usual reckless self, and really dialed down the risk level--I didn't want to start 2017 lying on the ground with a broken collarbone. For the first big lap, I worked my way through the field, and really made up time on the paved uphill section. Although I faded a little after after the halfway point, I didn't notice it, and I felt really indestructible for nearly the entire race.

Unfortunately, at the end of the second big lap, and only nine miles from the finish, we were neutralized as a group so a woman who had crashed could be helicopter evacuated. I had caught (for the second time) 65+ national cyclocross champion Fred Wittwer, and was thinking "podium!"  I could spin the neutralization two ways. Negatively, all the guys I had dispensed with on the road all caught back on. Positively, I caught all the guys who had dispensed with me on the twisty hiking-path sections. So it was probably a wash. After the restart, the fight went out of me for a while, unfortunately, and it wasn't until we hit fire-road sections again that I could dial the intensity back up.

I completely fell apart on the final single-track downhill section less than a mile from the finish. At least ten guys passed me in the final two minutes of a three hour race.

The finish order was a replay of my racing career. When I was a second-season Category 4, I had more than ten top-ten finishes, but they were nearly all sixth through tenth. If a race paid three places, I was fourth. If it paid seven places, I was eighth. This time I ended up 4th in the 50+: one place off the podium. And like Hilly Billy Roubaix 2015, where the winner passed me with less than five minutes left, I'm sure the third place guy this year passed me on that single-track section where I came unglued.

The race in graphs

I faded less toward the end than in past years. The horizontal section is the six minutes I spent during the neutralization. 

All five years compared. I have never been faster. than this year.  2015 was the year of the epic mud bogs, and in 2014 I DNF'd after flatting twice and then getting lost in the woods. I am astounded at how close 2016 and 2017 are for the first 80 minutes.

I averaged 175bpm for the three hours, even including six minutes standing motionless. I have no idea what was wrong with me in 2016. 

The race in pictures

Hey! I'm with a teammate! A lot of the course is fire roads like this one.

The road section. Time to drop the mountain-bike guys. It's always a good sign when you're riding with a national champion. 

Stream crossing. I rode this like a grandmother--I refused to flat. I'm off to the side to try to stay out of everyone's way.

The only steep section on the entire course just after the stream crossing.

Setup

Same as 2016. Crux with hydraulic disk brakes and Challenge Gravel Grinder 38mm tires @ 45 psi (5psi lower than 2016). I'm done with file treads; I'll ride regular cyclocross tires in 2018. Definitely needed more hookup on the twisting sections.

Results

• 2017: 49.4 miles in 3:11:42 57/309 overall and  5/46 in the 50+
• 2016: 49.4 miles in 3:15:47 82/342 overall and 10/55 in 50+
• 2015: 45.4 miles in 3:28:47 58/252 overall and 5/38 in the 50+ 
• 2014: DNF--two flats before the 1/2-way point
• 2013: 47.7 miles in 3:05:23  71/382 overall and  9/46 in 50+
• 2012: 3:17:33  58/336 overall and 12/50 in 40-49

Links to results

• 2017
• 2016
• 2015
• 2014
• 2013 By Division
• 2012 By Division (broken link)

Strava link

• Strava file for MC2017

Links to previous race summaries

• 2016
• 2015  

On academic integrity

The questions

• Should you get to declare a mulligan when you're caught plagiarizing part of your thesis, by just removing the parts you didn't write and then be allowed to keep your degree?  Or does this situation constitute a "one and done?"
• Bonus question. If you're caught and you get to keep your degree, should you have to acknowledge that your thesis was withdrawn and reissued for ethical revisions?

The back story

In 2015 I reviewed a manuscript for an additive manufacturing journal. It was the first "double blind" review I had ever done--where the author and institution information had been removed from the manuscript. Many problems existed in the manuscript, ranging from the grammatical to the scientific. Chief among the science problems was that the materials science in the explanation of the findings didn't make any sense to me. It just seemed random and unconnected to the experimental results. It was also clear that multiple authors had contributed different sections. That's jarring, but ordinary, in scientific publication where multiple authors contribute.

I  resorted to the cited references to try to understand the confusing discussion of the results. One of them was Iain LeMay's Principles of Mechanical Metallurgy, which I had on my bookshelf, since I had stolen it from Sandra's box in the attic.  Imagine my surprise, when I found an illustration in LeMay that strongly resembled one of the figures from the manuscript. But in LeMay's book it illustrated a very different deformation mechanism, in a completely different material system. And the text surrounding LeMay's illustration appeared nearly verbatim in the manuscript I was reviewing, with just some of the nouns changed.
At this point, I began drafting my rejection of the manuscript on the grounds that the author had plagiarized part of the manuscript. Nearly simultaneously, inter-library loan finally delivered one of the other cited references from the manuscript under review. The rest of the confusing discussion of the manuscript was a nearly word-for-word copy directly from the second reference. The author had not even corrected the direct-from-French-to-English sentence structure that he had plagiarized from the cited work.

The double-blind  nature of the review fascinated me, and I immediately challenged myself to find the identify of the authors. A few Google-scholar searches of unusual phrases from the manuscript made short work of that, and I rapidly identified the US university and research group. As is often the case, the manuscript under review was actually an already published and awarded Masters thesis, which I downloaded from the university archives.

I repurposed my review of the manuscript, and addressed it to the academic integrity board of the university in question. I included high-lighted versions of both references and the masters thesis that demonstrated the plagiarized sections. After a few weeks, an associate dean at the university informed me that they were investigating the case, and thanked me for my input.

The interim

I didn't expect that the university would keep me informed of the progress of their case or even, for that matter, their decision. Nevertheless, every few months I checked the university's archives to see if the thesis was still available. Within a few months it was gone from the on-line archive without a trace or notice that it been withdrawn.

In late 2016 my search found the thesis again. It had a new number (like what passes for a DOI at this university), and the plagiarized pages and figures had been excised. But nothing else was different, and no new explanation replaced the missing section. Even the acceptance dates and signatures in the front matter were identical to the original version. There was no statement that the thesis had been revised and resubmitted.

The changes were literally at most a couple hours of work of cutting and reprinting

What did I expect would happen?

I guess I thought that this would be the end of the student's career. It never occurred to me that the university would just re-issue the thesis with no comment.

Were there sanctions for the thesis advisor and committee? I have no idea, and probably could never find out. But the advisor had to know that his student did not write the entire thesis--if I could discern multiple authors in one reading of the manuscript.

Questions

• Is this outcome fair? Or right? 
• Should plagiarism be an academic death sentence? After all, if I stick up a liquor store, get caught, but return the money, I still committed the crime, and will be charged and probably serve time. (Though I won't get the electric chair)
• If a student plagiarizes (or invents data), should the advisor also be sanctioned? 

Caverngasm 2016

The 2016 Hyland-Luecke road trip them was "Caverngasm 2016. It takes its name from a chapter on the "Civil Wargasm" road trip  in Tony Horwitz book Confederates in the Attic (link) My original idea was that we would visit every commercial cavern in Virginia. Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess. I'm glad we didn't. By the end, we were caverned out, and even though there was time for one more, neither of us wanted to. 

After a few caverns, I was convinced that every owner must subscribe to a trade magazine probably titled "Cavern Owner's Monthly." The tours were all very similar. Most interesting were the origin stories, most of which involved some boys and an animal:

Endless Caverns: "According to the tour operators, the cave was discovered by two boys in October 1879, while hunting rabbits " (Wikipedia)

Grand Caverns: "The cavern system was discovered in 1804 by 18-year-old Bernard Weyer, a young trapper, looking for his missing trap."

Dixie Caverns: "The caverns were found by a couple farm boys back in 1920 after their dog fell through a hole that led to the caves." 

So, if you want to find a cave, employ some boys and a dog.

Also, every cavern has to be somehow unique. Endless Caverns: "The longest commercial cave tour in the state of VA!" Grand Caverns: "America's oldest show cavern." Shenandoah Caverns: Virginia's only cavern with elevator service!" and "best cave bacon!" 

Since I was still in the agonies of my National Championship crash-induced sciatica, I was able to check out the area around every hotel every night as well. 

Ratings

• Best formations: tie: Grand Caverns or Shenandoah caverns
• Best Tourguide: Natural Bridge Caverns
• Best tour experience: Endless Caverns, because we were the only two on the tour. 
• Don't bother: Natural Bridge Caverns--this is like going in a mine rather than in a cave.

Day 1 Two caverns

After a mostly on-time departure, we hit Endless Caverns, just outside New Market, VA for the 10AM tour. Score--we were the only people, so we got a personalized tour from Maria, our very charming tour guide. Endless Caverns is more of an RV park with an attached cavern. The formations are nice but not spectacular, but they haven't been endlessly beaten up like the ones in Grand Caverns. The private tour made up for the formations. 

Sandra and I in the "Cathedral Room" just before the cavern exit. 

After a quick lunch at a Mexican restaurant in New Market, we headed for Grand Caverns in Grottoes.

Grand Caverns bills itself as "America's Oldest Show Cave," since it opened for business in 1806. Unlike Endless Caverns, Grand Caverns was mobbed with people shuffling along in both directions (the caverns are mostly linear in and back out. The formations were certainly more spectacular than Endless Caverns, but also showed a lot more abuse. Almost all of the individual stalactites near the paths were broken off, presumably from the 19th century. 

We detoured onto the Blue Ridge Parkway on our way to overnight in Lexington, and stopped at the Humpback Rocks visitor center to check out the chickens. The visitor center tries to recreate a late 19th century homestead as it would have been in the hills. 

Sandra lectures the heirloom chickens (They are Dominiques--America's First Chicken Breed!--this was clearly a trip of superlatives.

Night walk observations: 

• Dude with a headlamp weeding a traffic island at 4:30AM. 
• Face to face with a skunk rooting through trash bags (the skunk, not me) Interestingly, I had smelled him (her?) 20 minutes before, while I was several blocks away.

Face to face with a friendly skunk out looking for a late-night snack. (He's right by the doorway in the center of the frame. I didn't want to get too much closer!) 

• Special-needs guy doing a booming business selling newspapers at the corner at 5AM (I bought one too). Everyone who drove by seemed to stop and chat and buy a paper. 

Details

• Endless Caverns
• Grand Caverns
• Dinner: Southern Inn I had the Fried Chcken (delicious). Sandra had the tuna steak (too salty)
• Overnight: Robert E Lee Hotel, Lexington VA. Great old hotel, newly renovated. 

Day 2 More caverns and some trains

Natural Bridge may be the oldest tourist trap in the country. The owners have been charging visitors for more than 200 years. As usual, I would have liked more history of the place, which also has a reenacted native american village and A CAVERN! We took in the cavern, whose tour guide was the most engaging of the four we visited. The cavern, which opened in the 70s, unfortunately was the least engaging of the ones we visited. It's more like going down in a hand-dug mine than a cavern.

Fun facts about Natural Bridge:

• Thomas Jefferson bought it from the King of England in the 18th century. 
• TJ mined a cave on the property for guano to make gunpowder in the war of 1812.

Sandra pointing at Natural Bridge. The highway actually goes over the arch. 

Sandra Hyland pointing to the entrance to Thomas Jefferson's bat-poop cave. 

How did I miss the Roanoke Museum of Transportation? Oh,right, I planned this entire trip in just a few days. We only found it because I googled what was in the area during our lunch stop there. We didn't leave anywhere near enough time. An actual working steam train had pulled in the day before and was still leaking water when we checked it out. 

Blacksburg night walk observations: 

• Not too much to see in an industrial park at 4AM. Two cute cats sleeping in the middle of the road. 

Details

• Natural Bridge and Cavern
• Roanoke Museum of Transportation
• Dinner Ceritano's Blackburg with Peggy Laine
• Overnight: Microtel Christiansburg

Day 3 Asheville

Wow, the streets were mobbed for a Thursday lunchtime: aging hippies, street kids, millenials with man-buns and batik-print skirts. All these people can't have come just for the Biltmore. I could see myself living here, especially for the riding. Literally two blocks from our downtown hotel we were on the base of a 350 m climb up to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
We walked to the downtown theater after dinner to see Hunt for the Wilderpeople: charming without being saccharine.
Two thumbs up for the historic Princess Anne Hotel. Expensive, but not as expensive as the new hotels on the downtown side of the interstate. We slept through (oops) the complimentary wine and cheese-plate happy hour. 

Details

• Lunch: Curate Tapas Bar
• Overnight: Princess Anne Hotel

Night wandering

I slept until 5AM, which was great, so I was able to walk for coffee when I woke up. 

Day 4 Blue Ridge Parkway and Valle Crucis

It was going to be long drive back to Blacksburg, and we made it longer by taking the Blue Ridge Parkway right out of Asheville. Great driving Sandra's Mini instead of my tank-like Subaru. Mid-drive we stopped at the Mast General Store in Valle Crucis, where Sandra's mom had gone to high school for several years. Unfortunately, the building next to the store had caught fire and burned, and the road was closed. 

We tried to make it to Dixie Caverns (discovered by a boy and his dog, of course) but the day was late, my leg hurt, and we were both tired. 

Details

• Dinner: The Cellar, Blacksburg
• Overnight: Microtel Blacksburg

Night wandering

Young woman, all dressed up, sitting on the curb of the Microtel at 2AM crying into her phone. Later she was wandering around the industrial park like me, but was gone by the time I completed my second lap.

Day 5 One more cavern before going home

Shenendoah Caverns caverned us out.

Shenandoah Caverns also has a giant exhibit of Rose-Parade floats,, department store animated window displays from the 1950s and 1960s, and the stage of some political party national convention. Roadside museums are the best.

Finally, the caverngasm was over--we didn't have the energy to stop at either Luray or Skyline caverns.

Details

• Shenandoah Caverns 

MonsterCross 2016

Outcome

I started well, but did get passed by too many people in the first thirty minutes before settling into a good rhythm. Around the halfway point, the front shifting started to go bad, and soon the crankset was hitting the chain keeper. There was a lot of metal-on-metal shrieking. I think that that added resistance didn't help my time.
I rode conservatively, perhaps a bit too conservatively. Conditions were ideal: dry, and about 50F at the start.

Diagnostics

The two plots below show how badly I faded on the second lap. I suppose that could be due to the grinding crankset. 

The dashed red lines are regressions to the first sixty minutes of the race in 2016 and 2015. In 2015 I actually went faster during the middle of the race. In 2016, the wheels started to come off about an hour in. 

Heart rate was also off from previous years:

Course

The course was longer than in 2015, and some of the nastier muddy narrow-track was gone. All that made a cyclocross bike the right choice. The new section was added to the mini-loop of 2012-2015, across the pedestrian bridge near the start. 

Most of the course is fire roads:

I was near this guy for 40 of the 50 miles

About 20% is narrower track

With some stream crossings thrown in.

Gear

• Specialized Crux
• Stans No-Tubes alpha 340 with Challenge "Gravel Grinder" 38s @ 50psi

Nearly crashed once while plowing a furrow with the bars turned 45 degrees. I could have used more hookup in the turns. But maybe that would have been detrimental in the wide-open sections.

Results

• 2016: 49.4 miles in 3:15:47 82/342 overall and 10/55 in 50+
• 2015: 45.4 miles in 3:28:47 58/252 overall and 5/38 in the 50+ 
• 2014: DNF--two flats before the 1/2-way point
• 2013: 47.7 miles in 3:05:23  71/382 overall and  9/46 in 50+
• 2012: 3:17:33  58/336 overall and 12/50 in 40-49

Links to results

• 2016
• 2015
• 2014
• 2013 By Division
• 2012 By Division (broken link)

Strava link

• Strava

Travel

Less than 2 hours door to door. Got there at 8:05 in plenty of time

2015 MABRA racing analysis

On and off since 2001 I've produced a year-end statistical analysis of racing for races that have been run under the auspices of the  MidAltantic Bicycle Association. 

USACycling Demographics through the ages. Note that the peak in the distribution is moving at almost one year per year. 

This little blog post is just a place holder for the link to the PDF version of the report  Here's the link to the actual  report.

Notes: The 2001 version has absolutely horrific "Excel" style graphics and was six pages long.

2015 Spring bike trip

Base of Operations

High Mountain Chalet at Bryce Resort on Mosby Hill Rd. 

The Cast

• Glenn Swan: 1989-2015
• Jay Romick: 1989-2015
• Ernie Bayles 1990(?)-2015 (one year missing)
• Bruce Barkley 1992 (?) -2015
• Bill Luecke 1992-2015
• Ed Duell 1993-?; 2011-2015
• Brian Thompson 20??-20??; 2014-2015
• Bill Erickson: 2012-2015
• Tom Snyder 2011-2015
• Ted Barber: 2014-2015
• Dennis (Day 3 and 4 only)

Day 1: Ed Duell, Me, Glenn Swan, Jay Romick, Bruce Barkley, Ernie Bayles, Bill Erickson, Brian Thompson (photographer is Tom Snyder)

Day 0, Weds April 15

I picked up Ed Duell at Dulles, and we did a 2 hour ride from the Marshall Park-n-ride.

Day 1, Thursday April 16

Bushwhacking
Once again I forgot to do my own field checking of the atlas maps, which led to a long section of bushwhacking and stream crossing. The DeLorme atlases are based on the USGS maps, which for this area of Virginia have not been field-checked since the 1950s.  After we came down from Supinlick Ridge, and got some local intelligence, we ended up quickly at a stream crossing. We were all in high spirits and forged across one, and then another.

Waiting to cross the last good stream crossing before beginning the bushwhacking.

Across the second stream was an even more enticing omen: a closed gate labeled "Road Closed." The gauntlet was thrown down.
We rapidly ended up in a clear-cut field, and then were bushwacking back toward the the stream we had just crossed, looking for the road shown on the map. We crossed over stream several more times, until we came out in a little development, in the backyard of a woman gardening.  She graciously waved us on through her yard.
Amazingly, and as a testament to our newly developed common sense, when it started raining at lunch on the croquet field behind the Fulks Run General Store, we turned around and went back to the base. So cold; so very cold...

Link to Strava summary

Day 2, Friday April 17

The second day was definitely the Queen Stage. We started almost immediately by crossing the stream behind the lodge on a bridge made from two I beams. From there it was over the mountain on Crooked Run Rd, which turned out to be a scenic, epic dirt climb, as expected.  The descent into Lost River tested the hydraulic disks pretty well.
From there we shot for another road on the map, which of course turned out not to really exist. Or at least it hadn't existed as a road in at least two decades. We hit a "private property" sign, and in another fit of complete sanity, we turned back.
Fortunately (or not--see below) we chatted up a local out painting his fence, who said that "no one cares" so we reversed and pushed on. The lower stretches of the climb were pretty, wooded, and smooth. After lunch, and a stream crossing, the final 1.5 miles of the climb turned out to be a complete core workout, with 15% grades and baby-head boulders. The post-action debriefing revealed that we should have turned back and ridden up the main road another mile to a dirt road that snaked along the state line. We probably would have had time to take the long way home.
Nevertheless, the downhill was completely epic--at least 5 miles of single-lane gravel/dirt with exactly zero guard rails, sketchy switchbacks. I'm sure the views were spectacular, but I was otherwise involved in trying to extend the event horizon. As usual, I started the descent at the back and passed everyone. I was unable to shake Ted Barber, who rode heroically in the match up of traditional cantilevers vs hydraulic disk brakes. I could not have stayed with him on a traditional cross bike.
My reaction during the descent was fascinating: absolutely no fear. The entire descent was basically an intellectual exercise in maintaining control. I nearly overcooked one turn when I was distracted by trying to understand why I wasn't afraid.
Link to video of downhill (unedited) 
I flatted right at the bottom of the descent, though probably because of an impromptu off-road segment when I turned to see where Ted was.
The rest of the ride back to the house took us through the Methodist camp at Orkney Springs and a well-deserved gin and tonic

 and our traditional Jay-Romick-prepared paella dinner on deck.

Link to Strava:

Day 3 Saturday, April 18

After turning over the route-planning for the day to Glenn, we carefully made sure that we only took maps that contained areas that we were not planning to ride. That lead to a lot of GPS checking.  The first destination was Wolf Gap. I was confused by the signage on Johnstown Rd, which indicated "Road Ends." It had been several years since I had been up this road, and was worried it the National Forest Rd had been closed. But it was open and we rolled up and over the Gap. We came back from Wardensville on FR 82, going the opposite way from 2013 and 2005(?).
On this traverse of the road Bruce's friend Dennis started to fade. Before the climb back up to Judge Rye Rd we took an executive decision and sent him and Bruce down to WV253 to wait for pickup.
Judge Rye Rd was in tremendous condition--very little gravel on hard-packed clay. I flew down the descent, despite pulling my foot twice trying to bunny hop holes.

Link to Strava summary:

Day 4 Sunday April 19

Just a short roll around before everyone had to pack up and go. 

Our accounting procedures (a long-tradition, always involving a piece of cardboard rescued from the trash) are worthy of a big-four firm:

$180 per person for four days of adventure. 

Postscript

Less than a month after we all parted on that Sunday, we got word that Brian Thompson had died suddenly and unexpectedly.