Thanks to everyone that gave me support through a long and tough week during the Race Across America as I served as Team Surfing USA's Crew Chief!!!
Unfortunately, our team only made it 2,000 miles. With 1,000 miles to go, one of the race vans from a competing team accidentally crossed over the line of travel for our rider Jason Winn. Jason was driven into the pavement nearly breaking his ankle and elbow with plenty of road rash in between. The other three riders made the decision to stop racing and head to NYC for other team business that was previously planned for immediately after the RAAM. After a few hours with Jason at the hospital, we loaded him up and gathered the team and headed for Annapolis for one night then on to NYC. We completed our other business in NYC without any further mishaps or safety issues.
To clarify and put any circulating BS to permanent rest, this was NOT intentional. It was simply an unfortunate accident. The other team felt horrible about what happened. We felt bad too. Everyone runs on minimal sleep in RAAM with great difficulties. In the end, it came down to safety. It's really important to constantly hammer your RAAM teams and crews about safety over and over again. Let's just learn from this and move on...enough said.
All in all, it was an amazing week. I learned more about life in the last week then probably any other week in my previous life. I learned about who I really am--and who I need to be.
In the heat of the fire, you learn a lot about people. Once again, RAAM and the universe provides!
From a HOT SoCal with post-adrenaline RAAM fever burnout,
In GARRA!!! Coach RJ