I sent this text out at 10:00
On top of the X middle of the desert amost full moon dancin like a freak with glow sticks to loud hard core music
Bob and I went out to cheer Jonathan on
again this year. We parked halfway down exchange 11 and 12 on the dirt road. Cheered every person (and support vehicle) that passed starting at 8:30. We figured we'd see him by 9:15. 80% of the people that passed us in the dark said thank you, or shouted you guys are awesome, etc. 20% of the people were scared out of their mind of the two random people they've heard hollering in the desert, echoing out from the last 3 hills. Sometimes we let them go by with their face unchanged, sometimes we acted like we were selling glowsticks at crazy prices. Pretty sure one guy sat in some used Red Bull as he sat down in the road to get the rocks out his shoe. Got some strange looks from the support vans too who chose our spot to stop sometimes to hand out water or to make sure we weren't passing out Rape ice cream.
Anyway, with the temps dropping and our voices fading, we began to get discouraged that we were running out of original moves for the runners and maybe we had missed Jon Jon or he had cheated by stuffing himself up in the wheel well of a passing van. We had no Ham radio or special licence to get in touch with anyone else who happened to have one themselves so it looked like we were on our own. But then we remembered we had cell phones, so we used those to call the Ham guys to see if anyone had seen J. Virgil answered his with a "*Ccchhhhssskkk*, this is K7VZ, over" and let us know that he had not seen Jonathan south of our position but he would "Hammer" Paul above us to see if he had made it there yet. I tried to tell him I could just call him but he was already making beeping noises with his mouth and I didn't want to squash his fun. Turns out Jon
had made it through above us an hr and half prior which meant that we hadn't missed him yet.
To make a longer story longer, we decided to tough it out. We guessed that Jonathan's swordplay must have slowed him down or something and we sat tight still cheering like every runner was Jonathan until 11:00pm. Some of our cheers, "Loud Words of Encouragement!," "Yeah! Get Some!," "You got this!," "Let's play tag!," "I've been behind you for the last mile and you never enen knew it!," etc.
When we gave up at 11, we drove up the road until the next exchange, only seeing one more runner as we went. The Ham slice there informed us that J had indeed passed through but could give us no times. We had no other choice but to head back and figure that Jonathan had become a classy Mexican sex slave that probably also gave great fashion tips and talked way too much during.
This morning, I called the other half of Team Yellow and asked if I could have Jonthan's stereo and a couple pairs from his large shoe collection. She calmly told us that he was actually ok and thank you for cheering him on
"?!?," I stammered.
She said when he ran past, he said, "You guys kick ass!" and we yelled back, "No You!" The probem being... It was pitch F-ing black out and everyone (except the ones who were disapointed about the ice cream) yelled something like that at us- plus we were yelling random things like that to everyone, whether prompted or not. Bob was not 3 feet from his victe... "runner friends" as they passed by on their leg sticks.
We had hoped when we found him to pace him for a bit, even had a list of things to yell at him (including ScrumpNugget) to make sure his pace didn't falter. Last year we race jumped him a few times, setting up in several different spots to continue our encouraging shout phrases and glow stick love beatings.
This year we thought we had failed at our task even though about 1 hundred dark faced, head lamped, racers got to see us rave dance to
Demon Hunter as we shouted German style alcolades in their general direction for 2.h hrs in the cold dark.