Railsplitter Triathlon...that of which we have not spoke

My apologies in a delayed update on our most recent triathlon.  But first, let me again thank all those who have helped in raising over $2,500 for Tasha and Stacie!

Our fourth triathlon for the year took us to Petersburg, IL with ties to the 16th President.  This would be our last real test before the half in Branson coming up in a couple of weeks.  The five of us loaded our bikes and gear into the Levings SUV and headed across the state of Missouri.  I believe the driving time was 6 hours, but seemed like 8 to 10.  We had our pregame meal at the Mark Twain Dinette in Hannibal, MO.  It was a good home cooked pasta meal with the best breadsticks around.  Following dinner, we continued on speeding past our exit to Petersburg detouring through Springfield and finally arriving after 9PM.  And then the real fun began!

As we made our way to our hotel rooms bikes in hand, we had a minor traffic accident with a couple of bikes leaving one with an inoperable spoke.  Trevor being our resident bike expert quickly had the wheel disassembled assessing the situation.  We soon determined a new spoke was required prior to the race with check-in beginning at 5:30AM.  As you might expect, the existence of a local bike shop in a town the size of Tarkio at this hour of the night is non-existent.  With Springfield only 20 minutes away, we hopped in the truck and quickly made our way to the city.  Having worked out a deal with Dick's Sporting Goods, we were well on our way to ending the broken spoke dilemma when Eric spotted movement in a bike shop as we passed by.  We did a quick u-turn and found ourselves knocking on the door of this shop at nearly 10PM.  Holding up our broken wheel and with desperate looks on our faces the kind owner, let us in.  We explained the situation and he quickly called in for mechanical backup.  Thankfully the shop's mechanic lived just around the corner.  Trevor was behind the counter assisting with repairs while Darin and Eric had full reign on browsing the empty shop with the owner.  Once the bike was repaired, we realized it would have been too much for us to fix on our own and we couldn't thank the local bike shop enough.  We finally found our way back to the hotel for a quick sleep prior to race day.

Fearing poor weather the day before, we couldn't have asked for better racing conditions.  The event was fairly small, but very well organized and setup with a great course.  I think we would all make the trip again. We only experienced on mishap during the race where Pat had to complete the second half of the bike portion on a flat tire, so the wheel saga was not quite over from the night before. 
-dlee