Miami 70.3 Pre-race. What Could Go Wrong...

Wow...what a pre-race adventure this weekend was. 

Bonnie and I started off that day being about an hour late getting out of the house.  Then about 100 miles into the ride the car started to overheat in the middle of BFE!!  We were stuck with the issue of how to we get car home 100 miles, get a rental car, how to get the bikes into a rental car and still get to the bike drop off before it closed at 6 pm. The nearest rental car company was 35 minutes in the wrong direction.

We called a tow truck that was suppose to come in about 1.5 hours. Of course in 1.5 hours they called and said they were going to be late so we told them we were going about 5 miles down the highway to get off the side of the highway.  It was much safer to be off the side of the road. 

When we got to the gas station we saw our tow truck.  Awesome.....WRONG. <expletive>  He said we were now two miles out his district.  I said, "how about I drive back two miles and you hooker her up."  "Nope", he said.  <expletive>.  So now we call back AAA who said she was sorry she did not tell us this but it will be another 1.5 hours for a new tow truck. <expletive> We do not have 1.5 <expletive> hours. 

So I chanced it and decided to drive the car the 30 miles to Vero (the closest big city).  By now the car was cooled down.  We go to within 5 mile and it started to overheat again.  We waited another 30 minutes.  Then tried to finish the ride to the rental company.  We turned to car off at every stop and JUST made it into the rental car company.

The rental car was $260 (<expletive>).  She was nice enough to waved the additional $260 one-way fee which would have means the rental should have cost $520 (holy <expletive>)!!!  It was interesting shoving two bikes into a small SUV but we made it happen.

A tow truck company finally showed up with a friendly driver.  Who said his day was sucking bad.  Come to find out he was near Orlando earlier in the day and hit a deer doing 75 mph (which messed up his truck pretty bad).

We made it to Miami a with about 45 minutes to spare.  But had no money to park.  So I ran to 7-11 where the clerk spoke NO English and he could not figure out how to fix the cash machine.  I was not real friendly to him (I snapped) and the manager (who spoke minimal English) got the machine working.

How off to the hotel were we unload all our stuff.  We went to go check in and found out...Bonnie directed me to the wrong hotel.  So we had to reload everything and go to the correct hotel.

We ate Cuban food (not the best pre-race meal) at 8:30pm.  We should have already been in bed and sleeping at this point. We got to be around 10:00 pm and had to get up around 4:50 am.

To Be Continued...