RAIN from the Inside…of a Very Big Truck

By Keith Vogelsang

As the registration numbers continued to climb, I became increasingly anxious about the job of provisioning all the rest stops along the way. I had lots of help shopping for food from Klaus Rothe and my two boys, Mac and Ethan. This was the first year using our new large-capacity, high-volume watering system (the four big tanks seen below). RAIN Committee Chair Mark Villanova and I had completed a full-capacity wet test the month before, using our largest (225 gallon) water tank, and determined that the engineering was fast, safe, and clean.

 I wasn’t quite sure how I would get everything into one truck, and I almost didn’t! But my wife, Kim, and the boys all pitched in to make it happen, and by late Friday evening, the boys and I had arrived at the first rest stop to begin setting up for the next morning. I couldn’t sleep that night; as I was still unsure that I could get it all set up in time. The boys and I started out around 5:00AM to get 225 gallons of ice cold water into position. Mac set up the food table, while Ethan and I filled up across the road at the Marathon station. This is the same site south of Greencastle that we’ve used for some of our club’s century rides. The owner there loves bicyclists, and goes out of his way every year to make sure we have what we need in terms of ice and water.

Ethan filling up one of the transport tanks.

Unfortunately, I miscalculated on the elevation to get the water transferred from the truck. The system was designed to be gravity flow all around, but I could have used another three or four inches of rise from the truck down to the tank stationed on the ground and a better transfer hose to prevent kinks. Fortunately, a PSV driver named Frank, along with Vince Caristo and Doug Steury from the city of Bloomington arrived just in time to form a bucket brigade to get the water transferred and iced down. Thanks guys—you saved the day!

  Here’s a shot of one of the smaller tanks in action at the Plainfield stop. Mark Villanova, Amy Cornell, Kim Vogelsang, Ellie Dahlgren, Grayson McKim, Mac and Ethan (and Pongo) staffed this stop. I’m grateful for their Nascar-level speed at getting the truck unloaded and the tables set up. We’ve received lots of great feedback about this stop, too.

Pongo

The first stop along U.S. 231/40 and this year’s new Greenfield water stop were the only stops where water had to be trucked in. The other stops were simpler, as we could just fill up with our new drinking-water approved hoses. Dan Hickey, Clair Murphy, and Matt Hoffman from Indy met me at the Franklin Middle School lunch stop. And they moved like a military operation to get the lunch snacks and water stop set up. Jill and Christina Beyerl answered our call for volunteers, and helped Jim Schroeder and Sylvia Stroub at the Greenfield stop. As a new stop, we weren’t sure how it would work; the help we received here from the Beyerls was crucial. My thanks to all of you! By that time of the day, Jim and I were both running very late, so the extra hands were very much appreciated.

I finally made it to Richmond just minutes ahead of the lead pack. Jim Schroeder coordinated this year’s route for the RAIN committee, and his extra few miles gave me the edge I needed. Susan Bassett (in the red visor) was one of the many heroes at the finish line, helping to process riders. We’ve received rave reviews about “that nice woman at the finish line” cheering everybody on. Yep, that was Susan! John Connell coordinated this year’s finish line, and set up a new system that worked brilliantly for keeping finishers organized. We’re especially grateful to all the nice folks at Earlham who provided technical support and helped keep the food and drinks flowing.

There are so many great folks who stepped up to help—it was really gratifying to witness first-hand what we were capable of as a club. Obviously, the ride is an enormously complex logistical and technical operation. It’s not easy to get 1600 endurance athletes safely from point A to point B, when those two points are separated by such a vast distance! But I’m proud of the work the new RAIN committee put into the event, and I know we’ll make even more improvements next year as we get valuable feedback from our riders.