48 Hours in Charlotte.

I mentioned last time that I had big plans for my Friday morning in Charlotte, North Carolina. I fully realize that I'm highlighting my inner nerd by telling you that I had been looking forward to seeing the Body Worlds exhibit at the science museum for quite some time. I read about Body Worlds in The Best American Nonrequired Reading of 2006. One of the essays in there was about the Plastination process that makes Body Worlds possible. I was so intrigued that I looked it up on the information super highway. Imagine my excitement when I discovered that the exhibition would be in Charlotte at the same time that I would be there! So, months before my arrival in Charlotte, I had carved out some time just to go see these bodies. For those of you who are too lazy to click the link I so thoughtfully provided, Body Worlds is the exhibition of real human cadavers that have been preserved by a process called Plastination. They wouldn't let anyone take pictures, but I did manage to find some out there on the net:

The whole thing was a lot creepier than I thought it would be. I thought I'd just walk around in there and be like, "Human bodies and stuff ... cool." Instead I spent hours staring at them and pondering my own mortality. I also did not eat lunch that day.

So that's what I did Friday during the day. Friday afternoon I headed over to get set up for the 2nd annual 24 Hours of Booty. The idea is basically to ride this 3 mile loop over and over and over again for 24 hours. They raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation while doing this. It's actually a pretty cool event. I was doing tech support and bike demos.

The event started out nicely enough. A little warm, pretty damn humid, but not much to complain about:

But then ... not more than an hour into it, a hell of a thunderstorm came our way. So, what started out like this:

Turned into this:


It was pretty crazy for a few hours. I spent a lot of time pushing pooled water off the top of my tent and awning. Pretty much everything got soaked since the rain was coming in sideways. The 3 mile course was closed for about an hour for safety reasons, so riders were piled in under tents everywhere. Finally the storm let up and went away all togehter. Travis, the guy I was working with took the first sleeping shift from 12:30am till 3:30am. I got to sleep from 3:30am till 7:30am. Then I worked the rest of the day and was surprisingly chipper most of the time. We finished up Saturday around 7 (24 hours later, of course) and I managed to get about 4 hours into my drive home before I had to stop and sleep. I drove all day yesterday and finally made it home.

My roommate is bugging the shit out of me to go ride, so, while I'd love to elaborate more, I've gotta go. More later though.