Crazy sweeps the competition!

If you go back and look at “Crazy” posts in the last few years, you’ll see a handful of entries about how my little brother Justin and Team WEDALI have kicked some major adventure racing ass. Well, they can’t accomplish much more than they have in the last two weeks:

In 2012, WEDALI became the first team to win both the USARA National and the Checkpoint Tracker Championships.

(Admittedly, this is only Checkpoint Tracker’s third championship race, but given that WEDALI won it last year and this year, that’s pretty damn impressive.)

So pretty much all I can say at this point is… wow. And congratulations to Justin, his wife Molly and all of Team WEDALI!

Just for fun, here’s a video of the team crossing the finish line this morning (and I’m proud to say that yes, that’s my little brother dropping his bike and cackling wildly… I can’t imagine why people might think we’re related).

I only care about certain weddings

The Royal Wedding of Prince William and Commoner Kate is not one of them.

Conversely, my little brother Justin married Molly Moilanen on this date three years ago. I talked to him on the phone earlier tonight and he was happy to report, “We made it over the two-year hump, so we should be good for another forty, fifty years.” I hope so for their sakes. Happy anniversary, guys.

Golden boy for a day

Just wanted to wish my little brother Justin a happy 31st birthday! For those who don’t know what a “golden birthday” is, use the day of the month you were born: he was born on January 31st, so he’s celebrating his golden birthday at age 31 today. My birthday is October 19th, so mine was when I turned 19.

I was going to say that he’s as old as someone can get before reaching their golden birthday, but if you were born on February 29th and Leap Year happens once every four years, you probably won’t get to celebrate yours because you’ll be dead. So… yeah. Like I said, happy birthday, Justin!

Interesting proportions

My family has trouble getting together. Lots of schedule conflicts, people running in circles… probably not that much different than other families, really, but we still like to meet at a restaurant to celebrate birthdays, although it’s usually for more than one of us at a time because of said schedule conflicts. My birthday was October 19th and my party ended up scheduled to be in November. We picked a time and place to meet and had everything all planned out. Unfortunately, the snowstorm that hit the cities that afternoon didn’t care about our plans. So much for my birthday party.

I mention all that because Justin and Molly got back from the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge last weekend and we still haven’t partied for my sake. We all met at Brent and Gail’s today to party for Santa’s sake, but not mine. However, Justin followed through with his offer to buy my birthday present while in Abu Dhabi and it’s pretty sweet.

There are two gifts and one is… I’m assuming it’s sweet, given that it’s a small bag of Arabian Delights brand “Chocodates”. Description on the front of the bag: “choco-date with almond”. My favorite part, though, is how the back of the bag lists protein, carbohydrate, fat and “energy” (in kilocalories and kilojoules).

The second gift is thoroughly awesome. It’s a polyester long sleeve “Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge” shirt (logo on the upper left part of the chest). Across the back reads “Abu Dhabi” and the right shoulder has “Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority” printed on it in both English and Arabic. I started wearing the shirt as soon as I opened up the wrapping even though the tags were still hanging down at the bottom.

I finally cut the tags off when I got home tonight and took a closer look. It’s a Salomon-brand shirt made in Cambodia and sold in Abu Dhabi, which helps explain why the little “Warranty & Glossary” booklet has two small pages of information written in 28 different languages: English starts on page 2 and a southeastern Asian language ends on 59.

There’s also a tag that lists the size, etc. Not out of the ordinary—it describes the shirt as black and made in Cambodia—but it also says “T-SHIRT (SHORT SLEEVE) L”. That’s right, short sleeve. Out of all the shirts I own, this is one of the few that can reach my wrists when my arms are fully extended, so if this is “short sleeve”, I can only imagine what a long sleeve shirt made by these people would look like.

Crazy hopes it’s a dry heat

WEDALI. My little brother Justin’s adventure racing team. 5th place at Primal Quest last year. USARA National Champions this year. They didn’t do as well in the Checkpoint Tracker National Championship—apparently, there were multiple other teams complaining about how the race was set up and organized as well—but the final result was winning the overall rankings. The championship was worth 200 points, but no matter how the Checkpoint Tracker people played with the numbers, WEDALI was the only team that reached the maximum 500 points.

As a result of those 500 points, they’re currently in Abu Dhabi getting ready for the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge. Checkpoint Tracker covered the cost of their flight, hotel and race entry fee. Well, not the entire hotel fee, given that they flew out a couple days early so they could tour around a bit. How many times do you think they’ll be heading to Abu Dhabi again?

Up to this point, they’ve sprinted through the Chicago airport because their arriving flight from Minneapolis was late, rode camels, visited a falconer hospital and the Grand Mosque, and stayed in a $3,000,000,000 hotel (sure, I could have written “billion”, but all those zeros look pretty awesome). The race itself is beginning… I can’t find a specific starting time on the website, but it’s about 3:00am in Abu Dhabi right now and the race starts today, so they could be bounding through the sand dunes already.

They’re not expecting to win. Out of 50 teams, they’re one of three from the United States. And given that some team names are “Russia”, “China 1” and “China 2”, my money says some of those are professional racing teams. And then there’s “Abu Dhabi Triathlon Team”. They’re from Germany. I think that team may have been put together for a particular race somewhere in the world, but I can’t figure out which one.

WEDALI is awesome at races that last for a couple days and they’ll sleep maybe three hours, but this race is set up more like the Tour de France—teams push themselves hard during the day and sleep at night. Buncha sissies… So like I said, they’re not expecting to win. They have no idea how they’ll place amongst teams that specialize in races like this. Teams like “Abu Dhabi Triathlon Team”. But it’s an experience of a lifetime and they’re there to compete and have a good time.

All of the teams are carrying a GPS, so feel free to check out the satellite tracking system and join me in cheering them on. Cheering on their little dot as it moves around on the map. They might not be able to hear us, but I’ll go ahead and cheer anyway. Assuming that it’s not 3:00am here, where there’s a much higher potential of waking someone up who doesn’t like being woken up at that hour. If that happens, it won’t matter how many points I had at the beginning of the race—I’ll be the loser.

Crazy is crazy fast

I know, I need to write another blog entry about what I’ve been doing recently, but this story is way cooler. If you look back at this entry, you’ll note that my little brother Justin is a bad-ass adventure racer. And when I say “bad-ass”, I mean “crazy good.”

He and WEDALI do really well in races across the country to earn points—he and his teammates have been racking up lots of frequent flier miles—the points at races sanctioned by United States Adventure Racing Association accumulate until (hopefully) qualifying the team for the final race of the year. I think they finished fourth for total number of points, so last weekend was USARA Nationals.

Here’s a little blurb from the front page on the website:

“About The Race

“The USARA Adventure Race National Championship is the “Heart & Soul” of Adventure Racing in the United States. Co-ed teams of 3 compete in 45 USARA regional qualifying events across the U.S. for a chance to battle it out for the title of USARA Adventure Race National Champion.

“Teams are required to navigate a series of checkpoints using only a map and compass to guide them while transitioning between several disciplines such as: Trail Running/Trekking, Mountain Biking, Paddling and Orienteering.

“These teams will have to push the boundaries of human endurance and teamwork just to finish. Winning will require extreme willpower, mastery of all disciplines, and a little luck.”

But here’s the most important page on the website: the final results. That’s right, WEDALI didn’t think fifth at Primal Quest last year would be enough of a legacy. They had to go ahead and WIN Nationals this year. Daaaaaamn…

So to Justin, his wife Molly and their teammate Erl, congratulations. Lots and lots of congratulations. I got to see a picture of the trophies they received—individual and a team trophy—and lemme tell ya, whoever keeps the big one will need to reinforce the mantle above the fireplace. Big trophy for a big accomplishment.