Velo Girls ProCycling Team was one of the top ten teams in the Women's Prestige Cycling Series and so earned a trip to the CD&P Bermuda Grand Prix. For more on the Velo Girls please visit their website at http://www.velogirls.com/racing.html.

Report by Velo Girl Pam Hinton

September 20, 2005
10:30 a.m.
I have been scrambling the past two weeks to get a bunch of lectures and exams finished in advance, so that I could skip out from class and play professional bike racer. The day of my departure has finally arrived. Actually, my travels started on Friday when my boyfriend and I left Columbia, Missouri and drove south to Claremore, Oklahoma to ride the MS 150 with Jim’s brother, sister-in-law, and sister. The annual McDonald ride was a good time and I used the long miles at a leisurely pace to get my body back in the groove of spending hours in the saddle. Living in the Midwest, the racing seasons finishes with a bunch of crits, most Missouri racers wrapping it up with the party AKA The Gateway Cup, Labor Day weekend. I am ready for the off-season.

This was my first year to race multiple stage races—Redlands, Joe Martin, TriPeaks, Nature Valley, and Tour de Toona. I am tired and eager for a break. My composite team, VeloGirls Procycling Team managed a top 10 finish in the Women’s Prestige Series, so we get to travel to Bermuda with some expenses paid. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to race in Bermuda. Plus, I wanted to finish what I started—I was the only VGP racer to do all 3 WPS races. As Woody Allen observed, “Eighty percent of success is just showing up.”

I planned to take a break from hard riding when I got back from Bermuda. But then Eric, the manager of VGP, sent out an email recruiting racers for a team to take to La Vuelta de El Salvador. I couldn’t say, “No.” I want to race an UCI event in a foreign country before I quit bike racing. So, I was in for ES, too. As the travel logistics worked out, I am going directly from Bermuda to ES with an extra day in NYC.

My great adventure has begun. It has been uneventful except for a possessed plastic coffee cup lid. I finished the coffee and crammed the lid into the Styrofoam cup. Evidently, there was so much potential energy stored in the lid that it exploded out of the cup and hit me in the face—directly in the eye, leaving me with bad airport coffee running down my cheek.

It turns out that last night St. Louis was without power, including the airport. The terminal had only been back up for a couple of hours when my flight from Tulsa landed. We waited an hour for a gate to open up. My flight to NYC is still showing as “on time.” I am keeping my fingers crossed.

10:30 pm
I met up with Eric and his wife Suz who races for Subway in NYC. We had to pass through a line of armed security guards on the jetway boarding our Bermuda flight—that was a bit weird. We made it through customs without incident and were greeted outside the terminal by a race representative. Keith arrange an “airport limousine” for us and the Webcor ladies. Somehow we manage to cram all of our bikes and bags into the back of an antiquated bus. As we pulled out of the airport, the moon was near the horizon, appearing yellow and bigger than normal, reflecting on the ocean.

The rest of the ride was anything but tranquil. The roads here are very winding, narrow with stone walls instead of shoulders. Our driver, Archie, did a remarkable job of finding our host houses in the dark and of maneuvering the bus on those narrow roads. I was greeted by our host for the week, Heather. She is a sweet woman who is hosting bike racers for the first time. I think she’s a little apprehensive that we’re going to tear her house apart. She told me that she was going to clean out her refrigerator before we arrived (and it is jam packed), but figured we’d probably do that for her. She showed me my room for the week—it is PINK—our team color.

September 21
We all slept in this morning. After coffee, I ventured out to the shed to put my bike together. Soon after, our last team mate, Sharon, arrived and Eric and Suz showed up from their host hosing. We changed into our pink kits and rode into Hamilton. Biking here is a bit frightening—they drive on the “wrong” side of the road and there are as many scooters as cars buzzing by with no room to spare. After hitting the internet café and bike shop, we headed back home, loading up with groceries on the way. I violated the “NO HELMETS” rule by wearing mine into the store. Ooops.

We could have ridden our bikes to the Team Presentation Dinner, but since it was at the Bacardi World Headquarters, we opted for the taxi. After a few free rum drinks and pasta dinner, we hit the festival on Front Street. Moriah and I already were scheming to get our hair braided and when we saw the braiders at work, we couldn’t pass up our chance. Moriah and I have started this crazy hair thing at races—at Toona we went for the pink dye—now corn rows for Bermuda. I went first and ended up with a Clingeresque pattern. Moriah warned me that I need to put sunscreen in my cracks.