Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 13:43:00 -0600 From: "Rich Limacher" THE UNLIKELY ADVENTURE OF KITSCHME SIOUXME AT THE SUPERIOR TRAIL 100 Part 7 Oh, So the Banquet Really Isn't at the Banquet But at a Different Function of the Same Name? "Kitschme Sioux said To R.D. Carleen, 'What am I s'posed to Do with this theme? Whole lotta runners Are starvin' to death, An' lotta readers more Are jus' holdin' their breath. Maybe I oughta end it all right here And just be done?' Carleen said, 'The food's spread out On Highway 61.'" --Kitschme Siouxme (With Apologies to Bob Dylan) Well, gosh. I'm sure you all realize by now how much I HATE to complain. I would rather have lead-based paint daubed on my nails than to ever cause you to have heard a discouraging word. In fact, I'd ratha suffa dis prickable belly piercin' dan to eva let da starvin' complain a' distended bellies. But these things can't be written to disguise the facts that our pre-race briefing was anything but brief, and our pre-race dinner didn't have any food. (In fact, these things probably shouldn't be written at all.) But I am, after all, a reporter at heart, and I'm here to report to you now that, according to the information we all received from the race management of the Superior Trail 100 Mile Endurance Run, most of us convening in that repeating meeting Re-union Union Hall of Silver Bay, Minnesota, that day--that fateful day by the shore of Gitche Gumee--even without the freshly slaughtered buffalo herd or a Sioux shish-ka-bob sizzling over an open fire by the wigwam of Old Nakomis, WERE still expecting to eat. We came by this expectation, probably, from the third page inside the cover of the pre-race booklet itself, which even yet states that the "pre-race briefing and optional dinner will be at Silver Bay in the municipal bldg/union hall which is located next to the liquor store and across the street from the Holiday gas station." Hmmm. Maybe that wasn't a bartender I mentioned in the last chapter. Was it a liquor store clerk? Did I pull into the wrong parking lot? Was there in fact a Holiday gas station across the street? Or was it Sinclair? These are questions even Little Bare had no answers for when I found her milling grain, ah--no, wrong story--milling around the crowd of ultrarunners in the non-banquet banquet room just after I got out of the no-bath bathroom. "Are they gonna feed us, or what?" I asked her in a loud whisper, so as not to disturb the other non-goings-on before the optional non-dinner dinner. "I dunno," she said. "Maybe they already ate?" "No, I don't think so," I said. "There'd be dirty dishes, don't you think?" "This is Minnesota," she said. "They do things differently here." "Right," I said. "Wrestlers rule!" Apparently, we were all misreading the pre-race booklet. It DID say "optional dinner," after all. But we were probably thinking that the dinner was OUR option when all along they were thinking the option was theirs. So, obviously, they decided not to take the option. But now, recalling my earlier difficulty in procuring provender earlier in the day, I rather non-quietly explained to Little Bare and the rest of my Rough Riders that we COULD be in real danger of not eating that night. "Don't worry," drawled her boy Schultz, "we'll eat." "How can you be so sure?" I asked. "Ah got ma pappy's gun in th' truck. We'll shoot us a moose!" "Your pappy's gun AND truck," I reminded him, "are in Grand Marais!" "Oh sheet!" Of course, none of that mattered anyway, not to me at least, because I still had to race back to the Ancient Mariner's and run back inside my teepee and pack up my drop bags AND get them all back HERE before THEY-all decided to haul them-all the hell otta the hall. "Okay, tell you what," I said to Schultzie and Little and Butch when they'd all gathered round to decide on Plan B. "You stall 'em. I'll be right back with my drop bags and then we'll just drive till we find someplace to eat. This is a tourist area, right?" "Right!" "Well, even tourists gotta eat!" "RIGHT!" "Don't go away," I told 'em. "I'll be right back." I started toward the front door, and then paused for a second time to retry to drink this all in again. Here we all were at the mandatory pre-race briefing, which was already taking quite a long time. There were rows and rows of chairs, but most runners were standing--or hunkered down--near the back, sorting their gear and dropping off their drop bags. There were many big piles of drop bags at various places along the sidewalls, all piled under various signs indicating weird things like the Indian names for all the aid station locations where we'd have drop bag access. But none of the signs indicated, for example, at what mile mark these bags would be dropped. When I asked the volunteers at the back of the hall selling sweatshirts and things from previous years' races, none of them had an extra copy of the pre-race booklet for this year's race, which I knew had a chart with mile marks for all the Indian names for all the aid station locations. OK, so do you get the idea that NOBODY was paying any attention to the speaker who was standing on the stage trying to speak the briefing? If you answered "yes," you would be entitled to a free entry in the first drawing for a pre-race giveaway for a souvenir from a previous year's race. But there was also a good reason why no one was paying any attention to the speaker. The speaker wasn't saying ANYTHING about the race! He was pretending to be a stand-up comedian and all he was doing--I swear to Cheeses--was trying to tell jokes. And they were all worse, I'm guessing, than the ones you're reading right here. Butt let me just cover my "but" by issuing a challenge to ANYBODY at all who was also in attendance at that pre-race briefing: Can any one of you recall even one single joke that man was trying to tell us? (If you can, you'll be entered in the second drawing.) Well, on that note, I decided to exercise my own option--and leave. I rushed out, jumped back in the car, scraped a little more sticky stuff off the keyhole, stuck in my sticky key, and turned on the ignition. And that's it for that joke. Ha! Fooled ya! You thought there'd be a punchline there, but there wasn't. It just gives you some idea of what everybody else was pretendin' to listen to while I was racing back to the motel. No joke at the motel room either. I charged in there, grabbed two bags, and filled them with everything I had previously poured out on the bed: First item that came to my hand went into the green bag, second item I grabbed went into the red bag, third item into the green, fourth into the red, and so on and so forth till the bedspread seemed empty and both bags looked full. Then I went back to the bathroom and pried two strips of duct tape off the sink edge. One I CAREFULLY stuck on the green bag, and the other one CAREFULLY on the red. Then...bodda-bing, bodda-bang...uh-oh, I realized I couldn't label either one of 'em because I had NO idea which aid stations the bags should be dropped at! Bing. Back in the car. Both bags in the back. Bing, bang, boom. Back to the remeeting hall to repeat my meeting with my renowned Rough Riders again. Bang. Parking lot's almost empty! Whoa! Wha happint??? Boom. I'm runnin', bags in hands, back into the you'll-recall hall again. This would be for my second time. And that, I suppose, is how the gosh darn place in the first place had its name renamed: The Reunion Union Hall. I'll never forget it as long as I live. When I raced in there, the repeating meeting was all over. I asked Little what had transpired in my absence, and she didn't know. I asked Schultz and then Butch. Nobody knew. I asked the volunteers at the back--again--and this time--again--they still didn't have a copy of the chart with the aid stations and mile markers on it. Neither could they either tell me what happened at the meeting in my absence. But they did give me my pre-race packet, inside of which was my bib number and three safety pins. And, I think, a coupon for 10% off my very next used tractor purchase from Zeke's Farm Implements down the road a piece inside the Outer Drive. (Although I could be exaggerating here. Maybe the coupon was only for 5%.) "Well, hells bells, Little Bare!" I exclaimed. "What should I do with these drop bags?" "Kitsch," she said, "just drop 'em. Let's go eat!" And that's pretty much what I did. I figured I'd need one bag about halfway through the race and another one about three-quarters. So I walked half the way along one wall and dropped the green bag. Then half of the rest of the way along the next wall and dropped the red one. There. All done. Simple, no? I even remembered to bring my magic marker. So I did the volunteers a favor by marking my name and bib number on each duct tape strip stuck to each bag. And I even wrote down the Indian name of the aid station. Let's see. The green bag went to "Oberg Mountain" (nice Sioux term, no? It means "you are really high") and the red bag was to go to "Cascade River" (another Sioux term meaning "babbling brook" or perhaps "you are REALLY 'high' if you think you'll ever see THIS bag again, buddy"). "OK, Little Bare," I said after I'd dropped the ball. Oh, uh, I mean the bags. "Where do we eat?" "The Northwinds Cafe." "The Northwinds Cafe?" "That's right, Kitsch. They told us THAT's where the pre-race pasta dinner is." "Well, it figures," I said. "It's also the only possible place TO eat in this town. I had, uh, brunch there. So, you ready to ride over?" "No, Kitsch," she said. "We decided to walk. We don't need you after all." "Gee thanks." "Don't mention it." "Do you know where it is?" "Oh, hell, Kitsch. Don't be such a sap. It's right across the street!" "It is?" Sure enough. The shopping center with the post office and supermarket and the-one-and-only eatery in Silver Bay, Minnesota, which is hidden from view along the Outer Drive, is apparently quite apparent to walkers walking out to the outside of the non-banquet banquet room of the Reunion Union Hall. "Bring the car round, James," she teased. "We'll be needing your services again after we dine." So now this brings us up to what's happening. We got everybody to the pre-race meeting where nobody understood anything. I got my drop bags to the piles where I have no idea where they're going, and neither does anyone else. We all got our packets, complete with bib numbers (nice T-shirt though, I must say) and shortage of safety pins, and we all opted for the optional dinner option but they weren't serving any food. Nope. For THAT we had to go across the street and order off the menu. In their own defense, however, the Northwinds Cafe DID have an "all you can eat" spaghetti dinner deal going that night. But...lotsa luck eating any of it. Sports fans, I swear to you now in mostly-total truth, when I rejoined our "party" and we tried to sit down but couldn't so went into the adjoining room where there were more tables and more runners already eating and sat ourselves down to partake of this proffered repast-- Not...one...waitress...did...we...see. Oh, well, actually we did see a couple of them, but do you think they would wait on us? NOOOOOOOO!!!!! Wellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll... Has our hero finally, this time, come to the end of his menu? Will he starve to death sitting there in the only possible beanery in the Bay--without one single noodle, sauce speck, or meatball piece TO EAT?? Will his happy little group of emaciated ultramarathon participants wither as they sit, faint dead away with their heads collapsing into the overflowing ashtrays on the "smoking permitted" adjacent overflow banquet room tables and require the premature services of the next day's attending ambulance-- ALL BEFORE THEY EVER EVEN GET TO THE START LINE??? Stay tuned next time, radio fans, when we'll all learn, at last, what ELSE Medium-Sized-Running-Little-Bare forgot at the grocery store, and how ELSE "you could be a redneck" if you stow all your camping gear in Tupperware containers and try to check out of a campground at FOUR O' CLOCK IN THE MORNING! Yes, furshure furshure, "The Further Adventures of James the Chauffeur and The Clan of the Cave Bare" will return soon with Part 8. And oh, by the way, the author lied. It IS November and he's barely gotten seven chapters done. At this rate, it just might take until the NEXT millennium to finish this ridiculous misadventure. Sorry. But be careful, won't you? This episode *could* possibly contain the Y3K bug! Kitsch Limacher TheTroubadour@prodigy.net