The 2011 edition of RAAM is history, with nothing left for the documentary crew to do but sort through a few terabytes worth of video looking for the soul of a film. That's going to take a while, but hopefully it will all come together and one day in the not too distant future there'll be a documentary that shows the race from a new perspective. Until then, a couple closing impressions from the race:
The last of the RAAM documentary crew arrived in Annapolis on the final Sunday of the race and within 24 hours were packed up and headed home. It was a bittersweet feeling, one that I think we shared with the riders and their crews. RAAM is a bit like summer camp. It's a weird, often unsettling adventure, and you end up with plenty of ridiculous stories to tell your friends back home. Along the way you do a lot of complaining, but you make friends quickly in cramped quarters, and at the end there's a sense of sadness that it's all over. It all seemed to go by so fast, and as you step on that plane or bus or RV for the ride home, you have to do a bit of mental stretching to reconcile what you've been through with your quickly approaching return to real life.
And it's that return to real life that may be most jarring thing about RAAM. Because yes, real life is comfortable. You sleep in an actual bed, and dinner is hot, and the toilet works. But in real life you're just like everyone else. In RAAM, you can be a hero. You can spend 10 days pedaling up mountains and across deserts. You can cling to the edge of the road as trucks whiz by at 60. You can push your body and mind to the absolute breaking point, stop on the side of the road totally defeated, then find a hidden reserve of will power buried deep within that forces you back onto that bike. Those are things you can't do in real life, and they make these two weeks in June such unique, irreplaceable experience.
So thanks to everyone at RAAM, all the riders and their crews, and especially to the documentary team- Andre, Ernie, Jon, Jeric, and Taylor- for making it such a great race. Let's do it again next year, shall we?
Andy
