To meet her new team and sponsors, she was originally supposed to fly to Louisville two weeks ago but she happened to time her flight with a big storm where all the flights out of the Northeast were canceled. So instead, she suckered me into joining her this weekend for the meet and greet. We determined that flying there and driving a rental car back would be the best option to transport all of her gear, including a brand new Argon 18 E118 fit to her by another team sponsor:VO2 Multisport.
Well here's to "best options"!
Finding economical flights typically means flying at odd hours which was the case this Saturday where we had to arrive at the airport a 4am for check-in. We were flying out of Boston so we were lucky enough to have Amber's parents drop us off. This early flight would allow us to get to Louisville a little after noon so we'd have the afternoon to get the bike fit, meet the team founder, Chris Hutchens as well as do a little photo shoot, and then hopefully be able to spend some time checking out the town. Unfortunately, American Airlines had a different plan for us-canceling our flight to Chicago and re-routing us through Miami. Now stop for a minute and pull up a map. I'll wait.
Okay now that it's in front of you: look at Boston and Miami and then find Louisville. My trigonometry is rusty but is the shortest way between two points to travel the other two legs of the triangle first? As can be expected we arrived quite a bit later than we had anticipated, making the photographers and the bike fitters all wait for us.
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| Amber and VO2 Multisport owner, Jeff |
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| Amber and Chris, founder of Maverick Multisport |
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| Pete, the bike fit guru, and Amber |
They were great and efficient and Amber was excited to try on her new uniform by Champion Systems and see her bike fully assembled with her awesome ENVE wheelset and Rotor Q ring and powermeter. She was stoked about how it turned out and it is sure to help for a FAST 2014 season. Add to that a nice new TYR wetsuit, 110% compression socks, and Swiftwick cycling socks and she was happier than a pig that has escaped a BBQ(as well as one in other things). So, bottom line: She was happy that she made it out to Louisville and it made our ordeal worth it. Oh yes back to the ordeal...
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| Amber with her newly assembled and fit bike! |
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| Amber with a Louisville Slugger, another Maverick Sponsor(click here to see all her sponsors) |
Hopefully you didn't get rid of that map quite yet. If you map out how long it should take to get from Louisville to New Hampshire regardless of the highway you chose should take you anywhere between 15-16 1/2 hours. What that does not account for is snow and Kentucky/Ohio drivers in it. What they lacked in accumulation, the drivers made up for in accidents. We probably saw close to thirty cars off the road as we made our way up 76. If I didn't have other drivers to worry about, we probably wouldn't have gone much slower but we ended up doing 30-45mph for the majority of the time. After six hours of this slow driving and rather than driving through any more of it, we opted to stop and get a room for the night. No spending a night with Amber is not an ordeal. But it did get us home quite a bit later as we spent the entire next day in the car.
The ride was not all bad though as the roads were clear, Amber was awake(for the most part) and we stopped for a great lunch at a Sushi restaurant in Wilkes-Barre, PA and an AMAZING seafood dinner in Sturbridge MA. That dinner alone made the trip worthwhile.
So if you're thinking about sponsoring Amber, just look at the distance she will be driven to meet you and just wait for the 2014 season to see how well she will represent. We're in the final stages of developing the season right now so check back on her blog to see the game plan.
Up Next: Amber is DANCING WITH THE STARS this Saturday night! Derry Prep 16 miler on Sunday for Danny and his sister Marilyn!
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