I killed Bambi

Before I get to my story about how I killed Bambi, let me review last week really quickly. Thursday was a pretty good swim with T3. I swam people out of my lane so that was a nice feeling and I was the fastest in the water that night. I'm afraid to go back to mornings because I'll definitely get my ass kicked. I do feel like I am getting faster though. My Friday weigh in was 192 so I've lost about 6 pounds since February 5th. That's a good sign. My weigh in tomorrow won't be close to that because of what I did this past weekend.

This past weekend I did the Leakey Death Ride. It's a ride put on by Richelle every year. I keep hearing that it is a fun time and I wanted to actually go this year and break in my sleeping bag and tent that I got last year and haven't used yet. I decided to go about a month ago and was actually looking forward to it. We camped at the Lost Pines State Nature Area in Vanderpool, TX. Each day is a ride if everyone feels like it. There are also some trails for those that want to run.

I meant to leave at around 1pm on Friday. I left at 3:45pm. Yeah, I was running behind but oh well. The trip up there was uneventful for the most part. The roads were very scenic, twisty, and turny. It was fun. I don't venture out of Austin into Texas much so this was a nice break. I was driving along and there were deer all over the place because it was getting close to dusk. I came upon a group of deer with about 4 on the right side of the road and 1 on the left. I thought it was pretty effective to honk my horn when I got near them to spook them away from me. Well, this time the one on the left ran in front of me at the last second. I was going well over 60mph and probably close to 70mph when it ran right in front of me. I heard a thud from where it hit the front and then there was a definite pause of a second or two. Ok, it could've been less than half a second but this was one of those time stands still moments. After this 2 seconds, I hear the thud, thud as my car tires run over something.

I pull over to the side of the road to make sure that the deer is dead and to see what happened to my car. I check out my car first. You hear all of these stories about people hitting deer in the road and it nearly totals their car. I checked my front bumper and found no damage because deer guts and deer hair. I check it over pretty carefully and I see no major damage at all. I walk down the road to check out the deer. It's out in the middle of the road and the speed that I was going as well as running over the damn thing, I'm pretty sure that it didn't suffer. I get up to it and check it out and it is definitely dead. It's still twitching for a few seconds but it stops pretty quickly. I'm glad that it was dead because I didn't want to have to run over it again to put it out of its misery. There are guts all over the place and then I see why it really didn't do much damage to my car. It was only about 40 pounds and it was definitely a fawn because it still had white spots. Yep, I just roadkilled Bambi. I drove back to the campsite which was about 5 minutes away and took these pictures. BTW, my car still smells like deer. I was calm, cool, and collected through all of this. I don't know why, but I was surprisingly. I felt bad for killing the deer because I don't like killing innocent animals and this is only the 2nd time I killed anything with my car. I did learn that I should be a lot more careful when there are deer out and about.









Got to the campsite and pitched my tent and slept that night. I have to say that my recent tent and sleeping bag purchase were damn good purchases because I'm really happy with both of them.

The next day was the ride. Richelle and Sharron tricked me into doing a 58 mile loop instead of the 40 miles that I wanted to do. I had brought my road bike because it has a triple chainring and I've heard about the killer hills here. I got out on the road and my hands went numb in about 5 minutes. Not a good sign but I get going. The temperate was fantastic. It was the low 60s and overcast at the beginning. It got warmer and the sun came out later though. The majority of the big hills are at the very beginning of the ride. I think it took us nearly an hour and 20 minutes to go 18 miles. The first hill was the worst though and I think that hill was a mile long. I got warmed up really quickly after that. It was very, very pretty though and the descents were scary as hell. After those 20 miles or so, it was more or less flat the rest of the way. One bad thing was that there was a lot of chip seal which is very uncomfortable to ride on. My ass and my arms were sore about half way through the ride. We chatted in our group and didn't have any major incidents during the ride. It was great. Sharron and I picked it up a bit at one point, put it in the big chainring, and was hauling ass. That was fun. We got back to the campsite and I think I nearly ate everything in sight. I had couscous and a package of tuna for dinner and that was a decent camping meal. The temp the rest of the day was nice but it was windy as hell. We all went to bed and the wind kept up the entire night. It was tough to sleep through but I got a decent amount of sleep that night.

We got up the next day and almost no one rode. The wind was brutal and I hate riding into the wind so I had no problems skipping it. Without a ride, that means it is time for breakfast! Rob and Cindy were heading to breakfast while most other people ran. I joined them because I wasn't running. We got to the Lost Pines Cafe in Utopia, TX and had a damn good country breakfast. I had French toast, ham, and hashbrowns as well as Rob's hashbrowns and Cindy's bacon. Yum! We headed back and I found out that Lisa and Lynda were now going to breakfast. Alright, second breakfast! We went there and I had some scrambled eggs and a bit of Lisa's delicious hubcap sized pancakes. When we were leaving, we saw a stray dog across the street. I walked up to it and it scurried away a bit but I worked my dog whispering magic and it came up to me and enjoyed me petting it. It was a sweet little dog, too. Lisa came over to pet it and then Lynda went back inside to get the dog the leftover pancake. She came back out and the dog definitely was hungry. You could tell it was protective of its new food and it was really funny. At first we thought it was trying to eat the entire pancake at once but it was just trying to get it all in its mouth to walk away and eat it somewhere else. It would try to pick up all the little pieces and when it would pick up one, two would fall out. Imagine carrying your laundry around the house. It finally put down the pancake, ate a bit of it, and then carried the rest off the entire time it was dropping a piece here and there and picking it back up. It did seem like a sweet dog.

We were off from the cafe and about 5 minutes around the corner, we saw the last bit of a wreck. Apparently, a couple of guys were riding their motorcycles when one lost control and bit the dust. Since both Lisa and Lynda are two (very hot) nurses, they pulled over to help. The guy that bit it was off to the side of the road sitting down. His buddy was pushing the injured guy's bike out of the road. The nurses took over and were examining the downed guy. He seemed to be doing pretty well and he was very receptive for the help. Luckily, he was wearing a helmet, chaps, and a ton of protective gear. He seemed to have his wits about him and was doing decently well. Another couple of guys pulled up and called the ambulance. Within about 2 minutes, we heard the sirens starting to wail and they were there in about 3 minutes. The nurses relayed all the information to the paramedics. He probably had a concussion and the patient realized it. He was actually pretty cool. I know a lot of tough guys that'll just try to get up once something like this happens and try to walk it off. Luckily, this guy didn't do anything like that, just sat down, and was very cooperative. He got strapped to a stretcher and loaded into the ambulance. He had a neck brace and that was just a precaution. I snapped some pics with my camera phone and they are below. I thought this entire ordeal was interesting and it makes me glad that I am going to go into the medical field soon.












The guy seemed like he was going to be OK so we went back to the campsite. We exchanged numbers and email addresses because it seemed like nearly everyone wanted to go to Big Bend so we'll keep in touch about that. I really want to go now! I miss how much fun backpacking is and I've been browsing REI all night long for gear that I want, I mean gear that I need. The drive home was uneventful. Now, I have to finish cleaning up and I'm going to hit the sack soon. My back is really looking forward to having my bed again.

Overall, I had a pretty kick ass weekend. The good thing is I think I've met some more people to hang out with because even though I've been here for nearly 4 years now, I still have issues meeting people to hang out with.