A Guy Gave Me His Phone Number! He's 40 years old. Yay?

Winning the Lake Mary Criterium: JC 1st, JK 2nd. Just like the old days.

This weekend, I did the Sanford and Lake Mary races. I got 5th on Saturday, which was kind of disappointing. I won the Lake Mary race on Sunday, though, so that made up for it. I really like that course, and my legs felt good. There were attacks at the beginning, a break went, we stayed off, almost lapped the field, and I won the sprint at the end...all the same ol' race stuff. You know how it goes.

I definitely want to congratulate Michelle Blake for winning the women's category 4 race. You can read her account of the race as soon as she posts it by clicking on the link to the right. She's the "Bottle Rocket."

Anyway, I warmed down a bit after the Sanford race on Saturday. Actually, I wasn't supposed to be warming down as much as I was supposed to be doing a bit of extra training. I did a couple laps around the block, and immediately got distracted by the men's category 3 race that a few of my friends were in. Who wants to train when you can sit leisurely on the curb and watch others suffer?

So there I was sitting on the curb when the nice police man who was corner marshaling for the race, struck up a conversation with me. He was fit, looked to be about 40 years old, and seemed genuinely interested in what the cyclists were doing out there on the course. I explained some tactics to him, answered some of his questions, and told him a bit about the Florida racing scene. He said he watched my race, and had pegged me as the one who would win the field sprint. Well, I didn't win that day, so I guess that goes to show how much he knows about cycling. It was a good conversation, but there's only so much I can talk about cycling before I start to go crazy. So I made an excuse, hopped on my bike, and pedeled away.

A couple hours later (my friends had finished their race, and we were packing up the car to go back to my house), I see a car pull up out of the corner of my eye. I don't really take notice of it until I hear my name called..."Jackie!"

I look up. It's a police car, and in it is the police man. I guess I must have told this guy my name, but I don't remember doing so.

He beckons me over, and hands me a white slip of paper through the window.

"Here you go," he says. "Good job today, blah, blah, blah."

And I say something nice like "blah blah blah" back to him. Meanwhile, I'm taking his card, registering what's going on, and thinking to myself, "Naw... he is NOT doing what I think he's doing, is he?" Next thing I know, I'm holding a business card with two numbers on it. One of them handwritten. Aw man...

I don't know what else to say so I say, "Thanks! Good luck with your blah blah." He drives away, and I look back down at the card in my hand.

I look up again, and my friends (three guys my age) are looking at me inquisitively. "I think he just gave me his number," I say, astonished. And then it hits me. "He just gave me his number," I say again. "And he was OLD...." They had all seen him too. And after a pause, they all start cracking up.

So I guess there's a first time for everything.