Am back from this year's Rando Stampede, which was counted as an overall success, but was marred by a couple of incidents.  The first night, going toward Marble Falls, the tandem of Stephan Hazelton and Lara Sullivan was sideswiped by a feral pig and went down hard.  Lara suffered a broken pelvis and a dislocated shoulder.  Stephan escaped with road rash.  He stayed with Lara at the hospital during the rest of the ride.  On the last day, Charlie Fenske, an LSR favorite, got his rear wheel caught in a crack in the pavement and went over the handlebars.  Fortunately, he was treated and released from the hospital with whiplash.
 
On the plus side, we had headwinds half the way, and crosswinds and headwinds most of the rest of the way.  Our visitors can tell their friends they endured record-breaking cold for this time of year, as well as the hottest day of riding some of them had done so far this year.  We decided not to bring on any hail or tornadoes.  After all, they're supposed to be having fun!  Mark Metcalfe and recent recumbent convert, Vickie Tyer, were the first ones to finish, in a total of 83 hours and 25 minutes (Vickie rides a CA 2.0).  Prominent ultra rider, Dex Tooke came in about an hour later, in his first 1200k rando event.  About 30 of the riders were riding in a pack until Charlie's accident took the wranglers away to tend to him, and they got separated into smaller groups that started to come in a couple of hours later, and the beer and eats were broken out.  The last riders regrouped and came in together just before 1:00 Sunday, a little more than an hour before the course closed.
 
One other 'bent rider participated, Gerry Elam, whom I think is from Arizona, but I may misremember.  He is taller than I am, and rode an extra large CA 2.0 with an Air Force insignia on the side of the frame.  Several members of the largest American rando club, the Seattle International Randonneurs, came for this event.  Thursday night, as we talked with Sharon Stevens about her cumulative mileage, we realized that every person who had ever received an award for officially riding over 100,000k (to which Sharon is very close) was riding this event.  So when they got to that control we got Mark Metcalfe out of bed and got group pictures done.
 
So it looks like another epic ride is in the books, and we may be getting a good rep for this thing.  Most of the riders make it look fairly doable, but somehow I'm not convinced.