| View Blog
|
|
|
|
So folks this weekend I traveled to Atlanta with my husband and my son for a national BMX race. For folks who are unfamiliar with this event..it is a gathering of thousands of people to race on bicycles around a dirt track. There are people racing from 3 years old to 77 years old. The races are broken into skill levels and age brackets and it is fun for everyone.
One draw back is that this is an expensive sport. Entry fees are $45.00 per bicycle per rider (our son rides two different divisions, 20 inch bikes and cruiser bikes). YIKES! This means that you have at least $115.00 (230 for two bikes) in race fees for one rider. Some people have 3 riders in their families..yikes.
Couple that with a hotel for at least 2 nights and every meal take out and you are talking about $1000.00 for a weekend at the track. Our son races for a BMX team called Domination Intense. His race fees and hotel fees are paid for by a sponsor..YES folks we paid only for our food. Since we would be eating anyways this trip was basically free for us..Go us! Gas?? Because I am the team's manager..was paid for also.
Atlanta is some two hours from us, so we headed down Friday morning early to set up our pop up tent and register for races.
To say that the race was a sweet distraction from the stress I have been under would be to put it lightly. It was nice to be away from my home and my phone and all the struggles of closing out all of my mother's accounts. I did receive texts and phone calls from two siblings, which I promptly responded to with a "I am in Atlanta and too busy to talk, we will talk later".
We set our tent up and put our chairs out and sat to watch all the people arrive. There were people from all over the United States and it is an interesting thing to see. No matter how much gas costs, these people just came anyway. Most of them drove, though I did see that some people flew in and rented cars. Friday was an all day practice session to give the riders a chance to ride the track.
My son enjoys practice and prepares for the race at 6. In his first round he wrecks, he goes down hard on the pavement. He writhes around on the pavement and I get to him pretty quick. Now let me say that in his 8 years of racing, I have seen him crash. This time though he did not get up. The medics are checking him and think he may have broken his wrist..yuck! His racing is over for the weekend. They checked him out good and advised us to take him for an x-ray. Being that he is 17 and can tell us how bad he hurts, I waited awhile, iced it and asked how it was. My son seemed to think it was okay and was just jammed. He did not have any swelling or bruising, so I felt sure it was not broken. We decided to wait until Monday to see our family orthopedic. Yes folks..we have an orthopedic on speed dial..Ha!
The rest of the weekend was spent cheering on our team mates and watching some awesome racing. We spent a lot of time with friends and had a blast. The team finishedi in 1st place on Friday, 7th place on Sat. and not sure where on Sun. They did well as there was probably 20 teams there or more.
Yesterday, I took my son to the orthopedic surgeon for x-rays on his wrist and arm. No breaks, just pulled tendons and it was recommended that he just slowly excercise it so that he can improve his range of motion. He goes back in one week to check his range of motion.
All in all, it was a good weekend.
peace :) shemelts
|
|
Posted by shemelts on 2008-06-24 10:12:00 | Rating: | Views: 55
|
|
| |
|
|
Email This to a Friend 
