Mass Exodus

The minute I saw who was calling, my heart sank.  A and I were just about to leave for the airport to fly to Sacramento when my cell phone started buzzing in my hand.  It was the teammate who never secured a vacation day from work for the Friday race, who swore up and down she was going to call in sick instead, who bought her airfare and recruited her cousin to join the team as a symbol of her commitment.  Additionally she was someone who worked at the same company I did, although in different departments.  I did not know her very well, but she certainly seemed friendly, capable, eager, and, most importantly, dependable.

“I’m so sorry, I can’t do the race.  I think I'll be fired if I call in sick.  But don’t worry, you can keep my registration fee. ”  This said with the perfect combination of airy angst that can only be delivered by an entitled twenty-something who justifies screwing over an entire team because, as she explained, her “future is on the line”.

It takes months of planning and a significant financial investment to put together a relay team.  Having organized a road race team last year and run on a friend’s team earlier this year, I have learned the hard way that anything can happen, even to the most reliable person you know.  The people you sign up with are never the same group that ends up running.  Just because everyone has paid, secured days off, and booked their travel, it doesn’t mean a last minute emergency won’t up-end your best laid plans.

Despite knowing the inevitability of human nature, I was dumbly confident two nights before the race with everyone’s checks cashed, waivers in hand, and multiple assurances that everyone would be at the Tahoe campsite bright and early Friday morning.  Instead I busied myself with worrying about mountain lion attacks, forecasted thunderstorms, West Nile virus, sleeping on asphalt, and figuring out how to cook ramen without electricity.  In other words, I fooled myself into thinking our team of eight was set.

Hours after my coworker called with her bad news, while waiting to board our delayed flight, the cousin she had join our team also jumped ship.  Via text, she piteously cited her dog’s chemotherapy and apologized that “it has to be this way”.  Of course I saw it coming considering all I knew of this person was that she was a thirty-year old woman with a penchant for posting midriff-baring self-taken photos captioned “How do I look? ;)” on social media and enthusiastically declaring herself “very liberal!” whilst ironically being unable to practice social responsibility on a micro level.

And just like that, as we shoved our backpacks into the overhead bin, I realized that we lost a quarter of our team less than twenty-four hours before go time.