Patagonian Expedition Race
YogaSlackers first into Villa Tehuelches
Anne-Marie Dunhill / 17.02.2016
YogaSlackers were the first team to arrive at the checkpoint in the village hall of the tiny town of Villa Tehuelches. Teams who reach this point have almost finished the monster 272km bike section. They made a quick stop, arriving at 10:25 and leaving at 10:40. Their first request on arrival was for medical assistance and as the checkpoint staff scrambled to find a medic, they filled their water bottles and went to the bathroom. Jason Magness quickly found the first-aid kit in their bag and squirted copious amounts of eye drops into his left eye.
When asked how the night went, the answer was two words; cold and long. A medic was found and Jason sprawled out on a gym mat. Chelsey said, “He can’t see out of his left eye. He was wearing protective glasses throughout the section but it suddenly hit last night. He has no depth perception. Hopefully when we get on the trek it will be ok.”
Staff member Camila Perez told the team that East Wind was about 40 minutes behind them and Jason said, “Not far enough, let’s go guys!” The Canadian team member, Alexandre Provost asked for the toothpaste and tooth brush but Jason said, “No, let’s go man, you can do that out there.”
Villa Tehuelches’s village hall is warm with delicious smells wafting from the kitchen so it will be difficult for teams to motivate themselves to leave quickly and YogaSlackers’ rapid departure shows just how serious they are about winning the race.
They asked where GODZone was and wondered out loud what was going on with the team; in 2013 Nick Gracie’s team took the lead on the very first stage and maintained it throughout the race. We are waiting to find out if this is a new strategy on the part of the 5 time PER winners or if something is going on with the team.
Standing to one side, waiting on his bike for the others to mount theirs before heading back out, Alexandre Provost simply fell over and Jason said, “Hey, what just happened there man? You’re scaring me.” Jason, Chelsey, Dan and Alexandre rode back out to finish the monster of a biking section, hoping that the two eye patches that Jason had tucked into his bag would give his left eye a chance to recover some vision.
Accurate information is hard to come by and most information about times appears to go through the grapevine so according to a member of the Japanese media team who had been following East Wind throughout the night, the 40 minute time lead that Camila relayed to YogaSlackers could actually be longer. The waiting game has begun.
Note: East Wind has still not arrived, over two hours after YogaSlackers left CP5.
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