Doing the minimum in Miami

The Coconut grove Criterium in Miami is the last official race for our team. It is part of the Pro Cycling tour so we had to attend this event even though most of the team is tired from racing the long season. I had 6 riders and Dan Osipow as manager and myself as the only staff. Frankie was to fly over to Spain after the San Francisco GP to do the last half of the Vuelta as the second director. So Dan came here in Frankie’s place. So this race was to be pretty low key.
Frankie asked me if I just needed to send wheels with the riders and they could fend for themselves or what. I kind of hinted that I needed to go to “Work” on the stuff. He got the hint and booked me a ticket to the Miami vacation…..er…..I mean race. After SF I sent a few riders with wheels and asked Kenny and Robbie to bring their home race wheels. Because of that I only needed to bring a couple of race wheels. I knew it was low key but I thought to myself that I’d better pack a few other things. So I brought, a floor pump and my small tool box. I’m not the soigneur but I thought about it and packed 12 bottles. Two per rider. That had to be enough!
I have three tool boxes after my years as a mechanic. My largest one is almost 60 pounds and has been nicknamed “The cooler” by Juan because it is so Damm big and heavy. A few years a go I wanted to make a smaller one so I now have a box that is a little less than half that size and Juan calls this one the “Six Pack.” My newest addition to my collection is under 10 pounds for sure and easily fits in my suit case. All the other mechanics on our team, Juan, Julien, Geoff, etc., have a similar sized tool box besides their normal (large) tool box. Juan and Julien calls these the “Beauty Case” because it is so small and it fits in the suitcase so nice.
So besides the 12 bottles, two pair of wheels, the floor pump, I brought my “Beauty case.” Not so many tools/things for a not so important race. I can still do a lot, but maybe not everything. I had hoped not to have too many emergencies to attend to for the bikes.
One of the things I pride myself on is doing work as best as possible AND as fast as possible. I try to do everything it needs but this trip I passed on a few things that could/should have been done. I did not wash bikes and that is probably one of my favorite things to do. I love a bike that is shinny clean. Especially a shinny drive train. A couple of them could have used some tape or a cable here or there. But without either of those things done, the bikes still were going well.
All in all I used a record number of tools. A record few to be more precise. I used my 4 mm, 5 mm, 8 mm and a pair of Scissors and my floor pump. Not counting the floor pump, I used 4 tools. In a strange way, I kind of feel proud that I could get by with only 4 tools. I think that is an unofficial world record.