“Reservation, no reservation. Get me a room!”

Juan and I arrived at the hotel here in Hamburg, Germany for Sundays World Cup race. We went to the registration desk to get our room only find out we had no reservation. No way. It was not possible we thought. Were we at the correct hotel? We argued for a while and showed them our fax from the organizer. Normally the race organizer takes care of team housing. We only tell the organizer how many rooms we need. There were 15 teams staying here according to the fax. The hotel had two different lists. One with our team on it and one without our team listed.
Our Soigneurs, Emma and Jim, showed 30 minutes later and instantly started to tell the hotel what was up and demanded our rooms. There was one team listed called Coast Professional team. They were not on the fax list so we thought that it was a typo. Coast instead of US Postal (Post)? Maybe? They agreed and gave us the rooms allotted to “Coast Professional team.” There were even the same number of reserved rooms that we needed so it made sense. Go Emma! Off to sleep and the next afternoon a cool new truck pulled up in the lot. It was the Coast Pro team. Ooooops. I hope they did not have too much problems checking in. I did not care to go to registration to see if they got rooms easy or had to fight for them.
I don’t do this job because I want a pat on the back or an atta boy. I do it because I like my job. OK, it is a good pay check too. If I don’t hear any complaints, it is a good day. No news is good news (usually). I HAVE gotten thanks from people including riders. I don’t want to sound like the riders are ungrateful. OK, some may seem ungrateful. One rider on Saturn mailed treats to the hotel, for the other mechanic and I, even though she was not doing that race and was staying home. Thanks to Julie Hudetz-Hansen! One rider on this team though, has been especially more considerate. Julien Dean has repeatedly brought us coffee to the truck while we are working. A few times while it was pouring raining. That was very nice of him. He genuine in his thanks for our work and getting a cup of coffee is no big deal for him. All this before he even goes to his room to shower and get his massage. Thanks for the coffee Julien!

CClinton

Owner of Promechanics.com and long time professional race mechanic.