Lady, there's a hole in the doughnut, too.

Last Saturday, Heather and I volunteered at the Utah Tour de Donut. What's that, you ask? Why, it's nothing more than a 21-mile bike race, where participants cram as many doughnuts down their gullets as possible after the 7th and the 14th mile in a quest for a reduced adjusted time and everlasting glory. For every doughnut consumed, the rider takes three minutes off their total time. According to legend, one year the "King Donut" ate 28 glazed rings of fried dough.

Sounds pretty great, no? (Except for the eating 28 doughnuts part. That sounds slightly vomitous.)

As volunteers, we were promised free t-shirts and free access to any leftover doughnuts at the end of the race. Naturally, these were our main incentives.  Unfortunately, the t-shirts turned out to be a "traffic cone orange" color instead of hot pink or lime green or neon blue (or pretty much any other color besides orange). I suppose beggars can't be choosers.

To go along with our fashionable outfits, Heather and I were also bestowed highlighter yellow safety vests, as we were in charge of directing traffic along the course. And of course, we couldn't direct traffic without incredibly legit stop signs!

Not pictured: super attractive, extra large safety vests.

For some reason, the race coordinators didn't want two volunteers at the same turn on the course, so Heather and I were separated by several miles for the duration of the race. Fortunately, we had our cell phones and could text each other when we hit a slow stretch.

Things went great for the first hour and a half or so, with the small exception that we didn't have any shade or seating and our arms got really tired (try pointing to your right with your arm extended for 15 minutes nonstop and you'll see what I mean). Many of the riders expressed their appreciation by thanking us every time they rode by (they had to complete a 7-mile course three times to finish). Several participants wore tutus and inflatable doughnut hats. Others rode tandem bicycles or, surprisingly, traveled on roller blades. It was all well and good.

And then we hit the last half hour of the timed race. Most of the cyclists had finished by then, so there were long stretches where we were just standing there doing nothing (except texting!). A lady in a car who happened to drive behind a fairly large clump of riders rolled down her window and yelled at me because they were riding in the middle of the street instead of on the side. Um, sorry? They were riding in the middle before they got to my turn, so I'm not sure how she expected me to enforce them sticking to the side of the road. I told Heather about this lady and she told me, "You should cut her!" Tempting. Very tempting.

Then, a little while later, I was several feet inside the right lane and held up my stop sign so a father and his son could cross safely. The truck I was trying to stop was not having any of that. It kept barreling towards me, and once it was five feet away or so and I realized it had no intention to stop, I leaped out of the way! The man referred to my stop sign and said, "I guess those are just a suggestion. . . ." Indeed.

Anyway, after an eternity of standing around and exchanging increasingly desperate texts with Heather ("I'm wilting!" "I think my left ankle is sunburned." "If they don't have any leftover doughnuts I may shed a thousand tears", and so forth) we were finally picked up in a blessed chariot of fire. By which I mean a van with air conditioning.

And we were just in time to eat the very last two doughnuts.