Why I will never, ever participate in the Jill Behrman 5K

I don't typically work Saturday mornings, but today I had to assist a workshop on campus - which meant primo scooter parking, as hardly anyone is up at 8 am on a Saturday morning in Bloomington.  I think I picked the wrong spot to park in, though.

For those of you who don't know, the Color Run is a marathon where at certain points along the marathon route you get covered in colored powder, and eventually you end up looking like a rainbow.  Scratch that - this wasn't an official Color Run, it was the Jill Behrman 5k.  Well, little did I know that I'd parked Mia a bit too close to the Bloomington Color Run Jill Behrman route...

There weren't any signs stating this ANYWHERE near the motorcycle parking spot I'd parked in, but apparently Mia was parked in ground zero for a purple powder bomb of some sort.  I walked up to her and saw she was pretty well coated in purple stuff.

So, I dusted her off best I could, then dusted myself off, because by that point I was covered in purple dust, then rode home, loaded my pockets with quarters, and took her off to the nearest car wash. (She'd been needing a bath for a week, anyway, after she and I fell into a muddy patch as we tried to sneak down that dirt patch on the hill in the first picture...)  I sprayed her so hard with soap and water that I think I knocked a body panel slightly loose, hah.  As all the purple powder mixed with the soap and swirled down the drain, I thought my troubles were gone - until I got a closer look as I was rinsing her off.

Yes, even post wash she was still spotty, and not just around her speedometer - her left and right fairings were streaked, her trunk not only had streaks down it but also sported a new scratch that wasn't there this morning and was obscured by the powder... I was so absolutely pissed off that I was shaking.  My Mia, ruined by the frigging Color Run.  I didn't know what to do - do I contact parking operations for IU?  Do I call the IU police?  Do I cry about my ruined scooter?  What if this gunk got into her engine and she dies?  I was shaking due to being so stressed out.  Mia's pretty much my life.  Then Ross said "Lemme try using rubbing alcohol on her."  

And it worked.  THANK GOD.  I was about ready to have Wick's Wheels price out a couple of new body panels so I could message Parking Operations and tell them "hey, you never posted anything about an event happening here, and so I'm holding you responsible, pay to fix my scooter."  Now I get to try to come down from the resulting panic attack, haha.  My poor Mia.  I must have hugged her five times after Ross got all the purple off.  But yeah, this event's soured me on the Jill Behrman 5k forever now - they obviously don't give a crap where they spray their color stuff, or if it damages anyone's property, so... I mean, come on, how hard is it to move the color bomb or whatever further down the street so people's personal property doesn't get damaged?

Current odometer reading: 1690ish miles