I would like to thank everybody who helped make yesterday's event happen.
The setup crew showed up on time and did a great job. The usual cast of
characters did a fantastic job, chipping in all day long to help. Bryan
drove the RV there, helped all day, and drove the RV back. Jeremy and the
registration crew did a fantastic job with the huge turn out. Durk and his
tech crew did their usual bang-up job. Jim Ochi, Don Ebaugh, Jeremy and
friends helped pack up at the end of the day and get out of there before
dark. But most of all, I would like to thanks my rookie co-chair, Joe
Harrison, for not only working his butt off all day, he had to deal with my
grumpy self to boot! Forgive me if I forgot anyone. Thanks again!
I do have to apologize to people who ran in the afternoon. I had to make a
tough decision in the middle of the day to go to 2 runs instead of 3 for the
afternoon run groups. That was due to the fact that we were running way
behind by the mid-day break. It was a very tough decision, but I would do
it again under the same circumstances.
Before you Monday morning quarterbacks start blasting away, let me explain
why that happened. The whole delay was cause by a stupid mistake on my part
and nobody else's. I had a course design in mind that would have given us a
crossover point around 20 seconds after the start. That would have been
ideal for the event. When we got there, I realized that with the position
of the poles, that was not possible. I had to put in a number of turns that
were not in the original plan. That basically made the crossover point over
30 seconds after the start. What I should have done was to change the whole
course at that point and eliminate the crossover. That's really ironic
since I always tell people; it's not the size of the course but the overlap
interval that makes the event longer. But at that point, I made a mistake
of thinking that we could still pull it off. That proved to be disastrous!
I did not account for the huge turn out and number of novice drivers in
attendance.
Another thing that went wrong was lining of the course. We started lining
the course but the moisture clogged up the gypsum in the rollers. We had to
abandon that task and go without lining the course. We tried lining the
finish area between the first and second run groups, but all we could manage
was dotted lines.
Despite these issues, I hope everybody had a nice day. Weather certainly
cooperated after doing the initial damage in the morning. With MJ's
makeshift dam at the start, we had a completely dry course for most of the
day.
--Navid
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