Bethel Spring Series - Pre-Sweep Day

The race promoting jitters are closing in pretty hard now. And not because of the racing, but because of the promoting of the actual race.

With snow forecast until 11 AM Saturday morning, it wouldn't make sense to start sweeping at 10 AM. So I've moved the sweep back until noon.

I spent a couple hours emailing the couple dozen people who've emailed me volunteering to sweep, letting them know that the sweep was being pushed back. I also updated the site to reflect the same.

I'll be driving down today, doing a last minute recon of the apparently sandy course, visiting a few tenants around the course, and getting the van packed for sweep day. Since I'm about 2 hours away from the van, I need to get there before I can do anything.

There's also the matter of filling up a lot of gas tanks and propane tanks with old dinosaur fuel so that the various internal combustion engines we use at the race actually work and the heaters really heat.

I've previously threatened to get an "air card", a broadband access card for a computer. This would let me update the Bethel site from the race. Yesterday I followed through with the threat and added yet another device to our group of wireless communication devices. I set that up today so Sunday I should have broadband internet access from the race site.

Imagine that.

Although I won't be doing any live feeds or minute by minute updates a la cyclingnews.com, I will be updating the site with results and notes as soon as I get to one of the laptops at the race.

Although this sounds cool and all that, it's really because it'll make life a lot easier on me, with an additional few hours of driving after the races finish up. Combined with what normally takes a few hours of work, it would make life almost unbearable each Sunday night. With the air card though, things should be almost done by the time I get home.

Much, much better.

I also have a couple UPSs (uninterruptible power supplies) for the race. This way we can shut down the generator and not lose our finish line camera, printer, tv (for the finish line camera), etc etc. This will keep things rolling from an administrative point of view, even if the generator is taking a break.

I got another microwave for the race, a little stainless steel trimmed one. Looks better than our actual microwave, if I do say so myself. This'll be key for heating up my full course meal that I'll be bringing to the race.

Speaking of which, I had to cook those today, making a mess of the kitchen. Just another thing to clear up before I depart for the van.

I hope to get the refueling done today, before the snows start. I have to clean and prep my bike tonight (tilt bar a bit, clean it up, make sure the race wheels are fine) and then tomorrow is sweep.

Arg.