Promoting - Revisiting The Trailer

Trailer. It looks big until it's next to an 18 wheeler.

I think I could drive my whole rig onto an 18 wheeler trailer.

This isn't a revisiting like "Should I have bought the trailer?" kind of revisiting. It was actually me visiting the trailer. I don't see or step into it that often and this year I think I was there three, maybe four times. All but one time was having to deal with a tire that went flat (ends up a bad valve, but once a tire is flat it's hard to troubleshoot a tiny leak off the side of a bad valve).

The last time I went there was to pick up one of the home fans that I'd moved over to the trailer for air circulation. We actually used the fans for cold weather, if I recall correctly, because the heaters we used didn't really distribute the heat well. And of course we used them for warm weather, for a little bit of air movement in the shade and shelter of the interior of the trailer.

I don't visit the trailer much because, honestly, I've felt sort of burnt out on the promoting gig. It's at best a break even thing, usually a money loser, so it's not really satisfying in that respect. Of course on the other hand promoting races is sort of my identity in the local cycling world, and in that respect promoting has given me back a lot of intangibles.

I bought the trailer a couple years back with the idea that I'd be promoting Bethel races for forever. Of course that's the year when the trampoline place opened, literally hundreds of cars drove around the course during race day, and the venue became essentially unusable for bike races.

Then over the winter of 2015-2016 the bit with my dad came up so I couldn't commit to promoting races at all, even working them. Nowadays I have a very small window of time available if the Missus covers for me, but otherwise it's basically impossible for me to be away from the house for more than an hour or three at a time, including driving time. That makes promoting a day of racing pretty much impossible. Therefore 2016 became the first year in over 20 years that I didn't promote a race.

It meant that I no longer needed to visit the trailer, the pitiful sight of the flat tire notwithstanding. Since I park it at a local business (one added benefit: security cameras) the flat tire looked kind of bad so I felt some internal pressure to fix it.

I was there at the trailer with Junior so he was pretty excited about the visit. For him visiting the trailer is a special event. He gets to run around inside this room-on-wheels he doesn't get to explore often, he gets to jump out of the door, and there's all sorts of neat things he discovers on each visit.

For this visit it was safety pins. Picking up stray safety pins kept him plenty busy while I unstrapped the stuff inside the trailer in order to extract the fan.

The whole process of unlatching the tie down straps, of moving around the inside of the trailer, it brought me back that promoting feeling, like I was getting ready to work a race. At that point I realized something.

I missed it.

I felt like I belonged in that trailer. It's where I was meant to be, if that makes any sense.

Others have joked about the trailer.

"If you get a bathroom installed you could live there."
"You know, if something happened at home you could live in here."

Stuff like that.

The reality is that the trailer is actually a nice spot to hang out, at least once I did some work to the inside. It's relatively warm in the winter, it's usually pretty cool in the summer, it's about as big as one of those tiny houses or maybe a small RV (it is about 20'x8' inside so about 160 SF).

Inside of the trailer when I finished the floor and walls.

It's a good set up, in terms of infrastructure for a race. It has a generator set up, regular plugs, lots of built in interior lights, the two big windows for registration (and clear windows with teller-like-openings for cold weather), a space to store stuff, tables, chairs, a spot for finish line tape, One Day and Annual Forms, two sets of drawers for numbers and such, so on and so forth.

Trailer at the 2015 Silk City Cross Race.

It's a bit messier here.

I do wish I'd had a vent installed in the roof, or even an AC unit mount, something to put a closeable hole in the roof. This would have given me an opening to either run out a video cable (vent) or do a direct mount in a turret-like structure for the finish line camera (AC mount). With a semi-permanently mounted camera I'd realistically put one of the two monitors on the wall - we could do photo finish reviews inside the trailer without any problems, even in inclement weather. At this point our finish line camera system is a camera on a tripod, which works but isn't wind proof nor water proof.

At any rate I looked around the trailer while I wrestled with the straps and such. It was cool inside, even though it was pretty hot outside. I took the opportunity to clean up a bit, to put the newly fixed tire/wheel unit onto the spare tire mount. I looked through some bins to see if there was anything I should keep at home, electronics and such. I think I grabbed one of the 2014 purple t-shirts.

(A tip: don't get more t-shirts than you think you need, and in fact divide what you think you'll need by half and get that many t-shirts max.)

The trailer reminded me it isn't all fun and games. The big metal plate that bridges the gap between the trailer floor and the ramp fell only my leg, scraping the skin off a solid part of my calf. If it was road rash I'd have needed one of those 4"x4" pieces of Tegaderm to cover it.

Metal plate - that black strip - doesn't look heavy but it really is.

About 8' wide, about 15-18" long, and definitely thick enough to support a car.

I grunted in pain and made some kind of face. Junior tuned into that and asked me if I was hurt. I told him I was okay but that I hurt myself on the "black metal piece".

I loaded the fan into the car while Junior played in the trailer, carefully staying toward the front of the trailer, away from that "black metal piece".

I walked around the trailer as I usually do when I leave it. Tires were all good, the spare looked fine. The rest of it looked okay, no wasps flying around.

Junior did a couple final flying leaps out of the trailer before I closed the door and locked up. He wanted to play in the sand in the parking lot so I watched while he moved sand from here to there and back again.

Junior playing in the parking lot.

It was getting time to go. We were about 8 or so minutes from the house but we'd burned a lot of time at the trailer. I wanted to get back to relieve the Missus of her watch-over-Pops duties.

As we pulled out of the lot Junior piped up.

"Can you play Uncle Gene's song? The one with the drums?"

I thumbed the control on the steering wheel.

I found URT's "I Erase"

"That one?"

"No, the one with the drums."

URT "Not Just One"

"This one?"

"No..."

I clicked again.

URT "Sea Monster"

"This?"

"No."

URT "Deepest Knife"

"This.."

"Yes! This is the one!"

URT "Deepest Knife"

We drove home in the warm sun. I thought about the trailer and realized there was something I had forgotten to do. I got home and pulled up an email. It was from the guys that promote the Silk City Cross race, my teammates. They'd asked me if I could help with registration this year. They knew about my situation at home, they'd been super supportive about the Spring Series (which I eventually had to cancel), but it never hurts to ask, right?

I clicked on Reply All.

I told them I'd be able to help out.

Aetna Silk City Cross.

I'll be there.

Event Services - 2013 Aetna Silk City Cross Race

Saturday September 21 was the date of the 2013 Aetna Silk City Cross race. It's the team race for Expo Wheelmen, at least the race on this weekend. Expo Wheelmen already held a TT series as well as an ongoing 'cross training series. This weekend would be the main event for the team.

The venue is close by, about 30 minutes drive for me. Since I only handle registration I didn't need much equipment. This meant loading the Expedition with just "a lot of stuff", not "a crap ton of stuff". I could see out the windows and I didn't need the trailer that I don't have. Good thing, right?

I met up with the guys at a breakfast place before the race, getting there early enough that a police car pulled up next to me. I had just put our new insurance card in the glove compartment, I had my license, so I was okay.

The officer was simply waiting for the breakfast place to open, like me. No interest in the Expedition next to him.

Early enough that the moon was out.

When we rolled over to the race course I decided that I'd park the Expedition on the other side of the tent, out of the way. Best way to do that?

Drive through the tent.

Driving into (and through) the tent at the beginning of the day.

With that little fun thing done the real day started.

We unloaded the stuff - desks, chairs, printer, cords, start lists, stuff like that. After a bit of set up we were ready and started getting numbers to the riders.

With the help of Barbara H the registration desk ran pretty smoothly. The system works well enough that I just need to type well, remember how to set print area, and print using the full option command, not just hit the print icon (else the stuff prints on multiple pages).

Although we had that first initial rush where it was really busy, the registration area calmed down quite a bit afterward.

We posted results too. With the stuff all set up in the spreadsheet it became a game of "Can I get the spreadsheet results printed before the handwritten ones get taped up?" I never quite managed to actually beat the handwritten notes but the spreadsheet results were done within maybe 30 seconds of that time.

Not bad if I do say so myself.

The Missus showed up with Junior for a bit. Junior was flagging a bit, tired. He's really needed his naps recently so we figure he's busy growing teeth (a bunch are about to pop through), growing height, growing brain, all that stuff. He's progressing in leaps and bounds to our delight.

I took a short break during the last race, then did the end of day number crunching stuff - calculating insurance surcharges, adding up One Days and Annuals, stuff like that. At some point in there I uploaded the results to USA Cycling.

Our final Expedition loading got interrupted by a little guy that was trying to camouflage itself on the tan chair. It sort of worked but not really.

Praying mantis, with chair for size reference

Close up

Front view

After a few of us took pictures I got it to get onto a bin lid and took it to a safer spot. The Missus actually let it crawl around on her hand, Junior watching in fascination.

Maybe he'll grow up a bit more tolerant of bugs than his dad.

The Missus decided to take Junior home at this point - he was tired and needed some good, solid recovery time.

I stayed and partook in the hanging out after the race stuff. I didn't partake in any beverages or foods but that was okay, the company was what I wanted. After a bit of time I figured that, yeah, I should get going. I said my good-byes, got into the Expedition, and turned the key.

Whrrr-whrrr-whrrr.

I guess the MiFi broadband modem does take a lot of juice. As does leaving some of the doors open for much of the day.

Before I could digest what had happened a bunch of the guys had gathered around the front of the Expedition. They pushed it back a bit so that someone else could pull up an appropriate jump vehicle.

I, of course, took a picture.

My view as the Expo crew finished pushing the drained Expedition.

"You run down the batteries and then take pictures of us?"

What struck me was that it was Kurt's wife that got up, without a word, got in their white SUV, and turned it around. When the guys pushing the truck told her that we'd end up over here and she should be over there she just replied, "Yeah, that's what I figured you were doing." I thought that was great, that she had the routine down. The guys hooked up the cables, no one got electrocuted, no suspicious smoke or anything, and they told me to go give it a try.

"Thanks for the jump!"

The Expedition roared to life and by the time I got out the jumper cables were gone. I headed out and home, without too much incident (just observing some dumb driving).

When I opened the door to the house Junior stood up from the Missus's lap, raised his arms, and ran over to me.

All was good.

Life - Event Services for Silk City Cross and stuff

With my current life's "non-schedule" I tend to think in terms of macro cycles, to use a training term, instead of micro cycles. In training a micro cycle would be your weekly schedule, your daily routine. You'd think about intervals on Tuesday, the long ride Wednesday, the hill repeats Thursday. The fact that I'm listing Eddy B's standard schedule automatically, almost 30 years later, tells you how long it's been since I've trained in any kind of structured way. If you want to compare it, moving two analogies away from my life schedule, it's like doing reps of a weight lifting workout. "10 curls".

Anyway that's a micro cycle. A macro cycle revolves around a set of micro cycles, like 4 or 6 weeks of training. In cycling it may consist of pushing really hard at the end of a 4 week training block, doing 25 or 30 hours in a furious week of training, then taking a few days off before starting the next macro cycle. It's sort of the whole "off season" thing also - the off season splits your annual macro cycles. In weight lifting it's like a set. "5 sets of 10 curls".

So in my life I'm more macro oriented now. Whereas I used to focus on a few days ahead - "Tuesday night is the race"; "Wednesday is my day off"; "Saturday I can do stuff in the yard"; etc - I now focus on more widely spaced events. My summer consisted of thinking of upcoming races, a trip, and the event services gigs I had.

Earlier this summer my schedule tailed off so I fell into this scheduling limbo. It got to the point where the Missus would ask me what I was going to do while Junior was at day care and I'd realize only at that moment that it was Tuesday.

As far as how macro I went... To put things in perspective I abandoned my goals of doing a good Bethel early this year when I got sick. I thought about what I might be able to accomplish in 2013. That process is sort of like imagining macro cycles into the future, understanding what I can and can't accomplish in each cycle. It's like trying to think about future moves in chess - if I move my bishop here then they can move their knight there.

I concluded that based on a year and change of not-super-productive macro cycles that it would take a tremendous amount of work to return to any kind of racing shape. It was bad enough that I went into March 2013 with my focus on March of 2014.

Yeah.

This summer progressed with my focus on everything except racing. I mean, okay, I'd think about a race in the days leading up to it, but all the races I did were a "take it or leave it" sort, meaning if I missed one it wasn't a big deal. I never thought about a race more than a couple weeks ahead of time, instead just doing whatever I needed to do day to day, hour to hour. In my head I was thinking of 2014 so a race on some random summer day in 2013 wasn't really critical.

I mention all this because my next macro cycle is coming to an end, and I have a lot of stuff focused into less than a week of days.

It started earlier this week with an all-day (after dropping Junior off at day care at 1 PM) road trip to meet up with some people. I knew I'd be back long after Junior fell asleep (his standard time is 8 PM) but I didn't think I'd be arriving home well past 1 AM.

This weekend is a double header - Silk City Cross on Saturday and the Hartford Cycling Festival on Sunday. I'll be working registration at Silk City and hopefully be racing in Hartford.

Working registration for the third time at Silk City (in the three years Expo has held it) has taught me a few things about cross. One, your start position actually matters. Two, to keep bullies from bullying their way up to the front of the line, cross racers get lined up based on rank. Racers want their ranks updated if they do well, so the top finishers at a cross race want their results as fast as possible.

This means leveraging the system we developed for the Bethel Spring Series to get results up as soon as possible. My minimum expectation is to upload everything before I leave the venue. The best case scenario is that the results go up while the next race is going on.

That doesn't come for free. There is some back end stuff I need to set up. Even though we've built the basic system I still need to customize it for each race. This has occupied me for a bit and will be my main non-Junior focus for the next two days, basically until I drive to the cross race.

I also need to prepare the Event Services vehicle, aka "The Expedition". Each race requires a slightly different load out. For example I won't need to bring extra black and white duct tape for a cross race finishline. When working a pavement race I'll bring the tape.

 Expedition, back when we got it in May

I'm debating using one of the VWs instead but I'm not sure. I don't want the Expedition to sit too much - I last drove it to the Tokeneke RR (and I realize now I never posted about that race) - and the next time I'll drive it is either to Bethel in March or to do some maintenance (plugs, tires, some touch up paint, and possibly brakes).

Since I need to be able to drive to/from the storage unit without a babyseat I have to accomplish this today while Junior is at day care (he only goes two half days a week, and I sacrificed the other day to do my road trip).

Hartford is a bit simpler - it's just a race for me. I want to go and hang out a bit too, but a number of things may prevent some of that. The main thing is the forecast - it's supposed to rain. The forecast has been improving daily so I'm hoping that the storm ends up hitting the area late Sunday.

In the old days I'd do a rainy race because I figured that a lot of guys wouldn't show up, a bunch of the ones that did show up would fall, and I'd have a better chance. Back then I was reasonably fit so I could stay near the front of a race, even a figure 8 race on a 1/2 mile loop (like at Tour of Michigan).

Nowadays I'm not that fit, I'm more risk averse, and I tend not to do well in rainy races. Plus if I hit the deck then it compromises my ability to parent. Typing at a desk is one thing. Catching Junior as he tears around a corner and starts clambering up a chair... that takes some physical agility.

Where does that leave me?

Playing with Junior.

I let Junior play with his chair for the first time today


Cutting oranges in the kitchen, preparing Junior's food for day care.

Learned a trick about cutting oranges to keep the white stuff off.

Then after I drop him off it's on to getting some prep work done for the cross race Saturday.