Promoting - 2014 Zwiedzanie Bethel

Ah, where to start.

It seemed like just yesterday that I was worried about whether or not the Series would even go on. I gambled a few thousand dollars (in insurance, numbers, and permits) that it would, then gambled many more thousands that it would go on for at least a few years (trailer, new generator). The stress really got to me, with my riding hours down, my back hurting, and generally being tired all the time.

The Series did eventually kick off, the racing happened, and I even got to race my bike. Surprisingly I could race okay after the first couple weeks. My back pain leveled out at "tolerable but be careful" levels, my whole body soreness (from sweeping and chopping and shoveling the course) went away, and the staff, virtually all new, settled into a nice, well oiled unit.

Before I knew it the last week of the Series approached us. Usually the last week means a lot of extra work so I tried to do what I could to get things done earlier. My normal first stop included picking up the release forms from Staples on Friday.

My assistant picking up the release forms.

It took 15 minutes to get going, about 30 minutes less than usual.

I dropped the releases off, along with the numbers and start lists, with Veronica, who would organize them into the pre-reg notebooks that we all know so well.

The big things for me this week, literally in some cases, was to bring the podiums down (big wood boxes), the trophies (big boxes that don't stack well), and the t-shirts (big boxes).

Although I had to make a trip to Bethel on Friday I got it done, dropping off the podiums, trophies, and t-shirts. Junior was a bit wigged out since he was with me for about 4.5 hours of driving that day.

Saturday the 12th was the CCAP Breakaway Benefit ride. I'd registered for it, raised money for it, but I wasn't sure if I could ride. I had this fantasy that I could pull Junior along in a single-kid trailer. When I realized that even 25 miles would be tough with 40-50 pounds of trailer+kid I started thinking I'd just pull Junior around in the parking lot or maybe a surrounding road or two.

Of course in the frenetic weeks I never even got the trailer down from its hook in the garage.

I lowered my goal to making it to the start at 7 AM. The start was only about 45 minutes from the house so 7 AM seemed realistic.

In the morning things just didn't work out. I thought for a brief time that I could make the 8:20 AM ride start time, when the Expo guys would be starting.

Finally I realized that, oh, I really should go to the bank (to withdraw $2000 in additional prize money in addition to the $1500 I normally had), and they open at 9, so I'll head down after that.

Things with Junior take a while so I didn't get to the bank until 10. Since he likes to run laps around the building and such it was a bit tough even to leave in 15 minutes, and a touch after 11 I finally got to the CCAP tent.

Junior loved it, running around for the next FOUR hours.

One of the rider's daughters was out exploring.

Junior was fascinated with her bike.

Trotting with purpose.

Dancing.

I've seen these birds a lot in the last week or three.

I didn't bring any bike or anything, I figured I'd just hang out with whoever was done riding and such. I managed to catch up with a few people I know from the races, saw a couple of my teammates, and we called it a day. Junior started to melt down at about 3 PM so we headed out. I'd drop him off at home - the Missus would be done with work by then - head back to the CCAP spot for the dinner, then drive to my dad's for the evening.

I managed to do 20 minutes on the bike at home, just a short spin up and down the condo complex roads, then dressed ("business casual") and headed back. Although I had my camera I didn't take any shots of the dinner, I just basked in the atmosphere. I'll have to do a separate post on CCAP as it's such a significant thing. Suffice it to say that I didn't head out until after 9:30 PM, and the nav system told me I had about 1:20 of driving ahead of me.

And here I was, still needing to do some registration work before tomorrow.

I got to the house pretty late, ate some (more) food as I really hadn't had much at the CCAP dinner, and decided to call it a night.

6:15 AM trailer selfie.

I kept meaning to take a trailer selfie shot in the dark with all the lights but by the last week of the Series it was too light when I got to the venue. I should have taken the 30-60 seconds to take the picture in the first week of Daylight Savings but I didn't.

6:17 AM, give or take, the beginning of the day.

I'd already coned off the truck on the backstretch and now we had to set up the registration area and the finish line area. I generally helped with the trailer, the rest of the crew helped with the Turn One and finish line areas.

6:30 AM, ready for business.

John is leveling the trailer. Note podiums in the background at the left.

I think that picture was from a bit later than 6:30 AM since we normally have Cat 5s ready and waiting by then. This might have been around 8 AM, after the clinic started and there was a short breather period for everyone in registration.

John R is the guy that's been at Turn One this year. He's helped out in the past but not to this extent. He marshaled the finish line intersection last year, the "crossover" if you will, and I knew that he'd be great at Turn One. He sacrificed his opportunity to race in order to make the Series work, and his efforts made the results incredible.

His backup, and usually stationed at the bottom of the hill, was Jeff C, and between the two of them they'd run the marshaling group. Derek was one of the full time marshals as was Joel. Both did other work too, in setting up and breaking down, but without the consistent marshaling from those two things would have been much less predictable.

Junior race.

Derek C is in the front gesturing, tall guy on the white bike, CCAP kit. He's one of the new guys and has worked out great. I first noticed him last year when he make a huge effort to make sure his teammate won the Junior race. Over the winter I asked his folks if he could work, if they could work, and so it was that the Series gained a whole family, Jeff, Veronica, and Derek. Derek spent each week working the whole day, from setting up to breaking down, marshaling until just before the P123s, and racing P123s. It was really great to have him and his family on board.

Hanging out at the trailer midday. Erin is standing at the window.

The "registration girls", as I call them, worked well once again. All experienced hands at the whole thing, they accepted the extra things I needed them to do in good spirits. This year we wrote checks for everything, I had a CCAP donation bottle out, we sold t-shirts… all sorts of extras. Erin, Delany, Amanda, and Veronica (in order of when they started helping out) worked out great, and I've only heard nice comments about the "registration girls".

One of my goals with the trailer was that it would become a focal point for riders in terms of hanging out and such. With Outdoor Sports Center's tent, CCAP's bake sale, and the results on the end, it sort of ended up like that. The traffic on the road, both bike and car, meant it wasn't an ideal spot for hanging out, but it worked.

Speaking of t-shirts...

Front

Rear

Luckily for all of you these t-shirts are still available! $10, let me know if you want one. S, M, L, XL, they run about true to size (Gilden t-shirts). As my brother asked…

"So how'd the t-shirts go?"
"Go?"
"Well, did you make money?"
"No. Lost a lot, actually."
"Yeah. We never made money on t-shirts either."
"Yeah."
(pause)
"I think the money is in making the t-shirts, not selling them. It's like the gold rush - the people who made money sold the picks and axes. The people looking for gold had to buy the tools but that didn't mean they found any gold."

Back to the regularly scheduled program…

Finish line set up.

This year was Mike's first year at the camera (back to the camera, blue shirt). He did an excellent job so that was a huge stress relief for me. I was super nervous the first week, making him do two practice "finish line clips" on the Cat 5s. I even asked him how he unlocked the screen saver on the laptop, since that would really screw things up if he couldn't use the laptop. He pointed at the manual his predecessor Jonathan wrote.

"The password is in the instructions."

Oh.

Mike and Meg, the officials, did their usual exemplary job. As a promoter I can request specific officials. There are a lot of reasons that I ask for Mike and Meg, but the main one is this: if I'm racing at a race I'd want them officiating the race. That's what it boils down to, that as a racer I'd want them officiating my race.

As a promoter I stress about three things - crashes, course marshals, registration, and the finish line camera. With the full crew in place I didn't have to worry about pretty much anything. You can tell because I took a lot of pictures during this Series, something that I can't do if I'm busy doing "promoter stuff".

My favorite podium shot, pretty much of all time.

Sixcycle guys, hamming it up. They won the Cat 3-4 overall in both team and individual.

We did podium shots on the last week, which you can see here on the Bethel Spring Series site. We also raffled away a roof rack with two bike mounts, courtesy Outdoor Sports Center and Thule. Fittingly one of the women racers who marshaled regularly ended up winning the roof rack.

5:40 PM, the end of the day, all packed up and ready to go.

Unlike other weeks I had to get everything into the trailer and Expedition for the trip home. Joel helped load the trailer properly, although I think I vetoed one of his ideas and that ended up making the trailer a bit less stable. Nonetheless I made the drive home, only a wiggle here and there on the road.

What I unloaded that night at about 9 PM, taking almost an hour to unload.

Normally I don't unload a lot the last day of Bethel but I wanted to empty out the trailer in preparation for the interior finishing. Therefore I tried to empty out the trailer before I drove home from the storage bay. Except for a few totes everything ended up in the garage, and by the next day everything was in the bay.

I worked hard to get the results up that evening. I wanted to do that for the race but when I woke up on the keyboard I realized that it wasn't going to happen. I got the individual GC up but had to do the team and high school stuff the next day.

Well earned cup of coffee in a Sixcycle gift mug.

I have to comment on the Sixcycle guys. I don't know any of them, heck I didn't even realize that one drove a green pickup until the end of the Series. But they've been super nice, super polite, at least off the bike (on the bike they just rip your legs off). One of them called me "sir" which was really great. They brought me a few gifts on the last week, a mug (same mug as Carpe Diem Racing so I know what it cost etc, but the thought is what counts) and a couple t-shirts (I know about them too, sort of). The kicker is that these were almost the only actual gifts someone gave me for the Series. Yes, for Junior, people gave us so much I could barely fit them in the car, but for me, for the race… not so much. So thank you to the Sixcycle guys and good luck in the rest of the season.

So that ends the 2014 Bethel Spring Series p/b Outdoor Sports Center. After a bit of decompression, some work on the trailer, and prep for some of the other events coming up, I'll revisit the whole "where will the Spring Series be in 2015?" question.

For now, though, a nice cup of coffee.

Thanks everyone for coming to and supporting the races. I hope to see you all next year at the WhereverItsGoingToBe Spring Series.

Bethel Spring Series - What It Used To Be

So Bethel has become this nice, polished, semi-consistent event. But how was it at the beginning?

Not so polished, nor organized.

One of the first Bethels. Not quite the first.

Based on Easter's date, it's from 1993. The Series started the year prior, in 1992, with a $7.95 entry fee. This confirmed what someone told me a long while back - that the Series started in '92. Anyway, no one wanted their nickels that year ("nickelback", so to speak), even though we'd brought rolls of them to the race. We decided to raise the fee by that nickel for the following year.

Bethel then was different from Bethel now. For one thing, the only van I had didn't run. You can see it in the picture below - a beautiful F-150 if it ran. I ended up selling it to the dump for $20, and they picked up up for free (bonus!).

Instead I got by on using a hand-me-down car, a Mazda 626. I hauled virtually everything in it. I also used my parent's Subaru, and for a while we even rented vans or SUVs.

Packed car, the last day of the Series.

Note the podium (the wood box), my green kit (means it was 2003 probably), the clock, and one of the original "Caution" signs from 1993 or so.

More podiums, cones, gasoline, and my bike up top (a Specialized M2 with Ergo).

I think we were in the "borrowing a tent each year" phase so there's no tent. Either that or Joe B or Tom was carrying the tents home. Whatever, they're missing from the pictures here.

At this time we were still using paper and pen for registration. It started getting complicated when we went high-tech with laptops, which then required some level of dryness, which meant tent sides, and finally heat.

We used a tiny generator after frying two cars worth of electrics (using plug in transformers). The generator was noisy, inefficient, and tried to give up after two years of service. Merto fixed it despite its protests one year and we got through that Series before it really gave up. I gave it to the dump when we moved a couple years ago.

Big honkin' radio, rented from CBRA. Guessing it's 1996-1997 based on the cap, maybe 1996 since a bunch of the pictures are from the same batch.

For the Series, especially in the early years, radios presented a big challenge. I thought for many years of distributing, to the marshals, a car battery with a CB radio attached to it. I figured a fully charged car battery would power a CB for long enough, and if it didn't, we could just hook it up to an actual car.

But instead we used walkie talkies. Heck, the $40 for a minimum CB was a deal breaker, and where would I find 2-3 car batteries that worked? (Forget about all the dead ones I had in my garage...)

For many years we rented radios from the CBRA. We'd get chargers, radios, and pay some fee each year. We finally saved up to buy some Motorola walkie talkies, and we're still using them now, supplemented by several AAA battery powered cheapies.

Mike, one of our two regular officials, standing in the center. Our actual official that day was Dave.

This used to be the scene at the start/finish area. A car or three, dirt, and warmly dressed officials.

Action shot of the same scene.

Perhaps it's 1996, based on other shots from that Feb/Mar. Yeah, that's me, at the back of the field. I'm running a 24H Zipp 340 rear wheel, probably a 28H GEL280 or FiR GL330 front. A very fast, very light set up, for the time anyway.

There's a building back there now, and a big paved parking lot, not piles of sand and dirt.

Doing the lap cards.

Checking the time gap.

Whenever I see this picture, I think of the Tour where Hinault gets into a break in the 1985 Tour, one of the flatter early stages, one that took place in Brittany. A young Phil Liggett comentates that the Bretons, checking the time gap, will be happy with Hinault's progress (Hinault is from the area).

The break has some horsepower. Stephen Roche, who would win it one day, was there with three teammates I think. Phil Anderson, another top rider from the time, was there with three teammates also. Only three or four teams missed the break, and it was up to Fignon's new-for-that-year System U team to do all the chasing.

Hinault finally gets caught, and as he does, the World Champion striped Lemond rockets out of the field.

"Has he caught the field by surprise? No, Marc Madiot, the French Champion, is on his wheel."

Phil concludes this flat day's adventures with the following rhythmic phrase:

"The Tour will not forget the day the Badger came out to play."

What everyone forgets to mention is that the cameras out that day were no normal ones - they were movie cameras, filming "background" footage for the "soon to be released" movie, The Yellow Jersey, allegedly starring Dustin Hoffman. The movie, of course, never happened, but with a chance to immortalize oneself in a film, a bunch of racers broke away on what should have been an easy day.

Not only that, two team leaders were almost across but couldn't quite get there - had the break waited just a touch, with those two leaders in the lead group, pundits were saying that the break would have gained 15 minutes. Instead, those two team leaders threw their riders into the chase, and for a good hour or so two groups of Tour riders chased each other around Northern France.

I guess we brought tables to the start/finish area.

I'm the guy with the horrible haircut leaning against the table, a reasonably lean 140-odd pounds, fighting weight back then. Merto is behind me in the striped shirt and long hair. Abdul is in the sunglasses, and his bike is the one leaning on the table. They still come to the races, when they can.

In 2010 we'll be doing the 18th confirmed Bethel Spring Series (thanks to that flyer up there). I hope that things get even nicer than last year. The town's already given its permission, and now, for the first time in a long time, I'm looking to increase (just a bit) the amount of stuff we give away. Hopefully I have more news in the next month or two.

See you out there.