The weekend of June 15 & 16 brought some new highs and lows for me. MoHud flag chief Rich Alexander and I offered to co-chief this event to help cover for NER’s current flag chief, who is busy planning for her upcoming wedding. This was a good opportunity to expand my experience in Control that I started this year at the Palmer event, and I was looking forward to the challenge. Rich had me go through the exercise of staffing stations, and he had also lined up another control person to help mentor me on the art of communication. I’d learned a lot my last time at Palmer (especially what NOT to do), and felt up to the challenge.
It was pretty chaotic in control – we had our usual radio issues, and if you’ve ever worked race control before, you’ll know that clear and quick communication are critical to making a race go smoothly. We ended up renting Lime Rock’s radios and had a good day Friday. The “Paddock Crawl” portion at the end of the day is always a fun time. Racers and organizers alike bring various foods and beverages and offer them to folks who wander around from place to place. I had some very good food, and Mohawk-Hudson’s very own Team Bucci has become pretty good at putting together a great chip, salsa, and margarita station.
Saturday dawned and the event was once again marred by ongoing radio issues. We couldn’t hear some of the stations, and everyone became pretty frustrated. We did our best to carry on with the event, but before we got to lunch I experienced a pretty serious vision issue. Unfortunately I needed to get to an ophthalmologist ASAP, so my friend Rich took me back to Albany. As it turned out, I had a small bleed in my eye that cleared up somewhat within hours, but it has left a ton of floaters in my left eye and some odd noise I constantly see. Nothing I can’t overcome, but it was scary when it happened.