The old boy still has it

Even at 36, Herman the Herminator can still race a Super G.  He did put on quite a show yesterday and our boy from Calgary was at least 2nd.  What a thrill that must be considering that Herman has been racing for decades and John Kucera is just over 20.  Wow.  But, John K has indicated that next time, he will be standing higher that Herman.  

The race yesterday went very well, except for the moment that Murphy showed up.  With 3 racers into the program, the battery on Radar 2 (bottom of Gun Barrel) died.  No reason why, other than it for some reason did not get charged, even though the charges we use did say it was charged.  

As I'm still trying to tune Radar 1 for the SG skiers (ie:  find the sweet spot that we get the best reporting), I now have to bail to the bottom of the course with the spare battery/RS485 box.  As this is a speed event, I can't go down the course and must find a way to get there outside the fence.  I can ski about 1/2 way, but the rest requires me to travel by skis down an up opened run with only enough natural snow on it to hide the holes and the rocks.  Then, through the woods, and down the outside of the A netting.  This still leaves me on the wrong side of the course and takes me about 12 minutes to get there.  

Dave B. gets escorted across the course to get the spare unit.  He tries to power the radar/interface box for a few racers by using a 9V battery which sort of works.  Dave runs back up hill, while I take off through the woods by foot to get back on a ski run.  Peter Dyson, who was watching the show from inside the timing shack, meets me at the lift with another spare battery and I cycle up and around to get back at my station.  Soaking wet and sliding down on my head through Sunset gully, I get back on my station after about 22 minutes.  Not bad I guess, but it should have never failed in the first place.

Not only that, one of the start clocks (the live one) also failed with a dead battery.  There is a pattern here.  We should get that sorted out today.

Today (Monday) is a sort of off day).  I'm sitting on the main floor of the Chateau either writing this or reading a book.  About every 20 minutes I get interrupted by the Japanese tourists who want their picture taken.  Too funny.  I have had to deal with every portable camera possible and figure out how to turn their flash on even with the Japanese character set on the screen.  All in the name of timing.