Last weekend was the
Green Wave Classic, the collegiate race that the
Tulane club has put on almost every year since around 2012. As often happens, people procrastinated, bureaucracy stalled, and things fell through cracks. To complicate matters, Spring Break ended just five days before the race, which meant that not a whole lot got done during that time. By Monday I was feeling pretty nervous about things. I didn't know if all of the follow cars had been lined up. I didn't know how much cash we were going to need to pay the police for the Time Trial. I was pretty sure we still didn't have official approval from Lakeshore High to use the campus for the TT parking and the criterium on Sunday. Even worse, the weather forecast for Saturday was showing a 100% chance of thunderstorms ahead of a cold front. I can't say I was looking forward to a weekend of officiating in the rain, but the worst case scenario was that between weather and the school availability, the entire event might have to be cancelled at the last minute. So on Monday I started rattling the cages. Pretty soon I got word that there was a problem with the school. They needed a form/waiver signed in order to get approval from the school board. The form wasn't ready until Monday. Unfortunately, all of the schools on the northshore were on spring break that week, which is to say that nobody was there and nobody was answering the phone. They wouldn't be back until the following Monday. What to do?

When I found out about the problem I called the school board office in Covington and was glad that someone answered the phone. That person gave me the cell phone number of the principal, so I relayed that to the student who was handling it and hoped for the best. Well, that kind of worked, and the principal forwarded the forms and insurance certificate to the school board for approval. A couple more days went by with no word. The principal stopped answering the phone calls from the student. By Friday, we still didn't have approval. I started trying to think of another course we could use, but it was just impossible on such short notice. Then I remembered that I'd worked with the Asst. Principal in the past for the Tour de La time trial, and I had his cell phone number in my contact list. I gave him a call and left a message. A couple of hours later he called back and basically said, "Don't worry about it, I'll unlock the gates for you." That was about an hour before I started cramming a truckload of race equipment into the Volvo.

Although I had originally planned to just drive back and forth across the Causeway on Saturday and Sunday, after looking at the weather forecast I decided to shell out the $200+ for a hotel room so I wouldn't be trying to load up the car at 5 am in a pouring thunderstorm. That's just not a good way to start a full weekend of officiating. Since I had a room, Gavin would be coming with me because he needed a ride, and Quentin would be meeting us over there later since he'd be working the race rather than riding it. At that point there were just two things I was worried about - the rain, and the turnout. Pre-registrations had been really low. I guess a lot of the Texas riders decided to skip this race. The MSU team, however, was actually driving even farther in order to ride the Sunny King races in Alabama rather than our race. Anyway, I loaded up the car with the new generator I'd bought (since the LAMBRA generator was up in Shreveport for a conflicting race), podium, P/A system, traffic cones, two tables, two chairs, two pop-up tents, two computers, finish line camera, race clock, traffic cones, megaphones, extension cords, medals, first aid kit, fence posts, clothes, etc. and headed out to pick up Gavin and his bike around 7 pm.

So early Saturday morning, sitting on the edge of the hotel room bed in the dark, I studied the radar. It was already raining outside and there was a line of heavy rain coming our way. The timing was critical, though. The races were scheduled to start at 9:00, which was right around when the worst of it would be moving through, but it was moving fast, and it looked like things would be a lot better by 9:30. I called Dustin and told him to tell the police to push things back by half an hour. As it turned out, this was the right call. We arrived at the RR venue around 7:30 with only a very light rain, and by the time the races started the street was almost dry and the rain had stopped. I'd been fully expecting to spend the day in pouring rain, so this was really a spectacular bit of luck. We set up the tents and generator, fired up the computer and race camera, handed out radios, logged in to Zello, put down the finish line tape and flag, put up the signage around the course, and started registering riders.

As usual there were a couple who had registered online and since they already had "permanent" SCCCC bib numbers, didn't stop by registration to let us know they were actually there and didn't sign the waiver. Damn I hate the whole "permanent number" concept. It only works when riders never upgrade and need new numbers and when riders never lose their numbers and when riders get new numbers at a different race and you don't know about it, etc.
Unfortunately, race-day registrations didn't do much to bump up the numbers and we ended up with an all-time low of 37 riders spread over five classes and categories. Really rather pitiful. On the plus side, everyone who raced scored big conference points. The road race went super smoothly. All of the follow cars showed up, nobody crashed, and with the tiny fields it was super easy to pick places, especially with three officials on hand.
That evening was the Time Trial. Naturally, a light rain started falling as we got ready to start. Fortunately, it never got any heavier, and with only 37 riders we were done at the start line in less than 20 minutes. We crammed everything back into the Volvo and headed back to the hotel to post the TT and omnium results and then found a nice Mexican restaurant for dinner. Officiating is pretty easy when there are so few riders.

Sunday's criterium also went really smoothly, although I was freezing for the first couple of hours because the temperature had dropped down into the 40s by morning. For once, there wasn't anything happening on the baseball field behind the course, so we didn't have any problems with cars or anything. The finish line camera worked fine and everything was wrapped up by 2:00 or so. All-in-all, I was amazed that we made it through the whole weekend without any significant rain. I got home, unloaded the car, posted the final results, updated the SCCCC spreadsheet and sent it off to Ben Davis, formatted and uploaded results to USAC, completed the USAC post-event report, created the officials' invoices, and poured myself a very big glass of wine.