Colorado Springs the hard way

Things seemed to be going along nicely last week. I got my bike back from Bicycle World with a brand new Campi Record crankset (nothing feels as nice as brand new chainrings), and then on Wednesday my new Wahoo Tickr HRM arrived.

By Thursday afternoon I was kind of looking forward to my Friday morning flight up to Colorado Springs for the USA Cycling Local Associations Conference. I figured I could probably use a few days off the bike, and it would be nice to catch up with some of the USAC staff and other LA folks. It was mid-afternoon when I checked the weather and discovered that the FAA had just shut down the Houston airport until Friday afternoon because of flooding associated with a tropical storm. Houston was where I was supposed to catch my connecting flight to COS. Crap. I spent an hour on hold with United Airlines, only to find that there was basically nothing they could to for me but give me a refund. So I pulled up trusty Orbitz and luckily found a flight that went through Dallas that would get me to COS in time for the first meeting Friday evening. It seems that all United flights go through Houston and all American flights go through Dallas. So after shelling out another $200 I booked the flight and felt like all was good.  It wasn't.

I got to the New Orleans airport very early for my flight that was scheduled for just before noon so that Candy could drop me off and then get to work. While I was hanging around the airport I ran into Brian and Laura on their way up to Alaska, so it was nice to be able to catch up. They were on the same flight to Dallas. So eventually we get onto the plane, buckle up, and back away from the gate, roll down to the runway, and then we stop and the pilot shuts down the engines. Crap!  Well, turns out they had just issued a Ground Stop for anything destined for Dallas because of the weather. We sat on the plane for a couple of hours while I online chatted with Orbitz since I knew I'd miss my connection in Dallas. The guy on the other end was amazingly helpful and got in touch with American, but in the end there was nothing he could do and the best advice was to just go ahead to Dallas and roll the dice rather than exit the plane and cancel the whole trip. By then the whole seemed like a challenge, so I went with it. By the time we landed in Dallas, Orbitz had rescheduled me on a later flight to Colorado Springs, which was kind of amazing since there aren't all that many flights into COS anyway. The downside was that I would be missing the 5:30 meet and greet and insurance presentation. So then I had to contact the USAC folks who were scheduled to pick me up at the airport to shuttle me back to Headquarters. They were super helpful and didn't have a problem picking me up later than planned. Over the next couple of hours the flight was pushed back another hour or so, and then moved to another gate on another concourse, etc., etc., so by the time I finally arrived in the Springs it was around 10:30. At least I was there!

The symposium agenda this year looked ominous, which is one reason I made the extra effort to attend. USAC has a brand new CEO plucked straight out of the business world (New Balance shoes) who had basically retired to his home in Utah until this job pretty much fell into his lap. I think for him it's just another challenge. So after all of the usual presentations about declining memberships and events, we started up Sunday morning for a long session about re-structuring the Local Associations model. If they had anything specific in  mind, they weren't saying, but what they were saying was basically that the current model was broken and was not going to continue, so we were tasked with making some suggestions about what a new model might look like. I don't know if they got out of it what they wanted, but we could all agree that three of the things that the LAs currently handle - event permits, upgrading, and officiating - would soon be almost entirely automated under the new system that was originally supposed to be in place about two years ago. Still, there are things like shared equipment, local knowledge, mentoring, etc. that need to be done more locally than centrally. Also, there's the whole issue of figuring out a way to pull new people into the organization as members. In the past, USAC was basically a race licencing organization that provided event insurance and rules for, mainly, road racing. Now there are all sorts of other cycling-related things going on that don't fit under that model - gravel, fondos, Zwift, eBikes, etc. The new president wants USAC to be the go-to place for all of that, so that's the challenge in a nutshell. At any rate, I expect we'll see some radical changes happening in a very short timeframe. Hopefully it won't be a repeat of the disaster back around 1999 when USCF abruptly fired all of the District Representatives, which led to the establishment of a few competing organizations like OBRA.

Anyway, the meeting was interesting and we had a nice dinner at a New Orleans style restaurant Saturday night, plus the weather was pretty spectacularly nice if you don't mind 12% relative humidity. The flights back were fairly uneventful but full - typical for Sunday afternoon and night flights. On the leg from Dallas to New Orleans I was way back in row 33 in the middle seat (remember, I had to make the reservation at the last minute) squashed between two huge people, one of whom looked like a Saints linebacker, complete with knee brace, and the other like yo' mama from the Nint' Ward. Good thing I'm small.  At least all the time I spent in airports and planes allowed me to read Draft Animals by Phil Gaimon, which I thought was quite good and very well-written.