NASCAR Pit Crew Challenge, Bobcats Arena, Charlotte

Nice article this morning in USA TODAY on the PCC. Jay Howard, the owner of the event who is quoted in the article, has a really unique business. His company, JHE, arranges all the razzle-dazzle opening & podium ceremonies for NASCAR and IRL. Rock bands, fireworks, custom staging, Air Force flyovers....you want 'em? Call Jay.

As a special added bonus, my old compadre Trampass is on my crew here. Great to have him in the mix again. He's a NASCAR fan, so he's really digging the show. High-resolution timing and photofinish isn't exactly his bag of croissants (yet), but he's soaking it all in. The circumference of his brainpan is a few mm larger than when we started a few days ago.

NASCAR Hall of Fame

In Charlotte with my homies to do timing & TV graphics the NASCAR Pit Crew Challenge, so we took a few hours to go to the newly-opened NASCAR Hall of Fame.

When the crosswalks look like the start/finish line, you know you're in Charlotte.

RFID "hard card". Andrew seems impressed.

Aero templates from the "old days", before the Car of Tomorrow.

The Boys outside the High Octane Theatre. Each visit starts with a 15 minute movie / multimedia presentation. From there you are guided steadily skyward.



Timing & scoring has its own display.


As does timing & scoring legend Morris Metcalfe, whom I knew personally.

Jimmie Johnson's car bolted to the banking.

TSA : Dumb as Sarah Palin, or Merely Dumb As A Box Of Rocks?

I have a new toy. It's called a NEXUS card. It is my new source of endless amusement when I travel.

As a US citizen, you can of course apply for a passport. Once you get a passport, you can apply for several different types of elite "Trusted Traveler" status levels with United States Customs. There is an elite status known as Global Entry, and there is an elite status known as Nexus.

Global Entry status allows you to avoid waiting in line (with the unwashed masses) to see a Customs agent when returning to the US from abroad. Once you apply for Global Entry, you must consent to an interview at a US Customs Port of Entry, where they conduct a background check (OK, I confess, I skipped first grade and got one "D" in college) and interview you. If you pass the checks, they take your fingerprints. Once you have Global Entry status, when you get off the plane after returning to the US from abroad, you go to a kiosk, put your fingertips on it, and if the machine likes you, a Customs agent waves you straight through to baggage claim. No waiting in line with the other 390 people on your 747 (and the 390 people from several OTHER 747s). No suspicious stares or strange questions from a Customs & Border Patrol agent.

When you achieve Global Entry status, there is no "card" or official doodad to show off. You're simply in a database, and you no longer have to wait in line.

http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/trusted_traveler/global_entry/

You can also apply for Nexus, which is a program offered jointly between United States Customs and Canadian Customs. Although Nexus is only good for passing into Canada from the US (or vice versa), Nexus is way cooler than Global Entry, for two reasons. First of all, they don't use fingerprints...they use retinal scans. Your tax dollars at work, baby...just like James Bond. The 2nd reason is that they give you a plastic, hologrammed, secure card so that you can show your friends how totally special and elite you are.

http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/trusted_traveler/nexus_prog/

I am both. I have a Nexus card, and I am in the Global Entry database. For Global Entry, I flew over to O'ahu last year and was interviewed at US Customs in Honolulu Airport. A few weeks ago, I had my Nexus interview appointment (in Edmonton, of all places) with Dudley DooRight and his US counterpart. They interviewed me, kicked my tires, took my retinal scan, showed me how to use their retinal scanning kiosk, and gave me a nice shiny new Nexus card.

One night shortly thereafter, I was sitting around Googling this and that, and I ran across a whole bunch of threads on various web sites (including FlyerTalk and TSA's own web site) containing vitriolic flame about TSA agents not accepting Nexus as valid ID at airports. We're not talking the airport in Buttfuck, Nebraska here; we're talking JFK, LAX, and ORD (among others). I read case after case of TSA agents being so dumb, so ill-trained, so Sarah Palin Stupid, that they rejected Nexus as ID because "its not government issued" (it is) or "I've never heard of it" (it's shown on the TSA web site, right next to a passport, as a valid form of government-issued ID).

http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/acceptable_documents.shtm

Among the recommendations I gleaned from reading various flames was that anybody attempting to use a Nexus card as ID at an airport should carry a printout of the above page from TSA's web site showing that a Nexus card specifically IS valid ID to anybody from any division of Homeland Security, of which Customs and TSA are divisions.

But consensus was that even the printout may not help, as it seems TSA inspectors are simply either too stupid, too ignorant, or too Barney Fife to know their own organization's rules. It's kind of ironic, as any dumb-ass TSA moron will accept a State drivers license, which are extremely easy to forge and almost as easy to obtain illegally (can you say "McLove"?). But most will neither accept, nor even know the species of a Nexus card, which requires a passport, a background check, a personal interview with a United States Customs Officer, an interview with an officer of Canadian Customs, and a retinal scan to obtain.

I decided, when time allows, I will start trying to use my Nexus card as ID – just to fuck with people and to amuse myself.

Today I had my first entertainment. I was flying Maui – Charlotte via DFW, and due to wicked thunderstorms in the Dallas area, my plane was 3 hours late arriving at OGG (hence I would be 3 hours late leaving). American Airlines actually called me (as an Executive Platinum, they make somewhat of an effort not to piss me off) and warned me, so I arrived at the airport 2 hrs before the rescheduled departure time. I was literally the only person checking in at American, and there was literally nobody at the in the TSA security line. I decided to give the Nexus card a go.

When the American Airlines check-in guy asked me for ID, I gave him the Nexus card. I didn't expect him to accept it, because he's not Homeland Security and probably doesn't even work for AA (he's probably a subcontractor). He examined both sides of it, checked the picture against my face, and asked me "What's Nexus?" I explained, and then I showed him the printout from the TSA web site. He thought about it for a minute, and then said "That's a great idea. But I think they should perhaps put "Homeland Security" or "US Government" on the card, because I doubt many people know what it is. I certainly didn't. Never even heard of Nexus."

The gentleman had a good point, and he was smart enough to accept it as ID.

Then I went to TSA.

As I said, I was literally the only person in line, so I wasn't going to piss off a bunch of people waiting behind me if I got into it with the TSA guy.

I handed him the Nexus card. He looked at it for about 15 seconds. Both sides. Then he put it under his ultraviolet light to look at the hologram.

"Do you have any alternate form of ID"?

"That Nexus card is a valid US government issued photo ID. Your own TSA web site lists it as a valid form of ID".

I handed him the printout from the TSA web site.

"Yeah, I know what they are, but I've never seen one before, so show me another form of ID".

"You've never seen a Nexus card before?"

"No".

"You know that getting one requires a personal interview with US Customs, a background check, and a retinal scan, right?"

"Yeah, I know, but I've never seen one before, so show me some alternate form of ID".

This is actually going better than I expect, so I hand Albert Einstein my passport.

He carefully compares the passport photo to my face, as if the Nexus card doesn't exist. He hands me both.

"Thank you sir, have a pleasant flight".

More amusement to follow, I'm quite sure......

Shitty Facilities Aren't Unique to the US Open

One of the many, many things I despised about the US Open (for the duration of my 20 years there) were the USTA's terrible facilities. It is, by far, the worst Grand Slam tournament facility, the best being the Australian Open's Melbourne Park. Despite spending $270 million on what eventually became known as Arthur Ashe Stadium, the place was poorly designed, poorly built, and maintenance was non-existent.

The roof leaked like a sieve into our high-tech Batcave when it rained. And not just during The Open. So every year, when we arrived, the place would smell like a mushroom factory, and there would be mold encrusting the roof tiles and the walls.

Well, it turns out the multi-billion-dollar Formula One industry occasionally has the same problems.

This season I have been following the Tweets and Twitpiks of a bubbly young lady by the name of Claire Williams, who works in the Media Department of the Williams Formula One team. As a passionate fan of Williams and McLaren (my favorite teams) and a card-carrying Ferrari-hater, I have found her enthusiastic, extemporaneous comments very entertaining.

http://twitpic.com/1m1vf5

This week, at the Spanish GP in Barcelona, the Williams garage sprung a leak. Water poured down into the garage from above, where it is rumoured that the Brembo hospitality suite burst a pipe.

Fortunately for Williams, the leak was dripping into the car area, not the electronics area, where Williams has rows and rows of laptops and LCD monitors.

Of course, one of the biggest leaks in room 1341 at Arthur Ashe Stadium (aka The Batcave) was directly over MY desk. And I do not miss the place one bit.

Madonna Inn, Redux

Got an e-mail via iPhone from The Mighty Sister, aka Franklin J Noseman. Somehow SHE wound up at the über-wacky Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo last night.

Just like her brother, yours truly, who wound up at the Madonna Inn twice as a result of collateral wackiness during the course of doing TV graphics for the Tour of California bike race in 2007 and 2008.

Here are links to my two previous blog entries regarding the Madonna Inn:

http://themightyskunk.blogspot.com/2007/02/oriental-fantasy-in-san-luis-obispo.html

http://themightyskunk.blogspot.com/2008/02/madonna-inn.html

No TOC for me this year. AEG, the owners of the TOC, entered into a "media partnership" with the Amaury Sport Organization (owners of the Tour de France) for 2010, so the race TV is being produced by a bunch of Frogs. Disgraceful. Shame on AEG (the owners). But hey, it's their race, they can do whatever they want with it, even if it gives American jobs away to fucking Frogs in difficult economic times. But...there WILL be irony, as I'm sure the aforementioned fucking Frogs are going to be freaked out when they check into American hotels to find soap. And showers.

They'll have a helluva time figuring out what those are for.

"Protect Your Junk" (tm)

link

David Zabriskie is one of the two or three best time-trialers amongst US pro riders, and one of the ten best in the world. He has won the US National TT Championships several times, and has both won TT stages and worn the yellow jersey at the Tour de Fucking Frogs, er, the Tour de France.

He also, obviously, is a very funny guy. Wish I'd been clever enough to trademark the phrase "Protect Your Junk" for my company.

Particularly hilarious is Zabriskie's off-the-cuff, impromptu commercial with special guests Lance Armstrong and Levi Leipheimer. Available here: link

One Happy Island

Mens room, Kahului airport (OGG).

A more creative graffiti artist would have drawn in flip-flops.

Preparations for World Equestrian Games

HD production trucks in the TV compound

Single-mode fiber pedestal in the TV compound

Denise: "GRFX Chick"

Daktronics ProStar in Outdoor Stadium

I was asked by "TV Producer" to come to the Rolex Kentucky 3-Day Event for a few days to attend production meetings for the 2010 World Equestrian Games.

My involvement with WEG has been a long and winding road. Originally, I put in a bid to be the overall provider of all timing & scoring + TV graphics. WEG decided to go with a Dutch technology provider, which was a disappointment on many fronts. I didn't really understand, amongst other things, why WEG management would even consider a non-US provider in these difficult economic times. But politics work in mysterious ways. You smack your head up against the office wall a few times, curse a bit, and move on.

After "Dutch Provider" did the World Cup Final in Las Vegas last year with "TV Producer" as the host, I was asked to come back into the mix. "TV Producer" has decided not to take "Dutch Provider"'s graphics for WEG. "TV Producer" will do the whole event (almost 150 hours of live TV, plus 4 two-hour shows on An American Network) via interfaces, D.P. will provide only data. And Interfaces R Us. So, another twist of fate, and I'm back booking flight tix to Lexington Airport.

WEG and Kentucky Horse Park are a somewhat odd public / private partnership, which is usually a recipe for disaster. But in this week's meetings, I was impressed with much of the infrastructure the State of Kentucky has provided. On paper, the fiber backbone (actually two BBs, one for TV and one for networking) is a nice design. I see a couple of problems, and a couple of areas where I would have done things differently, but the plan will work. I was pleasantly surprised with the expertise of the infrastructure team people from the State.

Should be an interesting September.

I really enjoy working for "TV Producer". The company is run by two really cool, unusual and talented guys, the production team is populated by lots of other cool and talented people, and the general competency of the whole outfit is WAY high. The workplace takes on almost a family atmosphere, which stands in stark contrast to many production outfits, in which the atmosphere can be toxic. Those of you who work in TV know all about The Screamers; there's none of that at "TV Producers".

WEG will be a long and difficult event, we'll be on the air 4-8 hours a day for 16 days, so working in a nice atmosphere with laid-back people will make things a lot easier.

Tracks of the Rare Alpine Skunk Spotted at Snowbasin

Yesterday I went alpentouring on Strawberry at Snowbasin, which has been closed for the season for about a week. Beautiful, cloudless day. Warm. Not a soul in the same ZIP code. No tracks in the snow, except for the paw prints of a few critters.

The whole time I was up there, I kept thinking about the old "Last Run" photo-essay on the last page of SKI magazine. Every month, they'd publish some irony-laced photo on the inside of the back cover, many dealing with desperate skiers dealing with the end of the ski season. I wouldn't know anything about that.

The other thing running through my mind was the memorable K2 ski print ad from a few years back, which showed a guy camped in the parking lot of Copper Mountain in the middle of the summer, alone with his SUV and a tent, reading a copy of SKI magazine while sitting in a lawn chair. Shirtless. His ski boots and a freshly-tuned pair of K2s sat on the tarmac beside him.

I toured around for over 5 hours in a t-shirt. Got some really fun turns in the untracked snow, which was, admittedly, pretty slushy.

Discovering alpentouring whilst marooned in Austria in the winter of 2004 has enlarged my repertoire, enhanced my fitness, and increased my enjoyment of skiing immeasurably. It has opened up a whole new world to me.

The runout at the bottom of Strawberry, named "Last Chance", was beyond slushy. It was downright melted. But I snapped the perfect shot for SKI magazine's Last Run.

My George Clooney Moment at 37,000 Feet

Today I flew aboard American Airlines flight 2527 from Dallas to Salt Lake City. As the plane was on initial climb, I reached into the seat pocket in front of me and grabbed a copy of "Celebrated Living", American's First Class-only inflight magazine. Andy Garcia was on the cover.

CL is considerably more upscale than American's regular inflight mag, advertising $50,000 wristwatches, and Aston Martins, and all sorts of ostentatious stuff I really have no desire to own.

I flipped through it idly, waiting for the seat belt sign to go off so I could whip out my phone and listen to a couple of NPR podcasts I'd downloaded at the gate. An article entitled "Global Rut Busters", about exotic vacations in places like Belize and Norway, caught my eye. Seemed interesting. As I flipped toward the end of the article, on page 56, I saw two photos of......me.

More precisely, not so much as photos of me, but photos in which I was one of several subjects. But it is definitely me, I've seen both photos before, they were done in a professional photo shoot about 6 or 7 years ago.

I guess guys like George Clooney and Lance Armstrong get used to seeing themselves in that type of context, but not me. I have, on occasion, appeared in a few sports and computing magazines, but I always knew beforehand. This one, I had no idea. I just ran across it out of dumb luck.

In a small, lame way, it was pretty cool.

My good friend Donnie Arnoult, a former elite professional bicycle racer, owns a bike shop called Maui Cyclery, as well as Go Cycling Maui, which is sort of fantasy camp for bike racer wanna-be's. Go Cycling Maui made CL's "bucket list", and the article was accompanied by two photos showing the Maui Cyclery racing team riding, as a group, down our exotic-looking roads.

It's easy to tell which rider I am, because on the day those photos were shot, I was wearing a Briko "Twinner" helmet, which are rare in the US, and have a distinctive shape.


I was really happy for Donnie, because the article spoke in glowing terms of Go Cycling Maui, and it listed the shop's phone number. I'd guess, pulling a figure out of my ass, it was about $40,000 or $50,000 of free advertising. As soon as the plane landed, I called him and told him all about it.

I grabbed 3 or 4 copies and will FedEx them out to him tomorrow, since I'm on the road and won't see him until the end of the month.

This Is One Clever Teenager.

link http://www.thesouthbutt.com/

Now THAT is clever.

As a personal aside, I've always thought North Face stuff was crap, at least as far as skiwear goes. I own none of it. The gold standard, as far as I'm concerned, are Spyder and Descente. FlyLow is my favorite for more backcountry-oriented apparel.

Quote of the Day

"If it flies, floats, or fornicates......rent it".

- Felix Dennis, author and billionaire.

From the "Do as I Say, Not as I Do" Department

Bill Marolt, CEO of the US Ski Team, VP of FIS, and the guy who threw Bode Miller off the US Ski Team for partying too much, was arrested yesterday in Park City for DUI.

Karma can be a bitch.

Nice mug shot, Bill.

And You Thought "Like A Bolt From The Blue" Was Only An Expression

This unfortunate guy was just going out for a jog. Sheesh.

Don't Forget the Paralympics

I've never understood why the Paralympics aren't held before the Olympics instead of after. Holding them before would be such a perfect testing platform for transportation, volunteers, scoring & timing, accommodations, food service, and so forth. By the time the Olympics are over, the public is all Olympic-ed out, a lot of the volunteers don't show up because they've used up their vacation time or are just plain exhausted, the local natives are sick of all the inconveniences, and so forth. It gives short shrift to the para athletes.

If anything, the Paralympics is a better show than the Olympics. The paras may not have the star power of NHL players or the odd Apolo Ohno / Lindsey Vonn crossover star, but 100% of the para athletes are there simply because they love to play. None are eyeing an appearance on Jay Leno or a bigger endorsement contract. They just want to compete for the love of sport, which is the basic principle upon which the Olympics was founded, a principle largely forgotten at the Olympics.

The ski racing conditions at Pissler during the Olympics were appalling, as you know from my earlier posts. The result from almost every ski race was compromised by terrible weather and slushy snow. And THAT was in mid-February, in the heart of winter. This week, the Paralympics are trying to get off their ski races with Spring fast approaching, and it is not going well. Several training runs were canceled this week by fog in The Sewer, and today's DH was postponed by (shockingly) more fog in The Sewer.

The good news is that nobody will ever have to deal with the challenges of ski racing at Pissler again in our lifetime. Word among the ski racing community is that the Olympic ski races were such a disaster due to the coastal weather and the fog that Alpine Canada will never hold another national-level race there.

But of course, that's what everyone said in 1998 after the 3rd straight attempt at holding a World Cup at Creekside ended up without a racer leaving the gate.

Those Wacky Downhillers

Eric Guay of the Canadian team, whom I predicted for Olympic greatness but who came up just short (two 5th places), won a very unlikely SG crystal globe yesterday at the World Cup finals in Garmisch. An almost impossible sequence of events needed to occur in order for Guay to win the globe, which included Guay winning the race, Michael Walchhofer either crashing or finishing way out, and Svindal not winning either. All of the above occurred, and Guay has a nice new shiny crystal globe for the airlines to smash on the way back to Montreal.

The Canadian team is extraordinarily stocked with talent and extraordinarily well-managed. It is, unfortunately, a testament to the flukey nature of Olympic skiing that they got skunked in Pissler. It's nice to see a Canadian take home a globe. The team deserves that, and more, after a very difficult and disappointing year in which several of their best medal hopes sustained season-ending injuries before the season really got started.

I think this may be Walchhofer's last season. He hasn't had a very good year, and he's got the look of a guy who has lost his jazz for speed. He's got two young kids, and I can see him calling it a career, going back to sleepy little Altenmarkt-Zauchansee to work in the family business. He's a great skier and has enjoyed almost every success possible to a ski racer, so I'm sure quitting looks pretty good to him right now.

photo by GEPA

Marco Buechel of Lichtenstein, for whom the SG WC Final was his last race before retirement, did something typically wacky for a downhiller to celebrate his retirement. He didn't quite do a "Full Rainer Schoenfelder" (ski buck naked), but fairly close. He ran the SG in a coat and tie, in bermuda shorts, and stopped midway down the run to chat with some fans. If my group had been doing the timing, Buechel's run would have been "LIMITS OFF!". Those of you who have been in the timing tower for World Cup know what I'm talking about.

Interesting Discussion on Sochi

To follow up on my earlier post on Sochi as a winter Olympics venue, this is an interesting interview, on NPR, with a Russian travel agent.

link

It sounds like a monumental clusterfuck in the making. But after Whistler's weather catastrophes,, how bad can it be?