Chesapeake Region
Autocross In Review Words: Greg Hartke; Photos: Jim McKee
It’s been kind of a weird season this year here at AX Central. First off, we’ve had some odd equipment difficulties with constant problems with the hotspot and (most recently) the timing board going belly up (which is an appropriate metaphor since it was killed by the rain at the AX#4 Drenchfest). Co-chair Brad Martinez has been destroyed by work all season until just recently, causing him to miss AX#4 and 5 (congratulations to Brad for getting his life back!), then Registrar Meilyng Wigney-Burmaka was on vacation for AX#6. I’m pretty sure all these headaches have contributed to making my hair even grayer than it was at the start of the season and I certainly didn’t need that! ;) All of the PCA events that we enjoy require an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work and AX is no exception. There’s a huge amount of prep work that must be done during the off-season (budgeting, scheduling, and coordinating all the pieces, with the AX School especially requiring a lot of work) as well as an awful lot of work right before each race to prepare for the event. Meilyng handles the details of setting up the heats for the drivers and the worker assignments for each race, as well as sending out the communications to the entrants, all of which is a lot (really a lot!) more work than it sounds with significant work that must be done in the last couple of days before the race. Since Meilyng was on vacation for AX#6, some of that last-minute work fell to me this time. Gulp!
Fortunately, Meilyng set up as much as she could the week before, but it still left me doing the last-minute stuff. Did those of you who raced in AX#6 notice that the event emails were sent out later than usual? Now you know why. Yup, that was entirely my fault because I had to do all the final administrative work for this one and of course I’m not familiar with it. It’s desirable to get the event emails out on Thursday for a Saturday race and I barely beat that selfimposed deadline by sending out the emails just before midnight. Oops. ;) And think about poor Meilyng! She and I were IMing back and forth for hours Thursday evening (while she was on vacation!) as she coached me through the process. For someone who knew what they were doing, it wouldn’t have taken very long, but being clueless, it took
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