Fall Ascutney is in the books.

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Shenglehoffer
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Fall Ascutney is in the books.

Post by Shenglehoffer »

I just wanted to take a second and thank everyone that made it out to the hill. Lyss and I had a great time chairing our first hillclimb, and we owe it's success to all of you guys (and girls). It ended up being a beautiful weekend and I think we got a decent amount of runs in. We had some issues Saturday morning and 2 pretty bad offs (glad the Kevins are both ok), but all in all, I feel it went pretty well.

Feel free to let me know things you liked and didn't like, or if you just want to make fun of me, please post here.

See you guys at Philo!
I may even be back in a BMW.

-Erik & Alyssa Saunders
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Re: Fall Ascutney is in the books.

Post by Rabbit Farmer »

I liked the grilling. Made it more of a family event atmosphere. Think we will do the same at Philo.

On the fence about awards before or after clean-up. Don't like it before as people are stuck on the hill late cleaning up, do like it before clean up as more people will attend. Will have to think a bit more about that.

One thought that came across in earlier discussions is to have the results from the previous event (excluding Philo) presented at the next NEHA event on Saturday night.

Amanda had a great idea of projecting videos on the side of someone's trailer for some Saturday night bench racing. :mrgreen:
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Shenglehoffer
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Re: Fall Ascutney is in the books.

Post by Shenglehoffer »

I'm with you on the awards, I'd like to get more people to be there when it happens, but I'm also one of the guys stuck on the hill at that time.
With the 900 gopros we have rolling at every event, the projector idea is AWESOME! If one of our local geeks could come up with a system for that, it would certain make for quite the hangout Saturday night.
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Re: Fall Ascutney is in the books.

Post by drummingpariah »

Shenglehoffer wrote:I'm with you on the awards, I'd like to get more people to be there when it happens, but I'm also one of the guys stuck on the hill at that time.
With the 900 gopros we have rolling at every event, the projector idea is AWESOME! If one of our local geeks could come up with a system for that, it would certain make for quite the hangout Saturday night.
It's not really something I had considered before this event, but I think I can make this happen. The trick is going to be making sure we have enough power available. I was surprised by how many people were interested in seeing footage when I opened up a laptop (which promptly died of stage fright).

As for cleanup, it seems like there were a lot of people milling about unsure of what to do. Maybe it's a good idea to break people up into small crews with specific responsibilities (the wire crew sounded like it was well focused, for instance) and organize that before the event even begins. That might have happened at this event and I just missed it, but it seemed like everyone relied on Drew to tell everyone what to do, and he's just one man.
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Re: Fall Ascutney is in the books.

Post by KevinGale »

It's not a lack of people. It's just that taking down equipment and wire takes time. And you can't really throw more people at the wire and make it happen any faster.

I like the awards before we take down the hill. More people go to awards and the people who take down the hill don't get home any later. They still spend about the same amount of time attending awards and taking down the hill they just do them in the opposite order. At the KSCC Burke events we just asked for volunteers at the drivers meeting. Those people know they are staying after awards to take down the hill. In my case it let me help with equipment for the first time ever. Usually I'm busy doing results so I can't help with tearing down the hill. But since it happened after awards I could help this year.
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Re: Fall Ascutney is in the books.

Post by drummingpariah »

KevinGale wrote:It's not a lack of people. It's just that taking down equipment and wire takes time. And you can't really throw more people at the wire and make it happen any faster...
Sorry if my last comment didn't read quite right, I was saying that the wire crew looked well organized, and everyone knew what had to happen as well as what their part was in it. It could very well have just been that I was a fish out of water and didn't see the obvious things that needed to be done.
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Re: Fall Ascutney is in the books.

Post by Mopar 151w2 »

Several new players in the organizing side, and Drew was the man who knew. Chairing a hillclimb is a difficult job under any circumstances, and, with managing the scheduling and sequencing in particular, has been the ongoing challenge of some very smart (stubborn, and opinated) folks for 40+ years with the current clubs. And, yes, we generally try to have wire & equipment crews set up - this weekend just had a high planetary misalignment quotient.
Some of the reason that we have the current question about trophies vs. wire is that, before Kevin's Magic Program, we compiled results after the hardcopy, wadded, wrinkled, and handwritten, came down after the last run. That was hand transcribed onto the results sheet/beer case. Printed results for competitors came in the mail weeks later, 30% of the time.
Now, technology has given us more options, and most of us are looking to improving the experience for everybody. This is an unusually egalatarian group of people, and we can look a little cockeyed from a distance. :roll: Authouratarians often become badly confused in our presence :? 8-) Webster's says that to compete is to "strive toward a common goal", and that's us in a nutshell.
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Re: Fall Ascutney is in the books.

Post by BugEyeRex »

Grills good!

Crashes bad!

It was a great event! The only small suggestion I might add is some water for the drivers at the top of the hill like KSCC does. It wasn't hot this weekend but it is appreciated. Having awards before the hill tear down is nice to have everyone participate but I hate to have the tear down crew miss out. I am also on the fence on that idea.

Thanks to everyone that pitched in to make a great event. I know it is a lot of hard work before, during, and after!
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KevinGale
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Re: Fall Ascutney is in the books.

Post by KevinGale »

BugEyeRex wrote: Having awards before the hill tear down is nice to have everyone participate but I hate to have the tear down crew miss out. I am also on the fence on that idea.
No one misses out. The crews don't start until after awards. The timing worked out pretty well at Burke in another way. It takes some time for workers to come down off the hill and for me to then print results and deal with last minute class changes etc. That turned out to be about the right amount of time for everyone to pack up. So just as a lot of the people finished packing and were deciding if they should leave we called for awards. So a bunch of people didn't have to decide it they would rather get home 45 mins earlier or wait for awards. And if we want to make awards happen sooner then we should not have finish walk the wire down. That is the biggest delay in my getting results printed. If we want the wire walked down we should ask for a volunteers at the drivers meeting to drive up and walk that section out into the road.

I rather liked Sherm's approach. At the driver's meeting he asked for volunteers for the stuff that needed to get done at the end of the day. And he made it clear we were not going to end the driver's meeting and start racing until people stepped forward. :)
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Re: Fall Ascutney is in the books.

Post by Chief Geek »

Great event. The chair-couple did a good job by any measure before considering they're rookies.

I like having the "village gathering" with as many members as possible. Count my vote toward awards first, take-down second. To further the cause, when possible, I'll volunteer to pack up the finish gear to allow the finish workers to grab the laptop and follow the last car down the hill.

To add my 20 millidollars:
- Water at finish is nice. Even a 5 gal cooler or a couple of 2.5 gal fridge-jugs of spring water and paper cups, if that's cheaper.
- Asking for take-down/wire volunteers during the drivers meeting is good. Maybe a sign-up sheet next to the results sheets would work if "advertised" properly.
- Continuing the idea above, I think a bulletin board would be helpful. It could list the daily schedule, be used for results sheets, provide a central place for announcements, and hold any group notices like "Small muffler & bracket found at T24. Can be claimed at Check 7." etc. ;) If it's still in one piece, I can donate a 4' wide white-board, although any piece of plywood would do.

Thanks for the porta-john at holding.
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