Coteau du Lac

A quick update from Coteau du Lac.

Took a two-day road trip to get here from Halifax, stayed overnight Wednesday in Riviere du Loup. It was raining so hard on Wednesday morning it was all Riviere and no Loup. Got to Coteau du Lac Thursday afternoon. Ran into the TD and HR (Technical Delegate and Head Referee) in the hotel lobby, got sucked into an impromptu meeting and been at it ever since.

Pretty much been keeping eyes open and mouth closed. There's something to be said to keeping schtum. The TD and HR have a shed-load of races under their belts, including a bunch of World Cups, World Champs and the Olympics, so it's unlikely I have anything particularly constructive or insightful to add to anything in particular.

In fact my job here is as much to be mentored as it is to do anything constructive (before race-day at least). In fact, I've been jokingly called a mentor-whore!

The lingua franca is, for now, English, which is good. I've been breaking out in French every now and then, and not for long. A measure of my success? Well, I've not starved to death yet and the swim-course has been accurately measured (to within 10m, which is the resolution +/- of a comercial wrist-mounted GPS). What more can you want?

Spent the morning mucking about on the swim-course and pontoon. Have a secondary assignment to the starts, and the start-pontoon is a bit tippy, and will be more-so when 71 guys all dive off en masse. So we (the officials) had a bit of a practice at not falling off the pontoon.

There is a better class of bike-porn here. Andrew Armstrong (HR) and I spent twenty minutes this morning fondling a couple of Dot Project bikes (including the pink one there) under the guise of familiarisation with the new wheel and tri-bar rules. Seriously though, there are new wheel and tri-bar rules. Be warned!

Race-briefing in an hour and then the officials' meeting. I think I'll be on Moto#1. Vroom vroom! Tee hee hee :)!!

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