Flashes of Panic

I spent a chunk of Saturday afternoon at the track at The College, helping out with the Little Three track meet. Despite a forecast of showers, not long after I arrived, it started pouring, enough to lead officials to cancel the pole vault. Only the steeplechasers, who are generally wet anyway, appeared unfazed. While I was turning the lap counter for the 5,000m races, we heard thunder, which made me happy I wasn’t standing in the aluminum bleachers.

The hardware used for automatic timing is relatively weatherproof, but the technician had to tune it some. The CCD involved is very narrow, and timing is somewhat finer than hundredths of a second, so it needed to be adjusted so that falling raindrops would not trip the timer. One of my functions, however, was to participate in the scolding of athletes not currently competing, in an effort to keep them from crossing the line while the cameras were running. This is more of an inconvenience than a crisis; there are a lot of ways to deal with an extra body in the finish photo. But the technician took apparent pleasure in barking at the kids and threatening them with various competitive penalties for crossing the line. I imagine he developed the habit when the auto timing was done with actual film, and an extra image could be much more of a problem.

Once the racing was done, I retreated to the press box, where we were entertained by the spectacle of a crew of recent grads from one of the other schools running a 4x800m relay against themselves. As they took their “victory” lap on the now-empty track, someone hollered from the press box that ratification of their time could only be completed with a skinny-dip in the steeplechase pit… which they immediately performed. They were rewarded with twelve-ounce silver trophies.

At a few points in the afternoon, I thought about getting out my camera, but I expect nobody is terribly disappointed that I didn’t. Aside from being thoroughly damp, I left with the half-feeling that nobody was really in charge over there—that things just happened because they were supposed to, and nobody bothered to question them.

Now Playing: Soon Enough from Inarticulate Nature Boy by Josh Clayton-Felt