I know that you all have been waiting with baited breath to hear from Jeff aka Pit Tootsie, to find out if Karen and I "cut the mustard" in performing our newly appointed jobs as Pit Tootsies in training.
You see, since Tom (the Pit Boss) was racing... he had to temporarily promote his highness (Mr Tripp) as temporary Pit Boss and since Karen and I were temporarily off from racing duties, we were immediately notified of our Pit Tootsie status and advised that we would be reporting to the temporary Pit Boss... his highness, his holiness, the Big Pit.
So Big Pit rang a freaking cow bell to get Karen and I out of bed at 5:30 in the morning, to ensure we were up'n at'em.
For God's sake! He already had his rain gear on and he was so happy to be in charge he couldn't stand himself. Me... I just wanted to slap some sense into him... and remind him that Tom didn't race until 9:00, but I didn't want to ruin the moment for him, so we just resigned ourselves to a miserable day of servitude and got our gear together and started loading our ton-o-crap into the vans and headed over to the course.
With all wise cracks aside... I will tell you this. Being a Pit Boss is harder than being the racer. Anything that goes wrong with the bike, the hand ups, the bike transitions, even the speed in cleaning the bikes... is all on the Pit Boss. It's a ton of pressure and the riders expects everything to be sorted out by the time they get to the pit and sometimes that's in as little as 3 minutes... sometimes the Pit Boss has as much as 5 minutes. In either event, it's not enough time!
The job of the Pit Tootsie is fairly simple... Do whatever the Pit Boss says... if things don't go well, the Pit Tootsie gets the blame... you know, it rolls down hill.
It watching how the other Pit Crews were working with their racers... I have to say, we did a good job. We saw some really bush league stuff going on that resulted in riders either coming into the pit and having no bike to rider (because their crew wasn't ready), or the handup was sloppy and the rider crashed when tying to remount).
Our Pit Crew had the bikes ready and operational when the rider came to the pit. The bike handups were clean and we only got verbally reprimanded once by an official (for helping get Tom rolling, by giving him a push in the pit)...
But... I will let the Big Pit let you know if we cut the mustard as Pit Tootsies.
So... On a totally separate note!!!! When we come to Nationals, there is a big rivalry that takes place between the East Coast and the West Coast with regards to which side of the Nation collects the most National Titles.
Last year.. The West Coast won out over the East Coast by a significant margin. But... through today, it looks like the tables are being turned.
So far the East Coast vs West Coast Title Count stands at: 9 vs. 2 NICE JOB NEW ENGLAND
My next few blogs will primarily made up of pictures that we have taken during the trip to share some of the things we have seen to date.
Don't worry... if anything fun or interested pops up... we'll be sure to point it out.
That's all for now...
Kath... aka, PTT (Pit Tootsie in Training)
