Directing the ECCC is hard. Stupid hard. Time commitment is one thing; the conference's appetite for hours, seconds, minutes, is voracious and growing, fueled by an unceasing, stupifying, terrifying tidal wave of email and travel.
Much worse though is the endless fighting, arguing, pulling teeth. Promoters you haven't heard from in weeks. Constant unfortunate decisions and unannounced changes from USAC. Staff, officials, riders with deplorable lack of vision, an axe to grind, or simply a bad attitude from somewhere. No matter how much positive energy you put into it, someone's willing to echo back that much and more, negatively. It's insidious, relentless, creeping up as you ride and sucking the life out of every pedal stroke.
So, it's awesome when someone does *something*---takes a positive action, shows some initiative, makes it happen. That's what makes this worthwhile.
Today's special action comes from Steve Hopengarten (Union) and Kyle Bruley (BU). Steve and I have talked for months about pooling and spawning a bunch of ECCC blogs, and Kyle's the talkative sort so he's been on board from "go" as well. Sadly, getting everything up and going has just never made it to the top of my conference to-do list, continually supplanted by something more pressing.
Fortunately, the two of them have decided "Damn that Joe Kopena, we're just gonna do this!" and taken the lead on marshaling the teeming hordes of two-wheeled scribes out there in the ECCC. Check out their new ECCC blog portal at http://ecccblogs.blogspot.com/, as well as their own excellent blogs.
A lot of riders and teams out there have blogs, and this is a great way to bring them all together and move some of our fantastic community online. For teams not running a blog, I highly recommend starting one. They're easy to create, easy to update, and a good way to keep the world informed about race reports, events, and just about anything going on in your team. Done well, it can go a long way to recruiting new riders, hooking up with the local community, building team history and tradition, and showing sponsors what sort of awesome group they're supporting. Check out some of the team blogs already linked to see some excellent examples.
See you out there---thirty days to Rutgers!
Much worse though is the endless fighting, arguing, pulling teeth. Promoters you haven't heard from in weeks. Constant unfortunate decisions and unannounced changes from USAC. Staff, officials, riders with deplorable lack of vision, an axe to grind, or simply a bad attitude from somewhere. No matter how much positive energy you put into it, someone's willing to echo back that much and more, negatively. It's insidious, relentless, creeping up as you ride and sucking the life out of every pedal stroke.
So, it's awesome when someone does *something*---takes a positive action, shows some initiative, makes it happen. That's what makes this worthwhile.
Today's special action comes from Steve Hopengarten (Union) and Kyle Bruley (BU). Steve and I have talked for months about pooling and spawning a bunch of ECCC blogs, and Kyle's the talkative sort so he's been on board from "go" as well. Sadly, getting everything up and going has just never made it to the top of my conference to-do list, continually supplanted by something more pressing.
Fortunately, the two of them have decided "Damn that Joe Kopena, we're just gonna do this!" and taken the lead on marshaling the teeming hordes of two-wheeled scribes out there in the ECCC. Check out their new ECCC blog portal at http://ecccblogs.blogspot.com/, as well as their own excellent blogs.
A lot of riders and teams out there have blogs, and this is a great way to bring them all together and move some of our fantastic community online. For teams not running a blog, I highly recommend starting one. They're easy to create, easy to update, and a good way to keep the world informed about race reports, events, and just about anything going on in your team. Done well, it can go a long way to recruiting new riders, hooking up with the local community, building team history and tradition, and showing sponsors what sort of awesome group they're supporting. Check out some of the team blogs already linked to see some excellent examples.
See you out there---thirty days to Rutgers!
Oh Gosh Kopena, I can't believe the guy who run's the blogosphere added you!
ReplyDelete