Sunday, December 12, 2010

Stream of Consciousness Announcing

I have been a huge fan of how Colt and the folks from Cycling Dirt have tried to bring races and race reports to the masses by turning around highlight videos and post race interviews of racers. At first I was just kind of amused that it just sort of seemed like Colt was just doing this on a shoestring budget, then the cyclingdirt.org guys got the support of Greenware to broadcast the USGP of CX in conjunction with Velonews. The broadcasts were definitely not the highest quality, but the enthusiasm of Adam and Colt made it worth watching. Today they have Mark Gullickson (from USAC) commentating in the womens race, and I can't help but cringe at the monotone and lack of vocabulary that he uses to announce. I watch the World Cup CX races in Europe that are commentated in Flemish, dutch or some other euro-centric language, but I can typically follow whatever is going on based off of HOW the commentator is speaking, not on what he is actually saying.
I can't speak Dutch, but I did take two semesters of Spanish in high school....... Bon Jour!

Don't get me wrong, I am incredibly thankful that USAC, CyclingDirt, and Velonews got together to put this out there, but Gullickson was like listening to my high school science teacher drone on about matter. They could at least "voice over" the race announcers. I was also sad that in the womens race they only really covered KFC, but since she had a 30 second lead for most of the race it would have been nice to see some of the other battles going on behind her.
But make no mistake, I am stoked to get coverage of any type.

On the other hand, I converted my Reba from 80mm of travel to 100mm. Took like 20 minutes and 18cc of fork oil. If you want your Reba travel adjusted just let me know.......I have enough 5wt oil to do 40 forks (since its winter I am only using 5wt, not a 50/50 mix of 5wt and Red Rum) I can do the conversion with your fork on or off of the bike. No charge, but a six pack would be appreciated.
Time to freshen up my beverage and get ready for the Elite Mens race. Viva la CyclingDirt! (take that eurotrash and bitter Canadians).

1 comment:

Andrew Slater said...

I've already put in my application for announcing natz next year. Rest soundly good sir.