ti 2015 review 1

ti was great. seriously. I've been wanting to go as a volunteer for a couple years now and this year I actually did. why did i want to go volunteer? ti has an excellent reputation for being well organized etc, lb does not. so i wanted to see what i could learn and hopefully bring back some changes to lb. thaddeus (cdba safety director) and I talk a lot and have been talking about cdba / scdbc steers reciprocity and he primarily came to BLB this year to volunteer steer so this was an excellent year to go up and volunteer. even better, I could leave sf directly to start my China trip a little early!

so, friday I drive up with xg. friday night was mostly the paddlers' party then some planning with thaddeus on guest steers for saturday. it was my first time going to the ti paddlers party and it was at a very pretty rooftop bar. great because I got to meet a lot of cdba people. thaddeus was staying at mabel and ben's house for the week. mabel is cdba and ben, her husband, is renegades(?) team chef. anyway, they were so kind to let me stay with them as well! it made more sense that I stay with thaddeus rather than the team at the team hotel because as volunteers our schedules are different than paddlers'. we even got our own rooms at ben and mabel's!

saturday!! we woke up DAMN early (earlier than i ever do for scdbc races, ha) and got to the site. in the early morning i worked the registration tent handing out paddlers wristbands and checking in volunteers. after the captains meeting i headed over to the dock to help out there. i'd met kerry, the dockmaster (at several well respected tournies, actually), before and he vaguely knows me (we're fb friends and he actually pm'ed me fairly recently) but i was really surprised how much trust he placed in me. i figured i would be helping people in and out of boats, easy stuff, while keeping an eye on operations in general, but instead he introduced me to the crew as co-dockmaster! pretty nice what the "safety director" job title will get you, huh? anyway, kerry explained that icdbf training is where they basically just drop you into the situation and get very little pre-training. so he did the first race, and from there i basically took over all major duties for the next 10 heats with him supervising, then he left, i think. lol. it was pretty crazy! i mean, jesus, thank god i have enough leadership skills and a strong enough personality where this worked, but i can see this type of training completely backfiring on, i think, most people!

but that's the great thing. dockmastering is a complicated job that i will not be needing with scdbc likely ever. our venues are drastically different and unless we change locations it's just not a skill that i'll need. also, i'll likely never be docking/marshalling again since i'm "moving on up." honestly, marshalling is not the hardest job. it's generally where you place the least experienced volunteers. lead marshalling and dockmastering is, of course, much harder, but i've moved away from that department. but anyway, the great thing is what i learned, and that's that this type of training is NOT an effective one. i've been to ti a couple times, but years ago, and well before i got involved with race officiating, so i don't remember the dock process very well. being thrown into the fray the way i was, meant that i learned a lot, but it was mostly me doing it as i would do it, with parameters. but since i didn't really get the chance to observe beforehand, i didn't have any time to come up with a good system, it was just figuring it out on the fly. and there's incredibly little down time, so i couldn't work out a better system. also, i'm very aware that this isn't my tourney, and i know they do things a certain way already so i didn't know how much leeway i had to change things. kerry told me that certain boats were to load from or off certain gangways so i followed that. if he hadn't given me that directive, i would've for sure done it differently. there were inefficiencies in the system that i would have fixed if i knew i were allowed to. but, again, it's not my tourney, and he has to dockmaster the rest of the weekend, so i don't feel comfortable "training" the teams to do a certain thing when he's going to do it a completely different way the rest of the time. i want to be respectful of the system already in place. but, yeah, i learned a great lesson in leadership that morning.

after lunch i was on the starter's boat with kim. who is practically "famous" for her skills as a starter. she's amazing and i learned a shit ton. i didn't get to actually do starting, but she answered all my questions in such a thoughtful way. even better, these skills will directly affect me since i'm a starter at baby and big lb. i'd never gotten any training as a starter, so this was a super valuable experience. i know i'll be better for it, and in turn, our tournies will be better too. and that was the whole point!!
furthermore i learned her philosophy about officiating which i think will be the biggest lesson i take away from this weekend. 

saturday night was mostly just resting, hahaha. 

(i didn't go too much into what i learned about specific tourney things, let's be honest, most of you don't care)