Kona 2006

RACE WEEK

Pre-Kona Blog: THE CONTEST
Pre-Kona Blog: THE PARTY
Pre-Kona Blog: THE SLOWTWTICHER BRUNCH
The race call, in SLOWDEF
The race WRAP-UP

OTHER STUFF

The Slowtwitch BIKE SURVEY on Kona

Wednesday, 10-/18, D minus 3: THE CONTEST

I boarded the plane to Kona from Los Angeles, took my semi-fraudulenty obtained through credit card miles seat in first class, saw the coupon and realized I’d blown it.

It was the Halfway Game flier, where they give you the airspeed, the wind speed to plow through, the altitude, the time we’ll take off, and the duration of the flight. I’m supposed to figure what time of day we’ll be halfway there. I’m competing for a box of macadamia nuts with an engineer from JPL and a mathemetician from CalTech. I’m unequipped, outclassed, trying a prize I can’t win, and that I don’t want. But hey, it’s a competition.

I’m surly, because there’s a pathway to the podium and I failed to prepare. I can plug numbers into a formula, like a monkey. I’m good at that kind of stuff. I need the formula, though, and I know if I would’ve Googled “united halfway game” at home, before leaving for the airport, I’ll find the raw mathematical materials some kind soul has posted.

”That’s cheating,” you might say. Where do the rules say I can’t bring a cheat sheet on the plane? It's legal drafting. If I was looking over my seatmate’s shoulder and copying his work, yes, that would be cheating. Using my method, I’m actually calculating the answer, I’m just secreting the formula on the plane.

That’s not cheating, it’s being entrepreneurial. It’s also quite moot. Nothing I could do at that moment. They don’t play this game on the way back, just on the way over, and I’ll again forget to prepare between now and next year.

But wait! A couple a hundred of Kona’s competitors talk shop on my reader forum at Slowtwitch.com. If I post the formula there, maybe somebody traveling tomorrow will win the contest because of the formula I post on the site.

If you win, just give me a little nod of the head if we see each other about town. That, and half the nuts.

Thursday, 10-/19, D minus 2: THE PARTY

Today’s installment centers around the "party." There have been two parties of historical import that occur at the Hawaiian Ironman. The second is the party the night after the race, unofficially held at Marty’s, until Marty’s ceased to exist. Now it’s held somewhere else and is not, I’m given to understand, as epic as the old Marty’s affairs.

The thing about this second party is that it’s not by invitation. You just go. Nobody’s checking your bona fides at the door.

The first party is different. It is by invitation, and it’s always on the Wednesday before the race. It takes place at the King Hulihee’s Palace, a historic colonial structure right downtown. This is the official party. What’s notable, as far as I’m concerned, is who is not tendered an invitation. Me.

It’s my 25th year coming to this Island to race, or participate in some business function, at this event. I won’t list my resume for consideration because, if you have to explain why you should be invited, maybe you shouldn’t be. That notwithstanding I’ve been asking attendees (most of whom I know) what it takes to rate an invite. I cannot print any of the replies here, for fear they would result in embarrassment for the interviewee, and one or another race-related organization to which the reply is aimed.

After 25 years, I think I’d better resign myself to the truth of the matter: I’m never going to get past the doorman of that danged party. So I drank beer with Paul Thomas last night, who wasn’t invited either.

Upon further reflection, considering how Paul and I comport ourselves in public, perhaps the social secretaries who excluded me from the list of the invited knew what they were doing.