Boilermaker Sunday

[lilbump1980]

Hi Everyone. I just wanted to let you all know, if anyone plans to be at the boilermaker post race party. Please find all of us Excellus Employees who will be passing out Groucho Glasses. We are doing it to premote Generic Drugs and also if we can have over 6500 people wearing them we can beat the recorded record for the most people at an event to wear groucho glasses.. So please if you or anyone you know will be there please find us and wear the groucho glasses with us!! Thanks!

[dgriffin]

I'll be the radio guy at Court and Whitesboro Streets. Say Hi!

[lilbump1980]

sounds good Dave!

[Swimmy]

How did you get a copy of a photo taken of me last year?! lol.

I'm working on getting a few of my friends to show up.

[dgriffin]

Don't remember where I got it or the spirit in which it was posted somewhere, but I'd call it "Tuned In News Hound."

[stoney]

Dave, are you talking HAM radeo??

[dgriffin]

Yes, ma'm.

N2chi

[Ralph]

I will probably be working......please throw money.

[stoney]

Dave, I always have on my scanner where the 2 local repeaters (146.76 & 145.45) come in. I get a kick out of listening to those guys. It's like a soap opera sometimes.

~~Stoney, easily amused

[lilbump1980]

well we beat the world record.. we had 8,336 people ( i believe) wearing groucho glasses....

[dgriffin]

Jul 13, 2008 17:59:48 GMT -5 @stoney said:

Dave, I always have on my scanner where the 2 local repeaters (146.76 & 145.45) come in. I get a kick out of listening to those guys. It's like a soap opera sometimes.

~~Stoney, easily amused

Regrettably, true. But you're listening to a very small segment of hams who are practicing only one of the many aspects of the hobby.
Although I use the repeaters (over here in Ulster county) for emergency drills, etc., I seldom talk on the repeater. In fact I seldom talk on the radio at all, preferring to use CW (a key and Morse code ... most of my work) and digital transmissions such as radio-teletype and similar modes.

[dgriffin]

I had a terrific weekend at the Boilermaker! My job was to participate in a radio network set up for "health and welfare" messages. These are non-emergency communications that support emergencies. That is, you don't want police and ambulance personnel taking up their time and radio frequencies with items such as lost children, which hospital or tent an ailing runner has been taken to, who has dropped out of the race, etc. So, the Utica Amateur Radio Club (of which I am a distant member) organizes a group of some 40 hams to be at the aid stations and mile markers and other important locations on the race course.

I was on station at 5:30 a.m. Sunday morning at the intersection of Court and Whitesboro streets, parking my car in grass up away from the street on the grounds of the old State Hospital. I began to feel somewhat concerned as I sat with my radios all set up and watched the local dope dealer begin his selling day at the convenience store near the intersection. I was a little worried that ... given my equipment and antenna ... I'd be taken for a DEA officer and shot at with an unregistered Saturday Night Special! Luckily, it rained like hell (until about 7:30 a.m.) and that helped to hide my presence. Maybe all of this was on my mind, because I’d just spent a night in the motel next to the famous Denny’s in Rome where a guy was shot a few months ago.

I had not worked the Boilermaker before, and to tell the truth, I wondered just how interesting and exciting it would be to view thousands of exhausted runners drag themselves past mile marker number 9 on a sweltering and hot humid morning. Turns out it was a lot of fun! The rain had brought temps down a bit and the cloudy skies helped to make the conditions better for the runners. I was able to make myself useful to emergency personnel and together we all caught the spirit of the race and began to cheer on the runners. The race began at almost exactly 8:00 a.m. and the first runners passed our 9th mile mark at about 8:40. They were from somewhere in Africa, of course. What amazing guys! They had such long legs that they appeared to be running in slow motion. But when they passed by I realized that it was an illusion, because each runner had legs and a stride so long that they were in the air more than any of the runners that were a good distance behind them.

The day before, Saturday, my family had a nice reunion at a veteran’s hall near Oriskany and on Sunday, after the race, we all joined up at a house party/picnic in Barneveld.
The Boilermaker is a pretty amazing gathering of families and folks from all over the world. Pretty neat!

[stoney]

All I'm able to pick-up on a scanner is 2 meters/simplex. But I heard you guys radioing each other during the Boilermaker. Wasn't KB2ZNZ from Syracuse net control?

[kim]

You were at mile 9, Dave? That's where I passed out one year! Broke a tooth, too!

[Clipper]

LOL, mile nine is by the state hospital and psych center. When YOU go by there Kim, you need to run very very fast, so they don't catch you and put you back on the ward, hahahaha!