Figured it's time to show you a little bit of what we've been doing lately. First is a trip to Florida for the inagural Miami Grand Prix and more time on Siesta Key. Through the same website we volunteer for races at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, we volunteered for the Miami Formula1 race. We did this several months before the event. Not long after volunteering we received emails letting us know we hadn't been picked up because there had been more than 1500 people volunteer and my experience level wasn't sufficient. Disappointed, but we moved on. About two weeks before the race I received another email asking me if I was still interested in working the race. They didn't need any flag marshals but were trying to fill all the spots for intervention marshals. That's the folks that run out when a car stops on the track and hooks up the lift truck to the car and helps get it off the track. We also pick up whatever debris might be on the track. I've not done it before but signed up. But only if Susan could volunteer as well. They agreed and we were in!
The first time for an event like this, there are going to be issues. There were. It really made us appreciate how well planned and executed races are at COTA. It was hot. All marshals wore fire retardant jump suits, all day. When cars were on the track, the intervention marshals also wore helmets and gloves. Three pairs of gloves when the F1 cars were out. The group Susan was working in was responsible for getting all the marshals on the track, lift operators, security folks and safety folks water and ice. It was not easy, believe me, but they pulled it off. Sometimes having to resort to carrying cases of water and bags of ice by hand for 100 yards or more to get it to all the people that needed it.
The worst part: Friday night the bus got us back to the hotel at 9:30 without having been fed. We had to be back on the bus at 4:50 the next morning to head back to the "muster point" for breakfast. The best part: The people. It's always about the people. Many of our friends from COTA were there. I also met some new folks. At my station, besides myself there were two guys from Michigan, one from Azerbaijan and one from Austria.
Every morning we had a police escort from the muster point to the track. All mile and a half of it. But not the 40 miles to and from the hotel.
