Officially Official

On Saturday Dave Matlin, the highly qualified CTS administrative executive Alyssa Gaebel and I traveled to Emmanus, Pa to partake in a USA Cycling Official's Clinic. It was an easy day... I learned the most on the structure of how the officials work, and how they get paid. Basically there are chief Referees and Judges, and Assistant Referees and Judges. I am now a "C" official, so I can, in most cases, only be one of the assistants, which means all I do is watch and write crap down- I'll almost never be called upon to make any sort of judgment or snap decision. We ate lots of bagels, went over some slides, and then got a rulebook and took an open-book exam. The questions were relatively entertaining:

A Cyclocross course is defined as:
a. completely unreadable
b. composed of varying terrain
c. having at least 2.5" of mud around the entire course
d. being full of snow

In many cases all of those options may be applicable...

Now I'm officially official:

We also had the honor of being enlightened as to the coming of Christ. Thank you central Pennsylvania.