Racing Rookies

And the race went well :)

Eight people showed up in T1 frigates, it was actually 3/5 rookies to vets, but I still split them 4/4. I had the rookies play hide & seek with me at the starting line until I decloaked, then whoever was closest got to choose his vet first and so on. Four couples flying on a "blind vet." They had ten minutes to get to know each other a bit, get on fleet and voice and off they went!

Five minutes later I was bored silly. Not much happens on chat while people are racing.

But, I had an advantage - I knew where the track went so I had my, ah, cloaked cam at a nice spot in Egmar, which proved to be the best vantage point for watching the action like I had never seen before, half an hour later.

Oh boy, where to begin? With the fleet of locals that showed up in the middle of our track? Pirate acquaintance Shae mentioned later that Egmar happens to be GIS's base, rather than our track -I think she may have a point there. What about the fleet vanishing minutes before our first racer arrived? And it was the best waypoint ever: I saw Takashi warping in, then Kay and the rest... then Kazuo overtaking them both right there, warping out followed out by Kay and then Tak. You don't see that kind of flying every day (and if you are racing, you don't have time to notice). After all, very nice view.

Kazuo ran a surprisingly good race, he was smart and consistent and even beat Tak to the finish line (Kaz got a 5-minute penalty for a silly mistake, which did not really matter for the standings anyway). Kay came in 3rd and NeonFolf closed the line -he seems to have run slow just to keep pace with his rookie Kira.

Our rookies were amazing. Cai Lun (not really a rookie but, hey) won the race for himelf and Kaz. Dracoknight carried second for Tak, and today I hear he was promptly recruited by Tak's team. Bloodpetal was engaged by... an interceptor? and not only managed to get out alive, but came in just 10 seconds behind Draco. Last but not least, Kira Storm was shot down, but she re-shipped and came back to complete the race. That was probably the best part, to see her finish -as they say, the last person to finish a marathon deserves quite a lot of respect.

In the end I think it was a good race: eight racers out, two hours, eight racers in. I am happy that there were no major disasters with the organizing and hosting. I was just surprised and a bit stressed out by all the time it took me to go through all of it from the organization point of view (8-9 hours all things considered), so I am really looking forward to having KillJoy back to organize. There is a reason I am PR...

Anyway, as a reward, I treated myself with a quick ski trip. It is a shame Mt. Kaala is no longer a destination, I used to love that ;)

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