USAT questions? Bowling results!

Inquiring minds want to know: Hey greerman you were just elected to the National Board of Directors for USA Triathlon, congratulations are in order!! BUT!!!How will you handle this since you have been such a critic and USAT basher for the past two years. My first response is a simple one, thanks for voting for me or if you didn't vote for me thanks for voting, or if the person was not in my region, then thanks for voting and voting for their candidate. If they didn't vote, 12% of the annual membership did vote according to USAT, then I say, "shame on you!" To have a voice you must vote, if not in this election then at least the next election. Now to answer the question. In my previous posts which may seem to be bashing I must say my intent was not to bash, but to point out areas of interest that I felt should not be going on or where USAT had lost its' vision in the mission statement of USAT. When I saw obvious flaws that were going on I just took the liberty to express my opinion, as an annual member, through my blog site. I took great care and put lots of thought before I wrote my opinion, and tried to stay away from knee jerk emotionalism. To illustrate this, I spent over 7 hours writing MY opinions on the 16 dispensations that Ironman had ask for relative to the 2005 race. As we all know 15 were accepted by USAT with one exception, which became the deal breaker and later the split of the two organizations. My plea was simple, cut to the chase and grant the final dispensation and get on with it. It wasn't like Ironman wanted to sacrifice 16 year old virgins at the finish line for the Kona Gods or anything, they just wanted to issue penalties a little differently than in the past. But, not to get away from my point. I put thought into what I wrote and did it for the simple reason that someone might be reading it and would in turn have the facts the way I saw them. For anyone interested in these issues they could just add fasttwitchmind as another source for doing their due diligence on the subject. In the case where I did go a little whacko on my opinion of the job the new executive director was doing, I did issue a private apology to him. In this e-mail I did state to him that I was not questioning his manhood or integrity but I felt he could have handled some of the public relations in a much better way. The apology was accepted and we have moved forward. So, bottom line here is that I was offering constructive criticism to the national governing body of the sport that I am a member of with the intent to help the problem, not cause more problems. It will be my goal and intent to do the same when I take my board seat January 1, 2007. It will also be my intent to run for president of the board for 2007. It will also be my practice that I will not discuss USAT board business on fasttwitchmind, and will direct all USAT business through the normal channels afforded to the elected board members. As I stated in my platform, I will represent the members of the SouthMidwest Region in a honest and dedicated manner and will encourage them to give me feedback at all times. That is not to say I can't receive feedback from other annual members, which I can and will, as to how the Federation can best serve them.

Now on to other stuff, i.e. bowling: Last night was the Twilight Mixed Bowling league night. For Team "Spare Me" they should have spared me, team captain, the miserary of bowling. It was like a bad hair day for me, except it was bad bowling night. As I said to myself, "the idea greerman is to knock down as many pins as possible with either one ball or the second mulligan ball." I never caught on and the pins just stayed standing like little soldiers. Not even another cold beer would persuade these little troopers to fall. So, our team ended up with 1 win out of 4 or said another way, 3 losses out of 4. I would have been better off for the team to just sit back drink the cold ones, let them use my average and we would have won 2 out of 4. But, alas, no wrist slashing from this ole boy, afterall it is just bowling. Now on to the rest of the day and week and get ready for the 70.3 World Championship in Clearwater, FL.