AmSnow.com is now SnoWest.com
The Go Pro revolution has swept the world, it seems, and it swept through my world last winter. Now, I’m not a technophobe, I don’t even own a GPS for my motorcycle or snowmobile. I can read a paper map just as fast, but I’m not anti-GPS either. My wife has one for her car and I recognize the benefit of it, but I also know that it’s wrong over 25 percent of the time. For instance, we were in Anaheim, Calif. a few years ago looking for breakfast and it guided us to a McDonald’s that was torn down. Oh, well, it tried, right? I just feel like a piece of highly technical computer equipment that costs several hundred dollars should do better than that.
I have also bragged in this very column that I can find anything faster in a printed catalog than on a website. That said, I do 90 percent of my mail-order related shopping online, but I still salivate when the rare snowmobile or motorcycle catalog shows up in the mailbox. I also think the concept of seat heaters is ridiculous, whether in a car, on a sled or motorcycle. I just think a cold rear is part of the experience of an all-day trail ride, and it sure makes you appreciate the hot tub more at night. My wife thinks I’m ridiculous when I jump in her car in the winter and immediately turn off the seat heater.
The Go Pro, however, is one piece of technology that’s actually served a purpose for me. Go Pros are everywhere, and I mean everywhere. As an entrepreneurship professor, I see a lot of business ideas cross my desk. The latest is a company that broadcasts wakes and funeral services online so people who can’t make it to the service can still experience the event with family and friends in real time. Now, even though the funeral-cam business wasn’t specifically targeting the use of the Go Pro, I joked with some of my students that perhaps the deceased should wear a Go Pro on their head to give a live action shot from inside the casket. Like most of my attempts at humor, I received the obligatory sympathy laugh from a few who wanted an ‘A’ in the class and not much more.
The Go Pro did enable me to do something last winter I had never done before. To set this up, I decided to try one more season of cross country racing. I say “one more season” because I had kind of hung up my TekVest for a couple of years, even though I still went to virtually every race as a spectator, which is really hard to do. A new class was launched a few years ago called Classic IFS, mainly for ’90s-era 440 sleds. So, I proceeded to track down a pretty nice 1997 Arctic Cat ZR440 and went racing.
One course I had never raced before, for some reason, was in Oslo, Minn. It was roughly a 25-mile layout of ditches, tree lines and a stretch of river. Both USCC and USXC had run the race in previous seasons and the course had been essentially the same each time. The night before the race, my son and I were poking around on YouTube and found a 2013 Go Pro video of the entire Oslo race, filmed from the helmet of, ironically, one of my competitors in the Classic IFS class.
I proceeded to watch the entire video two times. The amazing part was, I went out the next morning, left the start line and raced, perhaps, the best, most consistent cross country race of my life. I was edged into second place by a few seconds, but I was literally on the snow flap of the guy in front of me virtually the whole race. That guy was also the gentleman that posted the Go Pro video, so I guess he had a bit of an advantage.
My friend and former racer, Jesse Strege, once told me the good racers “see the race course unfolding in front of them like a movie.” In other words, fast racers can anticipate things happening before they actually occur. I have heard this same kind of observation expressed by professional athletes too, most commonly by football running backs, whose job it is to juke, jive and maneuver in, out and around defenders. I’ve never been very good at that kind of imagery, which is evident in my race finishes. I am, obviously, too busy trying not to end up in the ER to turn my brain into a futuristic cinema of what’s to come.
Go Pro, however, changes that game entirely. Now riders don’t have to imagine what the course will look like in real time, all they need to do is fire up their laptops or phones and watch it unfold in living color. Pretty amazing.
There’s a great song by the rock band Primus called “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver” that pretty much describes my racing ability in a line from the opening verse: “He never did win no checkered flag/But he never did come in last.” I wonder how well Jerry would have done with a Go Pro?