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| Perhaps the most critical bit of kit are your credentials. Security is becoming more and more serious at tracks nowadays with lawsuits and terrorism fears. This can seriously hamper your job since you need to be able to go about anywhere on the track. Security guards are usually poorly trained and are just waiting to detain or delay you. To deal with them you must have the proper credentials and if you are missing one of the many hard cards, badges and wrist bands needed, you often have to “Use the Force”. The Force is the abilty to get past guards that are being lame. You have to know when to act like you own the place and also have the ability to quickly decide which guards will respond to either being treated nicely or when to act like you have authority over them. It's not being a dick, you ARE supposed to be there, you have to help run the show that pays them. Sometimes it helps to have a shitload of different hard cards, the guards will think you are really important if you have tons of hard cards and wrist bands. Sometimes I bring stuff like my NASA drivers license or hard cards from different sanctioning bodies, hehehe. My daughter often has problems because no one believes that a kid would have a hot access hard card and wrist band even though her photo is on the card. I think she is probably the youngest person to have credentials in a race series or something perhaps. Be careful about overstepping things in foreign countries. In some countries like the Middle East, going about with the wrong credentials might get you shot by submachine gun toting guards. Put your credentials on a lanyard so you don't lose them and be careful where you put them down because people like to steal them. |
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| The black thing on my credential lanyard is a small LED flashlight made by Pelican. It is everything proof and I carry it here to ensure that I will always have some sort of light wherever I go. Middle aged eyes make it hard to see up in the bottom of cars or things in detail where I am usually always looking even during the day so having a light on me at all times is very important as I get older. Getting old sucks. |
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| I keep little stupid things that I need all the time in some external pouches on the sides of my pack. The external pouches have lanyard leashes hooked up to this carabiner to keep them from falling out and getting lost. I lost a lot of stuff before doing this. When on a team and in traveling around your stuff gets thrown around a lot in general and losing commonly used stuff sucks. |
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| The leashes lead to these external pouches that hold the dumb but handy things I use all the time. The pouches can also go inside the main bag on the leashes but the side pockets are handy. You can also stash bottles of water and snacks here. |
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| Sometimes your job as spotter can be stressful. Right about here Frederic Aasbo hit our car right on the rear wheel which broke our lower control arm and rear shock. Surprisingly, Dai reported that the car was seriously hurt about a second after this while still battling Aasbo. I radioed Scott, Dai's Crew Chief, and the crew to get ready and had to communicate with the FD officials whether or not we would need to call for a 5 minute competition time out. Fortunately the SPD crew was able to fix the car prior to the Final 4. |
