Preparing for the Wasatch 100 Ultra Marathon

Every year my wife and I volunteer to help with the Wasatch 100 Ultra Marathon. We drive our 4x4 up above Brighton and Solitude Ski Resorts where we build a small tent city complete with food, water, computers, and radio equipment. We then help runners as they work their way through a 100-mile running course through very rough terrain. We happen to sit at the 65.3 mile mark, so a lot of the runners are fairly well spent by the time they make it to us.

Our job at the race is to set up a ham radio connected to a computer and transmit the bib number and times as runners come into our aid station. That information is then used by the race organizers to let spectators know where runners are on the course. It is an amazing system but I only use it once a year and so I make sure to practice at home before I am remote and don't have all the tools available to me in my home office. Last night I tested the system and familiarized myself with it yet again.

The technology we use for the race is actually quite ancient. Sure we use nice laptops but we could get by with a 1985-era one. The modem I use to connect the computer to the radio has an old serial cable interface and so I had to get a USB-to-Serial adapter. Then we just use Telnet to connect to the server on the other end. Telnet is a fairly old program and when you do an Internet search the first thing that pops up is how it is no longer considered "secure" and should be avoided. That is fine for our application as we actually want people to know the data we are sharing and not trying to keep it secret.

This year I have to leave the race a bit early as I have another event I have to get to. While the race organizers prefer us to use ham radio to transmit times, there is also an Internet portal where we can get to the master server and interface with it. All we need is a telnet client such as PuTTY. Today I have been testing it out from my Chromebook and working with my buddy who will be able to stick around after I leave. Our aid station sits right underneath a mobile-phone tower and we get great Internet service. I imagine it is only a matter of time before the entire race course has Internet coverage and we lose the ham-radio part of the infrastructure.

Actually the more I think about it, the more I want to ditch the ham radio now. I could leave my extra car battery at home. I also wouldn't have to pack up my antenna nor set it up at our aid station. That could save a lot of time. Maybe I should bring all the radio equipment but not worry about setting it up unless it is needed. I'm seriously thinking about it. 

More Comments Equals More Views

Monday I posted another skiing YouTube video listing my top 5 favorite sidecountry ski areas. One thing about throwing out a term like "sidecountry" is that if you ask 10 different people, you may get 11 different responses on what it means. I provided a definition in the video and it is getting several comments. Some people don't agree with my definition and are asking questions.

At first glance, it seems like all of these comments are causing YouTube's algorithm that shares videos to push this new one to the front. I published another video on Saturday about preparing for the upcoming ski season and it doesn't have nearly the traffic even though it came out 2 days before this latest one. My hypothesis is that comments indicate engagement and so they think others will also like the video so YouTube is sharing it more.

All of this traffic for my video suggests I can get more traffic by creating controversial content. That does have a downside though. If people don't like your content, they might disengage from the channel. I also don't like controversy. While it is fine to disagree with an undefined word, there is also the chance people could be offended and I make an extra effort not to offend people.

I plan to watch video views over the next few weeks and see if the trend hold true. I may need to solicit a few of my friends to submit comments and see how that effects outside views. Currently I have a number of new viewers but not any new subscribers. If the number of subscribers increases, that will strengthen my hypothesis. I'll be sure to keep you posted.  

My Latest YouTube Releases

One advantage of working for Sony is that we get 4-day weekends for both Memorial and Labor Day. I like it because we get the Friday off before the Monday holidays and that gives me a bit of extra time to get stuff done. One year I used the that time to go visit Alaska and do some ocean kayaking. This year I did something different: I released 2 YouTube videos.

I woke up on Friday and decided I would try and put out a video in a single day. There is a lot of work that goes into each video and I wasn't sure I could do it but wanted to give it a try. I sat down at my computer and put together a compelling script. Then I recorded the narration. The subject of the video is preparing for the 2025/26 ski season. I came close but didn't quite finish the video in a single day. I had to roll over onto Saturday but got it released that evening.

In order to put out the video quickly, I had to interrupt another video I started creating over a year ago. I liked the topic but just didn't feel the need to get the video out and so it languished on my computer in a half-done state for months. Getting a video put out early in the weekend ignited a desire to finish an update on my second most popular video on the Top 5 Sidecountry Ski Areas of North America. My wife had to do some sewing and so she gave me permission yesterday to sit in front of my computer and finish the video. I completed everything last night and immediately released it.

Of the 2 videos, the Sidecountry one is my favorite. I can't really pinpoint why I didn't finish it earlier. I know one thing that slowed me down was not having enough photo and video content for one of the ski areas. I had to go back through an old photo album and scan pictures from back in the 1980's. I have a really good scanner and once I digitized the images, the video sat uncompleted for months. Perhaps laziness kept me from working on it or I valued spending my time on other pursuits. Ultimately I got it done and in less than 24 hours it has been viewed close to 100 times.

In the past, the closest I have ever released 2 videos is 5 days. This marks the first time I have done it in 2 days. I will be interested to see how that effects the number of views. My channel has about 650 subscribers and I hope to get more. Unfortunately I have not received any new ones since the first video on Friday. Perhaps there is something else I need to do to increase my popularity. Until then, I hope everyone enjoys the videos.