New opportunities

I am friends with a guy that also does event timing in the greater SWFL area.  Unlike me, he does it as a real business and is timing something more weekends than not during a calendar year.  Well for a long time he was using the exact same timing equipment (Ipico) that I used for timing club races.  Having this duplication was convenient, more than once we have been able to help the other out by exchanging equipment for certain events.

Well recently he has moved to a different timing hardware platform and had begun the sell off of all of his Ipico gear.  I did not know this was going on until it came up during a chat I had with John the other day.  All of a sudden the gears in my head started to turn quickly.  Without giving it more than a few moments consideration I told him I would buy his last box.

In reality, I have considered buying my own timing equipment for several years and never pulled the trigger.  However with my receiving some funds from the still in process estate liquidation of my mom’s assets, I have a little money to spend.  I look at this as almost an investment in myself as opposed to blowing money on some nice but not really needed material object.

Having my own timing hardware allows me to rent it to the running club if they want additional timing points (splits) for some of their bigger events.  It also allows me to take on my own timing ventures if they make themselves available to me.   My timer buddy and the club are constantly turning down timing opportunities due to overload.  If I only picked up a handful of those events I will easily move my investment needle from red to black. Last night I was messing around with the box.  It’s actually several years newer then the box the running club bought and has additional features which will come in handy. The box even supports WiFi connections which is something I definitely would like to experiment with.

It feels good to take a bit of a risk and step outside the box, betting on my abilities to turn the expense into an asset.