Horse Farm Hundred 1999

 The Horse Farm Hundred is an annual 100 mile bicycle event sponsored by the Gainesville Cycling Club. The route covers the pastoral horse farm country of southern Alachua County and northern Marion County. The Gainesville Amateur Radio Society was asked to assist in public service communications for the event. Although the GCC was using seven cellular phones loaned to them by Alltel, because of the remote locations of the route, ham radio operators were able to provide increased and more reliable communications coverage.

We were only able to round up three hams to help out this year. These included Steve KC6WCH, Gina, and Chuck W4JKE. Steve and Gina were operating as rovers, patrolling the route for downed cyclists. Chuck was the amateur radio/cellular gateway station. It was a quiet afternoon. No significant disasters were reported. The rest stops were well stocked with snacks and beverages, although the Start/Finish at Morningside Nature Center had a call out for paper plates. The lunch stop had PBJ sandwiches and the Finish had hot dogs waiting for the cyclists.

Hope you see more of you helping out for the Millenial Horse Farm Hundred (HFH 2K?) in October 2000!

Cyclists gathering at the registration desk at Morningside Nature Center. Cyclists lining up to begin the event. Cyclists continue to line up along the road out of the parking area. The end of the queue of cyclists. The front of the line is off in the distance to the left of center. The cyclists are on their way, complete with police escort and Chandler Otis showing the cyclists which way to go. Cyclists continuing to pour out of the Starting line with Chandler showing them the way. The first rest stop in a field in Irvine. It is also the starting point of the 25 and 50 mile routes. I found this feller standing by the fence watching the cyclists ride by, just past the lunch stop. (The white area is the sun glaring off the camera lens.) Horses, out standing in their field. A lovely day for a bike ride! Too bad there were so few horses to be seen in horse farm county. Well, there is a horse field and a barn but darned if I can find any horses.
All images ©1999 Steven King.  Pictures were taken with a PHD camera with three-year old film.  (Yes, you heard me!)  The film, Kodak Max 400 (I think) was processed using Kodak processing with the Kodak PhotoNet option.  Except for the thumbnail image, all images are unretouched as downloaded from Kodak's web site.  The reason the pictures are not very good quality, besides being scanned down to screen resolution, is because the film has been sitting in the camera for three years.  I happened to find the camera sitting on a shelf and had no idea how old the film was.  I finished off the roll at the Horse Farm Hundred.  Based on the other images on the roll, the age of the film was determined.

Lesson learned: Next time, buy a fresh roll of film and use an SLR camera (e.g., my Nikon EM).

PHD = Push Here, Dummy

Return to GARS Home Page