good job jake. 

did it take that long?  what time did we start, 10:30?  I know that john announced Saturday afternoon that we would start at 8:30.  but didn't give any running order.  since there were no differences in running order announced, one would expect the order to be slow to fast.  so at 8:45, he tells us TE is first.  then 10 minutes later he calls us to the lanes like we're late already.  I'm not going to rush just to pacify someone else, when I might forget something and get hurt.  they had all day Saturday to figure out and announce Sunday's running order. 
so we are all finally at the staging lanes and start getting loaded at 9:30.  only an hour late.  then 2 boats go down the track and something's wrong with the sensors so we wait for 45 minutes.  not upset about the sensors, but last minute running order nonsense needs to stop.

anyway, good job with it and see ya at firebird.

I may have been ahead of you on the rope.  don't recall.  I do know they were waiting an inordinate amount of time between runs, after the course was clear and water was fine. 
It is not John D's fault, and he does a good job.  It is someone else's responsibility to set the running order, time to start, etc.  It is also someone else's responsibility to inform the tower when a class needs to be called to the lanes so it can be announced, keeping boats in the staging lanes but not creating a line 2 miles long so engines are completely cold by the time you get launched.  same thing happened at the world finals, same "type" of thing happened in augusta and the lucas parker race last year.  which is why a couple of us brought it up to the powers that be after the drivers meeting in vegas.   At the WF's, Rick Carlson had announced Saturday at 6pm that we would start at 8am sunday morning, and that the order would be TE, QE, PM.  ok, so I get out there at 6:30, get everything ready and staged, warm up at 7:30, all ready to go.  then they call QE to the lanes first.  QE WASN'T ready.  so we stand there and watch QE boats straggle down to the staging lanes for the next 40 minutes.  didn't get anything going until almost 8:45am.  THEN they call PM, and finally TE.   There is no reason they cannot figure this stuff out on Saturday.  they already know how many boats are in each class.  continuously flip flopping the running order at the last minute makes it impossible for the announcer's to keep us informed in a timely manner, and it slows the program.
   

  Reason number 116 to avoid the track.

Sick! Don't you have a current call out? Oh, must be the orange boat.

Motor is back in the boat.