My Perfect Suit

Taigraphx has always been helpful to me, but today I had some outside feedback that confirmed that Taigraphx is the best graphic design company in the endurance sports market. Today was the race briefing and uniform check for the Mooloolaba World Cup (we race Sunday, which is Saturday night in the US – but more on that in a sec). The uniform check is where all the competitors show the uniform they will be wearing and the race officials measure every logo and its placement to make sure that it complies with the most recent of the ITU’s quite stringent uniform guidelines (if you really want to know it’s all in a pdf file here). They use little rectangles of the exact height and width allowed for logos and then take notes on any logos that do not conform. If the suit is deemed unfit, they make the athlete wear a blank suit with the ITU logo on it.

I was at the end of the line, so when by the time they checked me the officials had written a lengthy paragraph on every athlete’s uniform. Apparently nobody in front of me had passed each of the 10 stencil tests. My suit, however, was held up by the head official, shown to each of the other officials and referred to as “perfect.” She actually said, “This is perfect, the ITU logo on here is better than when we do it, this is how they should look.” I received a check, with no comments. It was like getting a term paper back with nothing but an A+.

For that prideful moment, I would like to thank Tai Blechta, my former roommate in Honolulu and the owner of Taigraphx, which is apparently the only graphic design company that can read a set of guidelines.

The race will be Saturday at 6pm Honolulu time, 9pm Pacific Daylight Time, and midnight in New York. It’s unclear if the World Cup series will be broadcast live this year, but I would recommend anyone interested in watching (or at least listening to the commentary) the race go to www.triathlon.org at those times to check out the live feed button.

Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve written about a new swim suit. A few weeks ago I wrote about a suit that Courtenay made for me from Splish that I nicknamed “Planet Unicorn” (left). It’s pink with unicorns all over it. At the time I was really excited because I figured it was so obviously weird that it would be a conversation starter (or at least give people the opportunity to poke fun at me). Not so. I’m renaming “Planet Unicorn” to “Anti-Social Suit” or ASS. In the past 5 weeks I have received zero comments about my unicorn laden suit. None. I may have caught a strange glance, but it seems the suit is actually too cool for school. I mean, people must be intimidated by how awesome I look. There’s just no other explanation, I refuse to believe that nobody would notice that I’m wearing a tiny pink brief with a dozen unicorns plastered neatly on my ASS. I’m curious to see the reaction in Seattle, where people already know me enough to say hello, but on this trip it seems the awesomeness of my ASS has actually made me unapproachable. Maybe before my next two month excursion Courtenay will help me make another Splish suit that isn’t quite as bodacious as my ASS.