I scheduled this week for vacation way back in January when the seniority list went around so here's a recap of how the week went.
On Saturday September 6th I attended the Jerry Richert Memorial at Cedar Lake. Despite about an hour rain delay they managed to get the entire show in. Due to the rain delay we weren't able to pop open our first barley pop until the stroke of midnight. The JR Memorial is an annual camping weekend and we enjoyed the camping experience and post race BBQ put on by the Richert family. If not for the rain delay we'd have been done a lot earlier and had more time to enjoy the post race festivities. Just once I'd like to see the racing conclude at 10:30pm but it wasn't to be this year. Maybe next time. The all night partying is getting to me a little more each season and it's getting harder to recover. I made it to something like 3:30 or 4am but didn't check the time because I couldn't see my cell phone clearly.
Sunday was a recoup day from the JR. I must have got home around 10am but again didn't take note of the exact time. The rest of the day was spent unpacking and cleaning camera equipment, editing photos and watching a little television. I fell asleep early in the recliner.
Monday? The only thing I remember about Monday was going on a long walk and watching the Vikes fiasco. I suppose that I spent some computer time catching up with photos and such. The day doesn't stand out but that's what vacation is for, to unwind. One does not have to be chasing a race or doing anything special to relax. I think I might have had a few beers that day because I had some left over from the JR.
On Tuesday I finally got around to cutting and installing some base board that my wife had stained months ago when we redid our bedroom. We have a powered miter saw so the job went off without a hitch and it looks pretty good. I ran up to Menards and got a couple of 36" laminate pre finished sliding closet doors and track so we put those up. The only problem I ran into was that the doors were about 1/2" too long so I had to cut that much off the bottom. The doors are hollow core but the bottom inner core was longer than 1/2" so it worked out perfect. I have cut a little off the bottom of doors before. You have to use masking tape so the saw blade doesn't splinter the door. What I did to get a perfect cut was clamp a straight piece of board across the bottom of the door as a guide for the skill saw. When we were done we lightly touched up the cut edges with steel wool and presto, a perfectly straight cut that you can't even tell we did.
Wednesday, another day spent wrapping up a few things around the house. The wife has been on call all week for one of her Doula clients so we couldn't do anything special like spending a night at Hinckley. Her client is going to deliver down at Regions in downtown St. Paul so she didn't want to go anywhere. Besides, when she has a birth pending there's no drinks allowed if we were to go anywhere and she's on edge wondering when the phone will ring. That pretty much kept Debbie occupied for the whole week so aside from eating together and saying hi and bye on the way to and from races I didn't see much of her. She spend a good deal of the time doing research down in her office. We've got some family issues with one of our daughters that have been keeping us on the edge of our seats as well. I hope that works out but it's not something I have any control over. Our door is always open but the older we get the more difficult it gets to give up our privacy.
Wednesday, night one of the Legendary 100 and I was looking forward to four nights of racing. The racing in the Street Stocks and Midwest Modifieds was excellent with two exciting Features. These guys aren't the top classes anywhere and they don't race for a huge chunk of money but close racing is always fun to watch. I got home late and stayed up until almost 3am uploading pics to my website. My four and a half year old rechargeable batteries that I use in my flash and power pack were giving me trouble and went dead after only 100 shots. Fortunately I was carrying eight fully charged spares so I continue shooting with four in the flash only. It doesn't recycle as fast but I could still take one shot per lap of the Features and victory lane photos.
Thursday, day two of the Legendary 100. I made the rounds going to Fleet Farm, Menards, Home Depot, Office Max and Northern Tool that morning looking for replacement batteries. I have used a 15 minute charger the past five seasons which works especially well when camping out. Unfortunately Rayovac discontinued the product line so I was forced to consider something else. After running around to the stores and calling the Battery Store I decided to wait until after the season was over. That night the rains came and we all ended up waiting around to see what would happen. The rain eventually stopped and it looked like we might get the show in but right around that time a steady mist that didn't even appear on the radar forced CLS to cancel. They rescheduled the Thursday preliminary to noon Saturday. The pits and infield were a muddy mess.
Friday went pretty well. I decided that I'd have to settle for overnight rechargeables so I went to Walmart and picked up another overnight charger that had two in the package and an additional eight pack to make the total of 10 that I would need. I put them on the chargers and would have to try to get by one more night with the old ones. CLS ran something like 17 Heat races, B Mains and Features. It was a wild night with one Mod tearing down a section of catch fence and snapping the posts right off. There were several other roll overs during the course of the evening so it was a wild night. It was a late night as well and it was going on 2am by the time I got home. The racing went well past midnight so I'm sure the track ended up having to pay a fine for going past curfew. I haven't had a cold in over a year but I started to notice that my throat was getting scratchy and that my nose was a little runny. D*mn, this might not be much fun if it gets any worse. In the meantime my 15 minute batteries only lasted for about 50 shots but I had plenty of backup to finish the night.
Saturday the weather was overcast, damp, humid, cool and clammy. I quickly took a shower, pumped down a couple of cups of mud and put my new batteries in the camera and auxiliary power pack. Unfortunately as it would turn out I didn't get an opportunity to test them at the track. I felt run down and my throat was sore when I woke up and I was getting an irritating tickle so I had to cough once in a while. The cold was obviously getting worse and the weather was not going to help it any. I stopped at a nearby convenience store to get some cough drops then drove through rain all the way from Forest Lake to Osceola. By some miracle it wasn't raining south of Osceola but the skies didn't look good. I got out to the track around 11:15am, signed in, made some quick rounds then ran out and got my camera, long lens and monopod to try some outside shots. They must have been in a rush because they went right into the Canadian and American anthems without hot lapping. They got three Super Stock Heats in the books before it started drizzling. I put the camera away and walked over to where Dan Plan, Vinster and Rick Blewitt were camping. Navy Davy was there with his wife Mary and they invited me to go to the Cedar Creek bar for a burger. I had a couple of beers and a tasty burger and it appeared to have stopped raining. We went back to the track and heard that they had been wheel packing but unfortunately it started raining around the time we arrived. After waiting around a couple more hours in the cool mist (great for my cold...NOT!!!) they canceled until Sunday afternoon. By this time it was obvious I wasn't going to be feeling very well the next morning so I decided I wasn't going to go back on Sunday.
So here I sit on Sunday morning with a sore throat, runny nose and that zonked feeling one gets with a cold. The weather didn't look any better this morning so I checked the CLS website and they canceled the Sunday afteroon race due to wet grounds. The pits were a mess and they're probably still pulling haulers out of the mud with the grader as I type this blog entry.
I was looking forward to seeing all the 100 Features and the Sprint Cars on Saturday night. But I only lost a few hours of my time and the irony of rainouts is that I had the opportunity to talk to some people and get to know them better. You too Jason!!! LOL So my loss really wasn't a loss because anytime I can get to know people it's good. The Saturday night crowd is always the best at the 100 so Cedar Lake did not have a good week. I'm sure some of the internet idiots are going to be blaming them for the weather but any reasonable person knows they did the very best they could. I felt bad for them because I talked to a couple of the owners as well as the track prep people a lot during the course of the weekend. Besides the weather they dealt with torn down catch fences, a very muddy pit area and a lot of unhappy people looking for someone or something to blame. Believe me, I would not want that job but as they say "it is what it is" so that's the hand we have been dealt. All they can do is pick up the pieces sand hope that their remaining events go better than the 100.
Meanwhile I'm going to lay low today and nurse my cold. Tomorrow I have to go back to work after nine days off and it's going to be busy. I'll have to stock up on cough drops and cold medicine. Meanwhile my wife is still waiting for the call from her client so we can't really do anything today. I think it's time to sign off and go watch the Vikings and Nascar race (side by side pictures is great for that).
Later.
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