GOOD MORNING!!!
I'm one of those guys that thinks the holidays are mostly for the women and kids. I enjoy the time off work and getting to see people but the celebration isn't my cup of tea. We won't go into the background of the dates or any of that stuff but look it up sometime and you'll learn some interesting facts about where the customs came from. But in spite of my indifference Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.
There's a lot of off season shuffling going on right now. As I mentioned in my last entry, Proctor is still tossing around the idea of switching to Friday night. Idiots!!! I seldom get up to either track but have seen some great Sprint Car races at Superior. On the other hand, I've been to Proctor twice, the first time the track rubbered up and locked down, the second time the Feature was fogged out. I didn't think that Proctor was a very nice facility, small grandstands, rocks in the parking area that could easily cause someone to sprain an ankle while walking back to their car in the dark (and fog), so so racing surface, not the worst I've seen but certainly on the bottom half of my list. If it would have been a little nicer I'd have probably gone there more often. I'm not a big Sunday night racer but it's close enough, all freeway and they run the Late Model Feature early enough. I could make it home at a decent hour and get up for work the next morning. That wouldn't be possible for me with Jim Falls or Redwood Falls. But Proctor never gave me a good enough reason on their schedule to justify it. Whatever happens up there I hope everything works out for the best.
Probably the thing that's bothering me the most this season is the number of racers selling their equipment and leaving the sport. Due to the economy a lot of high profile racers are losing sponsors from Nascar all the way to the short tracks. I think that the best short tracks (best shows, best facilities, near population centers) are going to be maybe in a better position than some of the rural tracks.
My personal circumstances have changed a bit as well. The wife lost a portion of her part time income so that's going to cut into my racing budget. Every year I sell ten days of unused sick time and use the money to supplement my racing budget. This year instead of just supplementing the season that money will be the majority of my racing budget. I have expanded my racing media contributions and added another publication to my list and another media pass to my wallet. That makes three primary publications I'll be working for, Midwest Racing Connection (photos and column), Hawkeye Racing News (photos) and Flat Out Illustrated (photos and an occasional column). In addition to that I am an occasional photo contributor to Wissota's All The Dirt as well as Dirt Late Model. Last season I did a special project for the Cedar Lake Speedway NASCAR night program and contributed photos to several tracks during the course of the season. The media work helps out at the gate because without that I wouldn't be able to attend as often.
Finally, last and probably the least is the gotomn.com website. This will be my thirteenth season running a website. It started out in 1997 as a personal homepage and I switched to the gotomn.com URL in April of 1999 so it's the thirteenth for the website and the eleventh racing season as gotomn. The website hasn't grown or taken on new goals but I have tried a few things that I didn't have the time or the commitment to pursue. And the bottom line with my website is that it's a hobby, I'm not competing for sponsors, market share or page hits. It's just my view of the racing world, a place for a history section, some links, a place to display my photo gallery and at times sort of an artistic outlet.
So I'll be attending anywhere from 20 to 30 shows between Cedar Lake, Kopellah and a few other tracks depending on the money situation. If I can pickup some pocket change from photo sales I'll go to Deer Creek for the World of Outlaws and finish out that week in August at the Jackson Nationals. Aside from those shows, I'll shoot for the Kouba at Brainerd, Red Cedar and Rice Lake IRA as well as Friday and Saturday of the Elko dirt week. I would like to get back down to Sun Prairie for the Fireman's Nationals this year but that's a long ways off so we'll see how it goes.
So far it looks like I'll be able to put together a decent season of racing. Maybe not the highest numbers but I'll go to enough of them. I've got some home projects to tend to so some weeks are going to depend on how well the projects are going. Last year not only did a month and a half of racing fall victim to bad weather at the beginning of the season but the projects lost a month and a half as well. Next year I have to get some of those things done and at times it might come down to finishing my work or going racing. I'll time my projects so that I won't miss any of the big shows but a few of the weekly races might have to be put on the back burner.
I'm going to take some steps to simplify the photo posting on my website. They won't look any different but I'm going to cut out some of the post processing. Post processing only needs to be done when they're going to be used as prints but isn't necessary for the gallery. I'm still thinking about getting that lens I mentioned a while back. Even though it's a manual focus I think that I can work with it and get some good results. The GRP Trivia contest is scheduled to start next month so watch the message boards for more on that.
I'll try to post weekly and more often if anything new comes up.
Later,
Stan
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