It's December 4th and I'm looking ahead to the 2009 racing season. Wow, it could be a rough one but I'm not sure at this point where media hype leaves off and reality starts. I was raised by depression era grandparents and was lectured daily about how rough things were for them during the 30's. They pounded it into my head to be thrifty and cautious about using credit and that has stayed with me my whole adult life. The media is telling us that this is the worst economic slowdown in many decades and the plight of the auto makers seems to underscore what they're saying. I've been through some slowdowns when unemployment got into the double digits and my job was a victim of one of those recessions. The core economy soldiered on and people needed an entertainment outlet to forget about the hard times during all those past slowdowns so there was still racing. We'll see what happens and hope for the best for all the hard working people out there. That's all we really can do when things happen that are beyond our control.
As far as my plans for 2009 go I'd like to try to hang onto my truck for (as long as it keeps running) so I can go another racing season without making payments. It's necessary for me to own and maintain two vehicles on one income and as anyone that knows me will testify I make due with what I have. The wife drives the nicer of the two vehicles and I get the Ranger without cruise or air but I prefer to drive the truck despite those inconveniences. If I wasn't putting every spare cent I have into chasin' racin' I would stay home and wouldn't need two sets of wheels. Anyways, if the old Ranger can hang in there for another year I'll be happy because it will help me to keep chasing races. It's always been a year to year thing with me that's contingent on my family circumstances as to whether I can keep doing this or not. So far so good but this season is shaping up to be a big challenge for everybody.
The plan this year is to write and/or submit photos to a variety of publications. I plan on continuing with my column for MRC and doing an occasional article for other publications. I'll be sending pictures to MRC, Hawkeye, Flat Out and an occasional shot to All The Dirt on nights when there aren't any ATD or track photographers on hand. I plan on continuing with the gotomn website but don't have any major expansion or improvements planned. I have been doing my website since late 1996 (got the gotomn domain in 1999) and I don't think at this time that it's very relevant anymore. Not that it ever was very relevant (LOL) but early on it got a lot more attention than it does now. Back when the internet was new, most people still didn't have home computers so it was a more tight knit group of hard core fans and most of the racing sites were hobby sites like mine. As time went on more commercial sites came online and the original hobby sites like mine either became businesses or fizzled out. Actually, I think maybe with the tight economy some of the sponsored sites might have a tough go of it and it could affect the printed publications as well. Provided that things don't get too difficult for me personally and I can keep gotomn online maybe there will be a bigger niche for it in the future. On the other hand maybe I'll get tired of it or I won't be able to sustain it anymore. But the bottom line is that I don't plan on making any big changes to the website. We'll be doing the GRP Trivia Contest next month and I'll be doing a little bit of updating as time permits.
Screen savers...arghhh!!! Man, those things are a lot of work so I'm not sure if I'll be doing them or not this year. Maybe just a few computer backgrounds this time around. I'm really not sure with everyone switching to Vista if people still use screen savers or not. Mine have been tested in Vista and they work but they stopped updating the screen saver program I'm using and I was never very happy with the photo resolution. I'd use some great shots to create my savers then I'd import them into the savers and the program would degrade the quality of the photos so they didn't look anywhere near as good as what I intended. Besides, it's a lot of time and work involved to create them. We'll see, maybe the mood will hit me and I'll put something together before the contest.
Preliminary plans are to do a schedule pretty close to what I have done the past few years. As far at travel, last season I attended a USAC Midget race at La Crosse, a couple of races at Jackson, and the WoO at NCS and Princeton. I went to Chateau at Lansing for a USMTS race and I liked that track so I'll try to get down there for the USMTS again. The crowd at La Crosse wasn't very good so I don't expect them to invite USAC back again and that's a shame because it was an awesome race. I'll try to get down to Jackson a couple times and would like to go to Sun Prairie for the Fireman's National again. Aside from those shows I'll be going to Cedar Lake and some UMSS races at Kopellah. Pretty much the same thing I have been doing. Once every few years I'll take a trip to Knoxville but with the old truck I'm not able to travel much.
Well, that's going to about do it for this blog entry. I was posting every day there for a while but that's a difficult thing to keep up. I'll try to put something on here once a week or so to let you all know what's going on. I realize you're not hanging on the edge of your seat wondering what I'm up to but I consider this like a chat with friends.
Later!
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