Tired and sore, taking it easy...posting photos

Man, am I ever tired and sore tonight from bailing out the sump hole the other day. I guess it must have caught up with me after using muscles I haven't used for a while. My back is bad under normal circumstances so being on my knees bent over in an awkward position for four hours with few breaks took it's toll. When I'd try to stand up it would take five minutes to fully straighten my back. After two nights on my feet at the races I'd have probably been sore anyways so bailing the water just added to it. It's not much fun getting old but I guess it's not so bad in some ways. I think a person gets a different perspective on a lot of things and ain't in such a big hurry to do things as they used to be.

One of those things is being in a rush to be the first to upload my event photos and announce it on the boards. I have been doing this website thing since before the internet was very popular and caught on with the masses. I've been at it since late 1996 but it really didn't start to catch on as a racing site until 1997 and 1998. In fact, by 1999 it started getting so many hits that it outgrew my personal homepage bandwidth allotment and I had to get a domain and hosting account. The other day I found one of my first ever action photos, a shot from around 1969 taken at CLS. There were no fences, no crash walls, no grandstand and tiered parking all the way around the track. I just walked from the pits up to the track in the area off turn two where the cars enter with an old point and shoot. This is the result:



I was hanging around the Wilke pit area on this night and felt like taking some photos. Now I wish that I had taken more but at that time I hadn't started to take my photography seriously.

My dad took and developed his own photos as a hobby so I guess you could say I've been around it all my life. Here's a photo of me checking out a camera, I'd guess it was taken sometime in 1952:



My dad wasn't really what you'd call a racing photographer but he would take a few photos from the stands and some pit shots after the races. Here's one my dad took at the old Rex Speedway. Evidently this car went through the fence so he ran down from the stands and snapped a photo.



Here's one of his photos of Jerry Lepinski on the front stretch at Twin City Speedway in 1964 waiting to be pushed off:



Unfortunately, my dad passed away in 1965, the year after this photo was taken. I never had the opportunity to discuss photography and racing or share a beer with him as two adults. That's a bummer, it leaves an empty spot in your life. I'm a little envious of my racing buddies who get to go out to the tracks with their fathers. On the other hand I have gone to a lot of races with my son so that's cool. Even one of my granddaughters, Les' girl Lucy, got to go to her first race this past weekend. I'm going to drag them all out there for the annual Firecracker so hopefully the weather will cooperate and it will be a memorable occasion. That night I'll probably be taking more pictures in the stands than down on the track.

Anyways, where was I going with this? Oh yeah, I remember now. I was going to say that I'm not in a big rush to post my photos and am not going to go on the various boards and blow my own horn. You know, "I posted 3,578 photos from last night on my website." People know where my site is and they know I take pictures so when they see me at the track they'll check out my site. If I sell a couple by word of mouth that's cool but not necessary. If I do then I'll have a little extra gas, beer and hot dog money. But if I don't sell anything, well, it's no big deal.

So anyways, I'm not going to go blowing my horn on the message boards that I posted pictures whenever I go to a race. Like I mentioned, I started doing this site back in 1996 so I've been at it for a dozen years now. I was 44 when I started gotomn in 1996 so I was already what a lot of today's racing fans would consider old. Today I'm 56, going on 57 this fall and have pretty much taken the website, media work and photography further than a hobby should be allowed to go. I've pretty much exceeded my wildest expectations with this sport without really even trying. So now I'm winding down a little and trying to taking it easy. Oh, I'm not about to quit anytime soon but what I meant is that I'm just not pushing to increase my work load or take on new opportunities anymore. Maybe when I retire and have more time I'll work a little harder at this but not now while I'm still working. I like things just the way they are right now. Keep a low profile, have fun and enjoy myself.

I wanted to take it easy tonight but this post turned into a little more work than I anticipated. Looks like I had a little more ambition than I thought I did. So now I'm going to take it easy.