Friday, looking forward to Rice Lake IRA...

I'm looking forward to the IRA race at Rice Lake tomorrow night. Last year's winner was Scotty Neitzel and it was a great night of racing.



Also on the card are the Wissota Modifieds, Wissota Midwest Modifieds and the Pure Stocks. Last year the Modified winner was Craig Thatcher but I don't believe Craig is racing much on Saturdays this season so my guess would be that Buzzy Adams will be the man to beat in the Mods.


Craig Thatcher RLS 2007


Kevin "Buzzy" Adams RLS 2007

Rice Lake had one of the better fields of Pure Stocks that I've seen in my travels. They're nowhere near as fast as the other classes but they put on a good race that's fun to watch. The IRA along with these support classes should make it an entertaining night. Rice Lake has been struggling with car counts this season from what I have seen on the results pages. I am not hung up on the sanctioning politics and don't like to see anyone struggle regardless of their affiliation.


RLS Pures 2007

There are some rumors going around the internet boards that the Rice Lake Speedway was sold. I can't verify that and have no idea what goes on behind closed doors so I'll just let those details work themselves out and leave it at that. RLS is an infrequent destination for me anyways as I have only attended a few Late Model and Sprint specials up there. Actually, I did make one attempt to go to Rice Lake sometime around the summer of 1966. There was a Supermodified special and I rode up there with my uncle Lloyd following the race car trailer. My uncle used to help our cousin out with the car so I tagged along with them. Unfortunately, that was before the days of cell phones and when we got there a heavy shower had dumped on the track resulting in the race being canceled. I specifically remember there being little or no grandstands and the track being the tiniest little thing I had ever seen up til then, a small quarter mile.



I did not return to Rice Lake until I started writing for MRC in 1999 and wanted to get out and visit a bunch more new tracks. I'm not on a mission to rack up record numbers of tracks on my racing resume but I have been to quite a few. Let me see if I can name some of them:

Minnesota
State Fair (dirt & asphalt)
Twin City (later North Starr)
Stillwater
Hutchinson
Fairmont
Jackson
Deer Creek
Kasson
Owatonna
Princeton
Grove Creek
Golden Spike
Alexandria
Proctor
North Central
Elko
Raceway (17)

Wisconsin
Cedar Lake
Kopellah
Rice Lake
Superior
ABC
Fox Ridge
Red Cedar
Central Wisconsin (formerly Monster Hall)
Angell Park
La Crosse (10)

Iowa
Knoxville
Cresco
Farley (3)

Ohio
Eldora (1)

Kansas
Kansas Speedway
Lakeside (2)

Texas
CC Speedway Corpus Christi (1)

South Dakota
Aberdeen
Husets (2)

That's 36 total but I can't help feeling as if I might have missed one. This year I added La Crosse to the list and I'm thinking about going to Chateau for the USMTS the Friday of Labor Day weekend (that's next Friday already). It's 122 miles from Forest Lake and work is 25 miles so I'd have a 97 mile drive, mostly freeway after work. Without taking any vacation I'd be leaving the office around 3:30 and should be able to get down there by around 5:30 or 6pm. That would give me enough time to sign in and walk around the pits for a while before the races started. I'm going to have to give that some serious thought because it's not that far and I have never been there before. I have seen photos and video clips and it looks like it would be a fun place to take photos of the USMTS. So far this season I haven't seen the USMTS and it's coming up on the end of the year already. I could add a new track and catch the USMTS in one shot. Might be a plan, we'll have to count the pennies.

I don't know about you but I'm about broke after a season of racing. Not the kind of broke where I'm destitute and can't afford to go to another race but the kind of broke where I'm having to pay attention to the bottom line more than I was a couple months ago. I'm just going to bite the bullet and spend the money. There's plenty of time over the winter to live like a monk and not do anything so I can save money. The rest of the season is going to cost more than I want to think about but I want to do some traveling to close out the year and I'll be damned if I'm going to let anything stop me. Photo sales usually pick up after the season for a couple months leading up to the holidays so I'll be able to bank a few bucks after the season to hopefully replace what I spend.

I've got a personal savings account that I use to fund all my racing. I have a certain amount taken out each month and lately I've been drawing more than I've put in. That might not sound like such a terrible thing but my property taxes, homeowners insurance and car payments come out of that account too. I've got another tax installment due in October and have not made a car payment in several years so I'm getting by with tired old iron. One of these days it's going to catch up with me and I'm going to have to start taking a car payment out of there again. Also, I use that fund for emergencies like breakdowns, etc. I've got credit but I don't like to use the plastic unless it's absolutely necessary so I've been dipping into that a little more than I'm comfortable with lately as well.

I was raised by my depression era grandparents after my folks died and I was in my formative teen years so being frugal was pounded into my head. Another thing they did was to insist that I work during the summer instead of just hanging around getting in trouble. I got my first job at 14 on a truck farm, worked 8 hours five and a half days a week. The first year the farmer paid me $3.50 per day and the second year I got a raise to $5 a day. I was one of the bigger kids so he used to take me out to do road maintenance because he had the contract for our village. Talk about violating child labor laws LOL, today they'd have hung anyone they caught doing that to kids. He contracted to do driveways too so he'd bring me along on those jobs as well. Hot sun, 95 degrees and humid I'd be out there raking asphalt and pulling the roller (water filled pushed, pulled by hand). At 16 I went to work on the golf course cutting fairways, roughs and greens with various size mowers up to and including a tractor with a gang mower. A few weeks prior to my 18th birthday I reported to basic training, got married a couple years later and have been working ever since. I guess the "abuse" according to modern libs that I received working on a truck farm at 14 gave me what they'd consider a bad habit in their eyes. I developed a good work ethic. Those lessons I learned at 14 were passed onto my children and hopefully will help my grandkids in some small way in their lives as well.

So where were we before I got sidetracked and told half my life story. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the Rice Lake Midwest Modifieds.


Midwest Modified action, Rice Lake 2007

Rice Lake offers some good photo opportunities and I'm looking forward to shooting there again. There was enough daylight last year to catch hot laps and most of the IRA time trials head on using available light. Rice Lake has some good angles for the type of head on shots I like to do where you can see the driver's eyes. This is my favorite angle for Sprint Car photos and I love shooting without a flash whenever I can get away with it. Perhaps I'll do that or maybe I'll try the straight on angle from the infield I did down at Arlington and Jackson. I'll see how the light is and make a decision when I get there.


head on using available light from outside of track


head on angle from inside of the track at Arlington


Robby Wolfgang shot from head on angle at Jackson

Well, this is going to have to do it for tonight. I'm about typed out for now...

Wednesday August 20, podcasts, IRA at RLS and more...

Was anybody out there listening to the Dirt Nation podcast? They went offline a while ago stating that they took their broadcasts offline in order to switch to a podcast only format and have not come back up yet. There is a post on the site stating that they ran into a delay because of an update to their podcast software. Now I'm not claiming to be an authority but some of you might recall my experiment creating a local racing podcast. Actually, it wasn't so much a racing podcast as a personal racing audio blog. After having played music for 40 years and having learned 4 track recording the recording and sound balancing part came easy for me. I did the entire podcast and mixing using a free open source audio recording program called Audacity. I listen to a lot of podcasts on a daily basis on my MP3 player, some are among the most popular on sites such as Podcast Alley, and many of the most popular podcasts are created using Audacity. They get way more listeners than any dirt track podcast will ever get. So I don't know what they're talking about that there's a delay due to their program being updated. All one needs is the free open source program Audacity, a mic, some podsafe music from one of the royalty free music sites, a few spare hours and presto, you've got a podcast. There are even free open source RSS feed generators out there for the taking. Actually I got pretty good at mixing the sound (attributable to past music recording and sound board experience) and my podcast stacked up pretty well as far as sound quality.

Another podcast I have been listening to on occasion is the KFAN Motorsports show. I'm not particularly fond of that one (no offense to Chris Hawkey) but it's too commercialized and NASCARized for my taste. Obviously it has to be commercialized because it's a re-broadcast of an AM radio show so they have to advertise and follow the standard radio format. Part of following the standard corporate radio format is music clips that target a young audience and emphasizing the personalities of the hosts often times it seems even more than the racing. I understand the need to do that, they have to attract younger listeners and target the biggest audience possible which in racing means television NASCAR fans.

Many of you might remember that the former host was Russ Bohaty and that Chris came in as a co-host and ended up taking over the gig. Russ is a good guy, really sincere and he loves his racing, but I think maybe his love for grass roots racing over the bigger picture (NASCAR) might have had something to do with the change. I talked to Russ as recently as last Friday night and I know Chris a little but I have never discussed this with either of them. I could be all wrong so consider this my opinions, my observations, which may not be entirely accurate as far as what really happened. All I know is that I liked Russ' more locally oriented coverage better because it had less NASCAR and not as much trendy music. Just my opinion so take it however you will but when I listen to a podcast or radio show I don't want to hear banter between hosts or endless music and commercials. True podcasts, those done in somebody's home office with a PC and mic, are often much more to the point and that's what I prefer.

You're probably thinking "if you think you can do better why don't you go ahead and do it?" Like I said, I could put out a good broadcast from a sound standpoint and set it up with RSS so your podcatcher could locate new episodes. I know how to do that and have done it. I could make the phone calls, line up the interviews and cull news to report on the podcast if I wanted. I think I've got enough contacts and friends in the racing business that I could get that done. I've got a digital voice recorder that I could use to get interviews at the track and have tested it so I know how to upload them to the computer and incorporate them into a podcast. There are programs such as Skype that are used to make the long distance calls and record the conversation directly onto a computer so with a little practice I could do that.

The reason I didn't take my podcast any further is that I already have a full plate of things to do at the races. There is also a line that I drew in the sand a few years ago after we did a year of television interviews. I swore that I would never work that hard at the races again for free. Without advertising or some kind of compensation it just wouldn't be worth it to do all that work at the track. My photography is basically a hobby but I do sell a few photos from time to time so I get some hotdog and gas money out of it. If I did a podcast and chased interviews it would be too much like a job and even though the fans would enjoy it I'd just be obligating myself to do even more work. That's why I stopped posting news and results and went to news feed links on the gotomn.com website. There are text links for tracks and sanctions as well as Speednet and Hoseheads Newsfeeds right on the main page. In addition to that there is a links page. That's all you need to find what you're looking for. I don't have to post endless results on my main page where you have to scroll through 200 banner ads to find out who won. I've got most of the favorite local tracks (to my location just north of the Twin Cities) and links to the most popular message boards on my site. If you can't find what you're looking for from those sources there's probably not much more I can do to help you. Besides, my site does have some news but it's never going to be everything to everybody. No website is that good.

Another thing that bugs the hell out of me is dirt track racing sites that require registering a user name and password to view content. Now I understand why people need to register to use message boards and that sort of thing but no way anybody should have to register to simply enter the site. Heck, I can see photos, video, and all kinds of stuff on places like YouTube and major news and sports websites. Who do these dirt track site webmasters think they are that their content is so valuable users should have to establish a user and password. As a webmaster I know what the reason is, sponsor statistics, demographics, market share, all that commercial sh*t. Now I realize that there's a time and place for corporate mumbo jumbo but when I come home from a day of that stuff at the office I don't want to deal with it when I surf my favorite dirt track sites. I think with the worsening economy and tighter advertising dollars some of these self serving money hungry folks that thought they could get a piece of the dirt track racing pie are going to find out that it's not the cash cow they imagined. There are a few, and I won't say any names, that have come along during the last five or so years and were gonna' whip the dirt track world. One even suggested that I shut my site down and go to work for them "and do it the way it should be done." Some no longer have a presence on the internet, they came in like a flash in the pan and ran off with advertiser's money. Their sites are gone and mine (the one that wasn't doing it right) is still out there.

So if anybody comes on the message boards and says they're the next new dirt track site that's gonna' whip the world give it the test of time. If it's still there in a year then just maybe there's something to it. I think most racing fans can see that type of deal as clearly as if the webmaster had a sign on their forehead that says "I'm only in it for the money."

Yeah, I know what some of you are thinking. I used to run a few banner ads but those businesses approached me and offered to help me with my website expenses. I never solicited any advertising and when some of them started making demands I said to hell with it and discontinued the banners. I'm appreciative of all the help I got and I got to know a few business owners through the banners that I still see sometimes but it just wasn't something I wanted to continue. Other things I tried years ago was selling photo CD's and gotomn decals but I probably caused more hard feelings by doing those things than it was worth. I never made much doing it and all I was ever wanting to do was supplement my gas and hotdog expenses. Now that I have put more emphasis on the photography (and hopefully gotten pretty good at it) that's how I make a buck or two but even that isn't much. Mostly I do what everyone else does, hold my expenses down wherever possible and spend every spare penny I can muster to go racing.

And now that I'm not hung up on the financial end of it I'm having a lot more fun with the racing. I learned a lot of lessons over the past ten years. I alienated some people and made some bad decisions but now my website and my racing are coming out of pocket and I do as much or as little as I can. I'm happy and my only regrets are that I might have pissed someone off in the past and that this season is winding down too fast. One thing my experience and mistakes taught me is to be suspicious of any new internet jockey that comes out of college thinking they're going to set the racing world on fire. When I taught myself how to create a website in 1996 I was already 45 years old and building computers and learning graphics and simple web design was just for fun. I didn't have any formal training and now I'm going to be 57 in a few weeks so I don't know for sure how much longer I'll stick with it. I always told people I don't want to be hunched over a computer doing this at 60 year old but that's only three years away so now I say 70 because I'm not ready to quit yet. I'd be willing to bet that gotomn gets more hits per month than some of the supposed commercial sites because it's been around for over ten years. I just don't blow my horn as loud as some people so nobody knows I'm out here half the time. I want to give something back to racing and not take away from it so I'll continue to have fun with this as long as possible.

This Saturday I'm planning on attending the IRA race at Rice Lake. I enjoyed the show last year so it should be a fun night. Rice Lake is a high banked speed bowl and the racing there is very exciting. Hopefully Red Cedar canceling won't affect the car count too much as some teams might not travel for only one night of racing. IRA usually schedules two nights when they travel in order to make it worthwhile for the teams but RCS pulled the plug without telling anyone.

That's going to do it for tonight, gotta get some rest before another exciting day at the office...

NAVY DAVY'S SHOT OF THE WEEK!!!

".........another weekend of great weather and excellent racing. I was at Kopellah Friday night and Cedar Lake Saturday. Both shows were very good. Tons of side by side and three wide racing as the regular season nears it's end. With all the rainouts we had early this year I wonder where all the time went. Here we are on the door step of another specials season then it's all over for another year. Sometimes it seems as though this season never really got going. I'm about 15 shows behind my regular pace.
This weeks shot comes from the Modified feature at Kopellah Friday night. See you at the races............."

Wednesday August 13, just thinking out loud...

Jeff Shepard, Superior Speedway Gumout race. Get well soon.
Stan Meissner photo

First off I hope that my comments about having to take some time next season to get some projects done didn't cause too much of a stir. I got a decent bid on my roofing job so I'll have a little left over for the other repairs. Looking at the cars I'll have to see which one is worth keeping for a couple more years and I'll have my brother-in-law evaluate that. I know the people that own Sparkle Auto Sales so I'll probably buy used and work with them to find what I'm looking for. We've dealt with these challenges in the past and they're not insurmountable obstacles to attending races but some years I have had to adjust my schedule. I'm sure you have all had to do that from time to time. I'm a glass half full guy by nature and tend to panic thinking about how difficult something is going to be but once I dive into the task things work out fine. What's that called, fear of the unknown?

Actually I got a lot of experience remodeling when I owned a home in the Cities. Let's see, rewired, new duct work and furnace, plumbing, sheet rock, hanging windows, privacy fence, chain link fence, finishing the entire inside of an addition. You name it and I've probably done it at one time or another. I've got ladders and most of the tools I'll ever need. But I don't do that stuff for a living so I have to ask questions and research it so I know what I'm doing. I do about as close to a professional job of finishing drywall as the typical do-it-yourselfer is going to get. And if the project takes a professional a half day it might take me two or three days but my work has gotten the approval of the building inspector. The older I get the slower and more deliberate I get at these big projects.

I've got the week of the Cedar Lake 100 off this September so if I make some of the projects my priority instead of photo editing I can get a head start. The thing to try and do is try to maximize my time this fall, winter and next spring. I'm sure we'll be alright but we might have to juggle the schedule for a while to get it all done.

I'm not such a hard core racer that I have to go to a set number of races and I have been doing it for a long time. Since 1962 to be exact.

Did I mention that we camped at Cedar Lake last Saturday? I'm finding that I can't hang in there as long as I used to a few years ago. This summer I have only hung in there until around 3am before I have to turn in for the night. Maybe I'll score my best finish of the season at the Richert Memorial. If I have to drive until 4am that's a different deal, I get into the drive so much that I have trouble falling asleep when I do get home. Difference is that when I'm driving I'm drinking energy drinks and laying off the beer for weekend. There's a big difference between the effects of Rooster Booster and Miller Lite. I'm a firm believer in staying planted in one place when you're enjoying a few beers. I always make sure that I stay for the night at the party, camp or have a designated driver. Years ago we weren't as careful but back when I first started driving in the 60's they'd sometimes even let you go and follow you to make sure you made it home. Times have changed and in this case for the better because we probably wouldn't have change if there wasn't an incentive. Then when one gets older it all starts to make sense and we mellow out.

There I go getting off in left field again.

Tuesday August 12 still trying to catch up

I can't believe that it's already Tuesday the 12th and the last time I posted was almost an entire week ago on the 6th. Time sure has been flying by lately and I have been spending some time away from the computer.

We camped out at Cedar Lake last Saturday night and had a good time even though it was a just a small group. Nothing like the USA Nationals crowd, there were only a few campers and your typical week after the Nationals smaller crowd. I have noticed that even some of the owners and track workers take the week after the Nats off every year so it must be a grueling week for everyone.

The Late Model Feature got to be kind of an ordeal this time around. The track slicked over, there were still a couple of grooves of racing but cars were spinning out almost every lap. They finally shortened the race to 25 laps and awarded the win to John Kaanta. I commented to Ron Bernhagen how frustrating it must be to work just as hard on the track for every race but they're still at the mercy of humidity, wind an weather. They put in just as much work whether the track turns out perfect or not so perfect. Man, that has to be a lot like farming, you work your *ss off based on an educated guess but never know how things are going to turn out. I appreciate what those track prep guys do and share their frustration when it doesn't go the way they'd like to see it. Maybe that was the dirt gods way of evening things out after three perfect nights the week before. The racing was actually pretty good right up to the end of the night but it was nothing like the previous weekend but that was an impossible act to follow.

This week I'll be heading to Jackson for the Friday of the Nationals. I'm looking forward to the show. My hands are wiped out after keying all day at the office so should really give them a rest but I had a few things to say. I'll try to get on here a little more during the coming weeks.

I haven't been real enthused about the racing since the USA Nationals were over. It was so good that I'm spoiled and anything else is going to be a letdown for a while. That's the problem with a great weekend of racing, it takes a while before things measure up.

Man, I'm in a jam for next season. You see, I make a pretty good living but my wife only works a little part time and she spends a lot, a lot, I said a lot of money on frivolous things. Gifts for the grandkids, furniture, decorating, who needs all that frilly stuff. Heck, I'd line the walls with my racing pictures if it was up to me but she doesn't like them. Anyways, in case you haven't figured it out I'm saying this tongue in cheek. I need a woman who knows how to decorate and to remind me to do things for the family because I'm so one dimensional I'd never think of it on my own.

Next year things could change though. You see, we moved into this house in 1997 and really got into the website around that same time. In 1999 I started writing for the racing papers and gradually got more involved in the photography since then, especially the past five years. I was having so much fun that I neglected the house and it's getting run down and needs a lot of work. We're talking about getting into a town home if the market comes back to where we can sell this place but first I'm going to have to do the work. I'm not talking a couple hours at night, h*ll that's how long it takes just to cut the grass. No, I'm talking all summer long, a couple weeks of vacation, intense stuff like replacing windows, concrete work and a bunch of big projects. I'm talking all my vacation, nights and weekends all summer long. My wife has been kind enough to let me "check out" every summer for ten years and now she's asking for something back. We're getting closer to retirement and I'm not getting any younger so I'm dreading it but it looks like the summer of 2009 will be the year I do the work.

I'd still get to a few of the big events but probably could only do about ten nights of racing for the entire season. It has taken me ten years to build up all my media contacts and get to the point I'm at today. Racing doesn't wait for anybody, if I step aside for a season there will be somebody filling my spot and I might not get it back. That's my biggest regret but I've got to take care of family and home first, racing is just a hobby.

In addition to the house I'm due for another vehicle before long. Actually it wouldn't hurt to replace both vehicles but I can't afford more than one car payment at a time. I haven't had a car payment for several years so I've been putting the extra money into other things like racing. Well, now it's catching up with me and I'm going to have to make some sacrifices. I'm not trying to get anybody's sympathy, just thinking out loud about how I'm going to tackle these obstacles that will be coming up during the next year or so. It's the wise thing to do to take care of the necessary things and I know deep down inside that's what I'm going to have to do. I'll have to take a real close look at everything during the winter and figure out what I'm going to do.

One more thing that I'm getting more and more is that the wife is sick of me using all my vacation to go racing and not taking her anywhere. I operate on a shoestring like I already mentioned so I'm not talking about going to exotic places. She likes car trips within a couple hundred miles that are not tied in with a race. I think that's pretty reasonable of her and can totally understand how she feels. I've got a cousin who used to own Sprint Cars then in 1976 they sold out and never looked back. He used to chase up and down the highway every weekend. Fairmont, Knoxville, Sioux Falls all summer for years just like us race chasers do today. Then one day he walked away and never looked back. I don't think I could do that, I love the photography too much, but I would be comfortable cutting back some. Have you ever noticed that many of the racing photographers and writers are single? Unless they grew up in a racing family not many women will tolerate a guy being gone all summer. At ten years I'd say my wife has been pretty tolerant but now that travel is so expensive I can see her point. Just like a lot of you I'm spread pretty thin but I can't see myself quitting entirely. Racing media work is like a treadmill, you can't get off and take a hiatus because your gig won't be there when you get back. The show must go on so if you get off you're out of luck. That's where I'm having a problem, I need to take the time off but I want the racing gig to still be there when I come back. The thought of not doing this anymore is depressing.

Wednesday August 6, blog statistics...

The USA Nationals and a few other things have kept me away from the blog for a few too many days. The blog hits picked up quite a bit when I was posting every day. The best month was July when it got 1397 visits. The gotomn.com website gets a lot more than the blog at around 15,000 to 20,000 unique visitors per month during the season. Unique means the number of new persons that visited the website at least once during the month, the website monthly hits are higher.

I wore myself out at the USA Nationals and had to spent a few days recouping. Actually it's been a working recouping and it has been sort of a challenging week at work. Not that I had more than the usual amount waiting for me but I've had some tough files dumped on my desk that I had to get a second opinion on. We know what the price needs to be but we're trying to figure out how to make adjustments on two separate files. They're currently sitting on a supervisor's desk and even he is having a tough time getting an answer on how to work through some of the system edits. That's right, finding the price is relatively easy compared to some of the hoops we have to jump through when something out of the ordinary comes up. It's a complex system with thousands of interconnected users. Sometimes you don't see that kind of stuff for six months but I had it waiting for me this week. Tomorrow I have to stand in for someone who will be on vacation so that's an additional task this week. Sometimes that happens but you just buckle down and work through it. Last week it was my turn to relax, this week it's somebody else's.

Tonight I was going to cut the grass but it rained here north of the cities so it was too wet. It's not that bad anyways, this time of the year the lawn growth slows down so a person can get away with going over a week between cuts. I'll find a couple hours sometime during the next few days. Probably on Friday night the way it's looking. I wonder if I could drive to work and sneak out early to get a head start on it. I'll have to think about that because an hour head start never hurts on a Friday. I've got grandkids coming over Thursday that I need to visit with so everything is going to converge all at once on Friday and Saturday.

I'm going to back off for a few weeks and only take in one night of racing per week through the Richert Memorial. The following week I'm planning on going to the 100 for most if not all of the four nights. I've got some work pending around the house that I really need to devote some of my vacation time to. I get pretty busy on the computer tending to photos when I shoot three or four nights in a row and am getting to the track mid afternoon. Probably with the 100 I could leave a little later than usual and maybe spend a night or two out there. I'm sure the campground isn't full yet so I've got time to plan this out. Thing is that week off is going to be my last serious opportunity of the summer because I don't get much done during the week. Usually after the last printed issue of MRC I can back off a little because the online version is monthly and everybody has seen photos from every possible angle of every car that races within 500 miles so I'm not in a big rush to get them posted the very next day. By that time of the season I can swap CF cards and not take as many shots. Who knows, maybe I'll even watch a Feature from the stands. I'm thinking about doing that one of these days because I haven't watched a Feature from the stands all season. I do watch some Heats and some of the semi Features from the pit side stands at Cedar Lake sometimes if I have to take a break.

Anyways, I'm rambling too much tonight. I'll try to get in the habit post more often again now that we've got the big weekend out of the way.

NAVY DAVY'S SHOTS OF THE WEEK!!!

".........it all started Wednesday night at The Superior Speedway for a WDRL show. It was a hot and humid night. I was waiting for that big air conditioner just to the north to kick in but it never did. The track was great and the racing was pretty darn good too. Jimmy Mars was the class of the field that night making his win in the 50 lap feature look easy.
Thursday found us back at Cedar Lake Speedway for night one of the 21st Annual USA Nationals. With another beautiful night WDRL was on hand for another great 50 lap feature. On hand also were the Nascar Superstocks. Mike Weber won the feature. The 50 lap WDRL feature went to John Kaanta who held off Jimmy Mars after a lap 41 caution.
Friday night we were once again at Cedar Lake for night two of the USA Nationals. With 50 cars taking qualifying, a full show of Nascar Late Models, six USA National heat races and a pole dash the night was topped off with another 50 lap WDRL feature which was a make up from the Masters back in June the fans got more than their monies worth. It just doesn't get any better for us Late Model nuts. The track held up well and the racing was as good as it gets. In the Nascar feature Pat Doar and Rick Hanestead ran side by side for 20 plus laps before they got into lapped traffic at which time Hanestead pulled away for the win. A very excited Brady Smith entered victory lane after the 50 lap WDRL feature. It was a great night.
Saturday was third and final night of racing at Cedar Lake. What another great night it was. On tap this night was another full show of Nascar Late Models, two 20 lap B-Mains for the last chance to get into the 100 lap USA Nationals and of course the 100 lap feature. After Friday night I thought maybe Saturday would be a yawner. Boy was I wrong. The final night of the 21st Annual USA Nationals was as good as it gets. In the Nascar 30 lap feature Kerry Hanson in the 4 car took off in the lead and stayed there for ten or so laps. Brent Larson and Lance Mathees were making their way through the field. Larson grabbed the top spot as Hanson fades back. Right there with Larson was Mathees and these two fought back and forth for the remainder with Larson getting the win less than a car length in front of Mathees. After some track prep the 100 lap feature was next. With the lights turned off and spot lights and smoke the feature cars entered the track one by one. This was another great race. There were several leaders at different points throughout. Early in the race there was one scary moment when Eric Pember lost a tire in turn four and rolled his car. Fortunately he wasn't hurt. Can't say the same for his car though. After 99 laps it came down to Scott Bloomquist, Shannon Babb, and Brian Birkhofer. Birkhofer had a flat tire earlier in the race and had to start at the rear and worked his way back to third. It was nearly a three wide finish to another great night. Bloomquist was the winner.
After attending all 21 USA National events this I think was the best yet. As I said all weekend "it just don't get no better than this".
Each of this weeks shots comes from all four great nights. See you at the races.................."

Saturday August 2, final night of the USA Nationals

Here are a few Friday night photos:


Justin Fegers comin' atcha!


The "Intimigator"


The WDRL make up Feature salutes the crowd


Brady Smith (2) battles Ashley Anderson (81) for the lead


Brady Smith celebrates in Victory Lane

It's been a busy weekend and tonight is the big Feature event. I'm enjoying the show and it should be a good one tonight. Last night Bloomquist uncharacteristically hit the wall during his first timed lap forcing him to start from the back of his Heat. Bloomer worked his way up to second putting him in the show. It should be interesting to see him work his way up from the back.

I'll be posting more when I get a chance. Just wanted to let everyone know I haven't forgot about the blog.