This time of the year always makes me wonder what happened to the summer. After the winter we had, and the late spring, we jumped right into hot weather. I heard a lot of grumbling about how hot it was, but I did not have to shovel the heat!!
We did get some riding in on the Gold Wing. Not as much as what I’d have liked to have gotten, but still a fair amount. We were able to take a short weekend trip to St Joseph, Missouri in June. We did that between thunderstorms and a flood on the Missouri at St Joseph. We made several short trips over the summer, and the big trip to Billings. A week before I left, Mikayla asked if she could go with me. She’s never been out of town on the motorcycle, and I tried to talk her out of going. I think a 13-year old doesn’t realize exactly how far 1,000 miles is, or how hot 100 degrees is when there is no air conditioning. She knows now. By the time we got home, we’d covered 2,994 miles and saw a lot of great scenery. I got to spend 12 days with Mikayla, and will always remember the time we spent together. I hope she does, too.
I missed the Blue Knights Fall Conference in Grand Forks. I took a trip to Chicago with Dad & Mom the week before for Dad’s World War II re-union. Except for some time spent in the suburbs of Chicago in the early ’80’s for automotive schools through K-Mart, I’d never been there. In addition to Dad getting together with some of his fellow surviving WWII heroes, we rode the subway into downtown Chicago and took one of the trolley tours of the city. Somehow, I neglected to take the camera, but I was able to get a lot of pictures with my cell phone. I have the pictures all posted on my Facebook page.
For the most part the weather for this trip was decent. It was breezy and cool, but tolerable. If you ever happen to be in Chicago, taking one of the trolley tours is a great thing to do. A 2 or 2 day pass can be purchased so you can spread your sightseeing out over s couple of days. Our greatest difficulty was in finding our way around downtown and finding the right subway to take back to where we started.
The racing season in this part of the country is all but over. With my work schedule, I raced at Beatrice Speedway every other week. On the Fridays that I worked, either Jeremy or Jason drove the car. At the end of the season, I finished 13th in points and Jeremy finished 14th in points, just 4 points behind me. We knew we wouldn’t be racing for a top 10 in track points, but it was fun to race against each other for track points. If it hadn’t been for an opening night mishap, Jeremy would have finished ahead of me in points.
I also made the trip to U.S. 30 Speedway at Columbus several times. The weather didn’t cooperate as it started to rain on 3 different nights before I finally got to do more than hot laps and a heat race. I really like that track and would race there more often if I could find somebody willing to pay for the fuel in the hauler.
The last trip I made to U.S. 30 Speedway was for the Abe Lincoln Memorial on a cool damp Sunday in September. With 28 street stocks on hand, I missed out on making the A Feature. I started 3rd row in my heat and finished 6th, missing out by one spot. That put me on the pole for the B Feature. I fought an inconsistent, ill handling car for the entire race and didn’t make the A Feature. When I started to load the car, I found that a brake must have locked up on me as the car wouldn’t budge. Once the car was back in the shop and on jack stands, I found the right rear caliper had almost no pad left. Apparently the caliper was hanging up once the brakes were warmed up.
Fantastic weather greeted Beatrice Speedway’s Octoberfest. What a difference from last year when we had snow! The factory stocks raced on Saturday and we had 17 cars in our class. Not all of the Beatrice regulars showed, and we had a few cars show up that hadn’t previously been at Beatrice Speedway. I hope that the track can tweek some rules for 2011 so the pro-am cars can race with us. I think it will put more cars on the track and more butts in the grandstands if that happens.
I felt like the car was pretty good and had a 10th place finish going with 2 laps left. However, I had the right rear go flat before taking the white flag and dropped out, finishing 13th.
The final race of our season is this weekend at Junction Motor Speedway at McCool Junction. Jeremy will be taking the wheel as it’s my weekend to work. He’s been looking forward to this weekend since he raced there last fall. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and Jeremy won’t have any problems with the car.
We’re already looking forward to the 2011 riding season. Blue Knights International Convention is at Chesapeake, Virginia and we’re making plans to attend. We want to stop in Nashville and hopefully attend the Grand Ole Opry. I have a rough schedule worked up, going through St Louis, then on to Nashville. From Nashville, it’s just less than 500 miles to Roanoke, Virginia, then the 4th day we’ll be at Chesapeake for the Convention.
We’ve signed up some new Blue Knights in our area and hope the new members will be enthusiastic about attending regional and national events. I sponsored a new Special Honorary member who is a local pastor, and he has already recruited 3 new members and wants to make the trip to Chesapeake.
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