More 2010 Line of Duty Deaths; Blue Knights at Chesapeake, VA; Progress on the race car; Beatrice Speedway releases 2011 schedule

Since I talked about the LOD death of Weld County, Colorado Deputy, 8 more law enforcement officers have died in the line of duty in the United States. As of today, 156 officers have lost their lives in 2010. Of these, 55 have been killed by gunfire. The Officer Down Memorial Page reports that the next highest cause of death in 2010 has been from automobile accidents. That does not include motorcycle accidents, of which 5 officers died.

The latest reported death was that of Officer Andrew Rameas of the Harker Heights, Texas Police Department. Officer Rameas was killed while providing a motorcycle escort for a funeral procession through Killeen, Texas on December 20th.

Of the 5 reported LOD deaths on motorcycles, four were in Texas and one was in Louisiana. The one in Louisiana also involved an escort; however, it was a parade escort.

Texas has had 16 officer LOD deaths, while both California and the Federal Government has had 11.

The National Transportation Safety Board released figures that showed that in 2009, 4,400 people were killed in motorcycle accidents. Miles traveled by motorcycle are on the increase, and will probably keep increasing as the price of gasoline keeps going up. I know that if it weren’t for having a motorcycle, there are a lot of places we’ve been that we couldn’t have afforded to have gone to. We’ve ridden close to 150,000 miles since I got my first Gold Wing. We got our ‘06 in July 2006 and currently have 32,000 miles on it. Many of those miles have been going to and from Blue Knights events. We plan to attend the Blue Knights International Convention at Chesapeake, Virginia in July of 2011. We will be doing a lot of sightseeing on the way there, once we get there and on the way home.

Given my occupation and my off duty pursuits of motorcycle touring and stock car racing, I am statistically more likely to be killed at work or play than the average person on the street. A few years ago, Jan & I both had our wills drawn up. Three years ago, a Gage County Deputy, who was also a volunteer firefighter, lost his life in a house fire. Shortly after that, officers in my department received data sheets to fill out with all our last wishes to include pallbearers, songs and music to be played, etc. This is something I haven’t done yet, and it’s something I really need to finish. I plan to finish our my career, retire, race every week and ride a million miles, but JUST IN CASE, I really need to finish filling out that paper!

Speaking of Chesapeake, the time will be here before we know it. I need to start planning routes and how long it will take to get there and home. Jan reminded me she will have to get her calendar marked so she will know how much time off she will have to take.

I’m spending some time in the garage working on the race car on my days off. I have most of the interior fitted and spot welded into place. I’d have liked to have spent more time working on it tonight, but I’m running out of firewood for the woodburner and it was getting pretty cold so I knocked off.

Beatrice Speedway has put up their 2011 schedule. They still haven’t put out anything about factory stocks & pro-ams being able to run together in 2011.

The season will kick off with Spring Nationals on Friday March 18th & Saturday March 19th. Sport compacts will be on the program on Friday and factory stocks will race on Friday. April 9th will be Test & Tune and the season will start on April 22nd. This will be the latest starting date in recent memory, but Beatrice always seems to have a lot of rain-outs the first part of the season, so maybe this will eliminate the rain-outs.

With the price of gasoline already being $3 a gallon, I probably won’t be going to Columbus this summer. Of course, maybe a sponsor will step up and offer to keep my hauler full of fuel for me…..  That's about as likely to happen as me winning an A Feature in 2011,