NASCAR to crown 2009 Champion in Las Vegas; local IMCA and Whelan Weekly Racing series; 4 Officers ambushed and killed in Pierce County, Washington

The world of NASCAR is getting ready to formally crown the 2009 champion, Jimmy Johnson. Johnson’s week will begin on Monday with public appearances in the San Diego area, then on Tuesday in the Fontana area. The festivities will move on to Las Vegas, where there will be activities open to the public all over Las Vegas as well as at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. There will be a “parade lap” on the strip by the Chase drivers, and pit stop competitions for fans using real Sprint Cup cars. These will also be held all over the city. The awards banquet will be at the Winn Vegas and for the first time, a select few members of the public will be able to attend. Even though I was pulling for Mark Martin to win the Championship, I congratulate the #48 Team on their 4th in a row. I believe that after the season Mark Martin had in 2009, he will once again be near the top of the heap in 2010. In his 2nd year with his Hendrick team, he will be a force to be reckoned with.

I’m sure that anybody spending this week in Vegas will not find a shortage of things to do if they are NASCAR fans.




On the local racing scene, some awards banquets have already been held and others are coming up. IMCA has already posted the 2010 rules on their website. At the Beatrice Speedway Women for Racing Banquet, it was announced that there were no changes being made in the non-sanctioned factory stock class. The 2010 schedule was not announced yet. The Junction Motor Speedway awards banquet will be held on December 12th, and any changes being made at that venue will be announced at that time. Eagle Raceway located 12 miles east of Lincoln, Nebraska already has a tentative 2010 schedule, having added IMCA Sport Mods to the line-up. Eagle’s awards banquet is scheduled for January 9th, 2010.

After input from fans and participants, the Butler County Motorplex near Rising City, Nebraska will once again race on Friday nights.




I-80 Speedway will be holding their awards banquet on January 9th. The last I checked, there was nothing out about schedules, etc for I-80 for 2010.

Dawson County Speedway at Lexington, Nebraska has announced their classes and tentative schedule for 2010, with more discussion planned at their awards banquet on December 12th.

Moving 125 miles southeast of Beatrice, new owners took over Thunderhill Speedway at Mayetta, Kansas. The track was closed before the end of the 2009 season and put up for sale. The Conkwright family from Manhattan, KS, longtime racers themselves, purchased the track and since have been working on it every waking minute they have to spare. It looks like they will keep the same classes they ran in 2009, Modifieds, Sportmods, factory stocks and hobby stocks. They will be racing on Saturday nights, but a schedule has not been set at this time. With a background in Late Models, the new owners would like to get a late model special or two on the 2010 calendar.




At Beatrice Speedway, there are some drivers switching classes. I’ve heard that Kyle Vanover is selling his IMCA Modified and will be racing a factory stock in 2010. I haven’t talked to Kyle to verify this, but he has a ton of modified stuff for sale and yesterday I noticed a stock car body sitting next to the his garage.

Tyler Phelps will be driving a factory stock for Watts-Pope Racing out of Beatrice. That could prove interesting as Jeff Watts will still be racing. It will be interesting to see how Tyler does against his car owner. Another rumor I haven’t verified yet is that IMCA Modified driver Brent Schlake bought a factory stock. Beatrice factory stock driver Gary Laflin was in an IMCA Sport Mod at the Beatrice Octoberfest and has said he will be racing a Sport Mod in 2010. I haven’t heard where his factory stock went, or if it did go anywhere.

We got our old trailer sold last week. The SCS car is still for sale, either with a floater rear end with no gears or with a metric rear end. It looks like the block of the engine we had problems with will clean up with a de-glazing. I will have to find a new set of pistons and rings and of course the heads need to be fixed. In the meantime, I need to get the 360 out of the “new” car so I can freshen it and go over the rest of the car with a fine tooth comb so it’s ready to go come the 2010 racing season.




Before I close, I must once again address the issue of “Officer Down.” At 8:15 AM on Sunday November 29th, four officers of the Lakewood, Washington Police Department were shot and killed as they sat in a coffeehouse working on their laptops. It isn’t clear whether the officers even had time to draw their weapons to return fire. Pierce County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Ed Troyer said the attack was clearly target at the officers, not a robbery gone bad. The officers’ marked police cars were parked outside and all of the officers were in uniform. PLEASE, ALL OFFICERS READING THIS - BE IN CODE RED AT ALL TIMES!! Here’s hoping that the perpetrator of this vicious crime is caught soon. Condolences go out to the family, friends and co-workers of these fallen heroes.

http://www.policeone.com/Fugitive/articles/1970694-Manhunt-continues-motive-unknown-in-Wash-coffeehouse-ambush/

weight loss products

Las Vegas Metro Officer killed

Once more we are reminded of the dangers of police work. At this time, this incident is thought to have been a random robbery, but it’s possible that the suspects knew that their victim was a police officer. A little after midnight on November 19th, an off-duty Las Vegas police officer died after being shot in his garage by robbers. Reports from the online edition of the Las Vegas Review Journal say that 30-yr old Trevor Nettleton was a Marine Corps veteran who had been a North Las Vegas Police Officer for 3 years. Officer Nettleton was found dead of apparent gunshot wounds inside his home in the 1100 block of Emerald Stone Avenue, North Las Vegas police spokeswoman Chrissie Coon said.

Coon said the officer was gunned down in the garage of his home during an apparent robbery attempt in which there was an exchange of gunfire. Neighbors called in reports of gunfire at 12:18 a.m.

Clark County Undersheriff Rod Jett said the police officer had just arrived home after his shift with the Bolden Area Command, near Martin Luther King Boulevard and Vegas Drive. Jett said the shooting appears to be a random act. The officer was not in uniform and did not have his patrol car with him. The officer's wife, mother, a 1-year-old son and 2-month-old daughter were at home at the time of the shooting, Jett said. Heartfelt condolences go out to the family, friends and co-workers of Officer Nettleton.

One follow-up story tells us that Officer Nettleton was a 2nd generation police officer. His father, Richard, is a retired Nevada State Trooper. When Trevor told his father of his plans to become a police officer, Richard tried to talk him out of it. When Trevor graduated from the police academy, his father pinned the badge on Trevor.

In another story, we learn that three suspects are in custody. At least two are gang members and one lived in the neighborhood. Kind of leads me to believe that maybe this was not a random robbery after all.



Police officers do a lot of things in their off-duty time to relieve the stress of police work. I know of guys that do carpenter work in their off-duty time. When I was with the Grand Island Police Department, several officers rode motorcycles. I’d have liked to have joined them on some rides, but at the time I didn’t have a motorcycle. Shortly after I started working in Beatrice, I bought a 1980 Kawasaki LTD 750. I rode around the southeast Nebraska area quite a bit and made several trips to Sunset Speedway in Omaha to watch the races. It wasn’t long before I realized I wanted to get a bigger motorcycle. I’d be going down the road and I’d meet Ultra Classics and Gold Wings and always thought to myself “I’ll have one of those one day.”

All told, I put about 10,000 miles on that Kawasaki while I had it. In August of 1992, I saw an ad for a farm sale north of Friend, Nebraska. They had a 1981 Gold Wing Interstate advertised on the auction with less than 19,000 miles on it. I went home with a new 11 year old Gold Wing that day. Before the riding season was over, I’d put almost 3,000 miles on it.

Right after I bought the Kawasaki, I joined the Grand Island Blue Knights Chapter. At the time, that was the only Blue Knights Chapter in Nebraska and we had 12 members. Today, Nebraska I has about 50 members and there are 4 chapters in Nebraska. Worldwide, the Blue Knights have over 20,000 members. I attended my first Midwest Regional Conference, at Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, in June 1993. At the time, that was my longest road trip on a motorcycle. It was also the first time I ever had to put on rain gear. As we were going to get on the Kansas turnpike at Wichita, there was a trooper sitting on the side of the road. He told John that there was a tornado warning for Wellington, which is about 20 miles south of Wichita. There was heavy rain, wind and hail. We pulled off the highway and went to a café a couple of blocks east and waited out the storm while drinking coffee and sampling the homemade pies. In a couple of hours, we heard the weather had cleared and took off in a very light rain. A few miles inside of Oklahoma, we stopped and put on the rain gear as the sky was getting darker. We were only back on the road for a few miles when we hit with a real gully washer. It rained so hard that we were going less than 25 miles an hour, and I had a hard time seeing the taillights on the motorcycle ahead of me. Luckily, it only lasted a few miles, and when we ran out of it, the skies almost immediately cleared. We stopped just before the Cimarron Turnpike and took the rain gear off. From there on, we had a beautiful ride.

Since then, I’ve had several different rain suits; some did a fair job and others didn’t help much at all. This particular weekend ended up being sunny and hot the rest of the trip. I made a lot of shorter trips, traveling about a total of 8,000 miles that summer, but didn’t end up using the rain gear for the rest of the season.

The 1993 MWRC Fall Conference that year was at Springfield, Missouri, but I ended up not going. Instead, Nebraska I decided to ride up to the Ft Randall dam just inside South Dakota. I asked Dad if he wanted to go, and he agreed. It had been quite a few years since he’d been on a motorcycle, but we would ride about 100 miles between stops and everything worked out great. At the last minute, the other guys who were going to make the ride backed out, but we had a good time.

I’d never been to that area so I took a camera and over the 2 days took a bunch of pictures. We took Hwy 281 north from Grand Island to Ft Randall. The next day we went back east to Yankton, South Dakota to Hwy 81 and came back south into Nebraska after a stop at Gavins Point Dam. It was well after dark when we got home. All in all, it was a great weekend of riding and sightseeing.