01/12/01

Well, another year has ended. What an exciting time this is. It is the end of one year and the beginning of another, the end of one millennium and the beginning of another, the end of the holiday eating season and the beginning of the diet season.

There isn’t a lot of racing going on at this time of year, unless you count my kids racing for cover when I holler for someone to shovel the driveway. Some folks did get a fix on Christmas day when ESPN played re-runs of old Winston Cup races all day, but others don’t have cable and had to settle for plugging the old ‘Days of Thunder’ tape into the VCR. I still can’t bring myself to re-watch races. Every time I do it, the same driver wins as did the first time I saw it, so I guess I’ll continue to use my free time in the cold winter months the only way I know how. I read a lot, I write a lot, and I think a lot. I read a lot about racing, I write a lot about racing, and I think a lot about how to convince my wife that my reading and writing would be a lot more productive on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean. She would allow me to go if I took her with me, and I’d love to have her go, but then who would go to work each day to earn the money that supports my stupid hobbies and habits? Oh, well, catch 22.

I guess the high point of the off season, and the only point of this column, is the Northeast Motorsports Expo. in Augusta, Maine. I know there are other shows around the northeast, but this is the only show I go to due to its proximity to my home and the restrictions of my allowance.

On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 being the year it snowed so much we never made it to the show and 10 being the year my son, who was about 6 years old at the time, and I sat and talked to Harry Gant for about an hour with no one else around) this year’s show was a 7, not bad when you think about it.

The first thing we were greeted with upon entering was a large display of custom Harleys with wild paint jobs. Now I don’t know about you, but very little gets my blood pumping any more than the sights and sounds of a racetrack. The one thing that does is the power of a big V-Twin underneath me. That display was a great way to start the show, the only thing missing was the Hooters girls.

The next thing encountered was the Viagra booth. I’m not sure if this guy thought not many people would show up or if he assumed he could go home as soon as his giveaways were gone or what. His main purpose was to give his stuff away as fast as possible, and everyone I saw was helping him do it. We saw him pass out about a zillion pens, binoculars, stopwatches, and T-shirts in a very short time. He had nothing left to give away for the rest of the weekend, which, I’m sure was his plan. I’m still trying to put together the connection between pens, binoculars, stopwatches, and T-shirts, I’m quite sure there is a Viagra joke in there somewhere and when I find it I’m going to laugh like hell.

Once inside there was plenty to see. Kelly Moore had his new NAPA colors on display

and was signing autographs, as were Dale Shaw, Tracy Gordon, Dave Dion and many

others. The best booth in the show was the NHIS display. NHIS media-man Fred

Neergaard was there this year and brought his knowledge, class and wonderful sense of humor

with him. The ‘Team Knievel’ car was there also, along with driver Jamie Aube. I think we all

expected to see Snake River Canyon and Las Vegas fountain videos playing in the background, but they stuck to racing videos. I think Jamie spent the whole three days signing tons of autographs and trying to explain that he would not be jumping the car or a bike over anything, including the NHIS media center. Everyone would have liked to have seen Kaptain Robbie Knievel there with the Verres team but I expect he was off changing bandages somewhere. It will be exciting to see how Robbie adapts to stock cars and how Jamie adapts to his new teammate.

The winner of the "Best of Show" award was Matt Eaton’s Super Street car. The 2000 Monte Carlo was adorned with all 102 Dalmatians from the movie. Each was in a different position and each was hand painted. Hundreds of pictures of the car were taken, not a small task considering each time a flash went off we had to move Rick DeBour who was intent on counting the dogs for the sake of artistic accuracy.

All in all it was a great weekend, one that will have to satisfy the racing bug for a lot of folks until test day at Lee USA in April. Let’s hope that by then, Robbie Kneivel has made an appearance, that big dollar sponsors have been found for six or eight very deserving teams, that two or three more ROTY candidates have made their intentions known, that Alan Claffie has his voice back and doesn’t have to make another trip from Connecticut or Massachusetts (or wherever they came from) screaming at Rick to slow down, and most of all that I’m on top of the big V-Twin again and not sitting here freezing to death and wishing for spring.