End Of The Season 2002

10/03/03

How’s the song go? Another day older and deeper in debt. I think that’s right. At any rate, that is where I’m at. Being older and in more debt isn’t all that bad once you resign yourself to it. You can’t change it so why worry about it. Between the cash debt and the time debt, I am going to miss the last race of the season this year. That’s right, I am the one who said he’d rather see one road course event than 3 good oval track races.

I stepped up my plans a little in September and even after three long weekend trips to NHIS this summer I went to Dover for the Cup, BGN, and BNS weekend. We spent very little money on fuel and food and even opted for the free ride-along program with a group of drunks in a Firebird at 3:30 in the morning, as opposed to the more expensive legal rides. Have you ever witnessed a security cop jump off a golf cart and put his hand on a car tire to see if was hot? My first thought was "How bad have you got it?" The financial problems came on the way home. Fortunately we were in the last hundred miles of a twelve hundred mile trip when my buddy Scott woke me up and said "We’re out of power". What that meant eventually was diagnosed as a bad fuel pump. Between towing and repairing it came to just under $500.00. That shot the October racing budget pretty quickly.

What turned out to be even more important was the October racing "time" budget. The NHIS and Dover weekends each caused me to miss important High School Varsity football games. With only an eight game schedule, missing more than two games is totally unacceptable, so when the cars take the green flag at Lime Rock I, hopefully, will be congratulating my son on a great game and a big win the prior evening. Cars will be racing for many years at Lime Rock Park but my favorite fullback has only one year left of High School Varsity football. I don’t intend to miss another game.

I really hate to miss the finale partly because I love the road courses, it’s my favorite type of racing, but also because, unlike the state of New Hampshire, Connecticut has got the cold beer thing figured out. The party after the Lime Rock race is second to none! We are always congratulating a new BNS champion at that point and the fun-factor is way up there. I will miss the annual trip to Connecticut but I can’t say that I regret going to Dover instead. Besides the late-night ride along thing, we had great accommodations in the back of the Busch North Scene Chevy Tahoe, some great friends camping next to us with food and beer, nice hot showers compliments of the track, excellent meals in the media center (they had the best Buffalo Wings since Hooters) and great seats for the races. One of the best moments was the interview during Winston Cup qualifying with Hideo Fukuyama. Obviously he couldn’t speak in a language that most of us could understand so he spoke through a translator who spoke excellent Japanese and fairly good English. Each question took a while to answer due to being translated and sometimes the answers sounded a bit odd. When asked "What do you think about the Dover track?" the answer that got back to us was "It will be taking him about one hour before he liking duh truck" With the speed problems he had, I have to wonder if he ever did liking duh truck.

The Dover BNS race was a very nice experience and all in all, the 2002 season has been an excellent one. I missed more races due to family and illness than I would have liked to, but a whole new season starts in April and we get to start all over again. In the meantime there is a champion to be crowned, a party to be thrown and lots of nice cold Busch Beer to be consumed. Y’all enjoy it and I’ll get caught up during the off season.

As always, send Questions, Comments, Hate Mail, and Indecent Proposals to, Fish c/o Busch North Scene or e-mail them to fishy@cybertours.com