2002 Banquet

11/13/02

A funny thing happened on the way too the banquet. Nothing. At least, nothing bad, which considering the way my season has gone, is a good thing! The 2002 BNS season has been by most standards a great one, filled with controversy, close finishes and a points battle right down to the wire. Unfortunately for me it appeared to be the "Season from Hell." Starting in June with my wife being injured in a car accident and ending (hopefully) in October with myself being injured in one also, the season in between was plagued by bad timing, bad weather, car trouble and illness. It was very refreshing to plan a trip to the banquet and not have anything interfere. The fact that the banquet was at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium was a bonus, it is an excellent venue, complete with wonderful food and many good cold drinks provided by Anheuser-Busch and the room accommodations next door at the Doubletree Hotel were great.

Back in March I made a few predictions, some bold, some just plain stupid, most wrong as usual. I predicted that Stubby would come out of retirement at Thunder Road, spin Mike Olsen out and win the race. Well, Stubby didn’t come out of retirement, Mike didn’t spin out and went on to win that race, himself. I think that qualifies as a close prediction, not perfect, but I was in the ballpark.

I predicted that Robbie Harrison would win the ROTY award. I pegged that one, the only thing I didn’t predict was that minutes before his speech I’d find him in the men’s room, nervous and reciting to himself. Don’t worry, Robbie, you did a great job, we heard and understood every word.

I predicted that at some point in the season there would be some kind of controversy between Bill Penfold and Tracy Gordon. Man, I’m good, ain’t I? I just might be psychic.

I predicted that Andy Santerre would be so busy driving back and forth between North Carolina and Maine that he would forget how to ride his Unicycle. I don’t know if Andy still rides that thing or not, but after talking to him, I do know he was plenty busy driving and put on just shy of a Gazillion miles this summer. Some people might be amazed that with all that distance and just a small volunteer team, he was able to win the championship. What surprises me is that Sue still lives with him, obviously still loves him and is expecting their first child in the spring. I didn’t ask exactly when the baby is due but you can be sure that it will be just nine months from one of those rainy weekends.

I predicted that the name Robbie Knievel would finally fall out of your vocabulary and with the exception of two or three media types living on the edge and calling me Kaptain now and then, I was pretty much right on the money. Although we both have a beard, he is still more famous than I am. I only recently learned that if you type "Robbie Knievel" into the "images" section of Google.com you get a whole slew of pictures of Robbie. If you type "Greg Fish" into the same place you get pages and pages of pictures of Haddock and Trout and one picture of the Big Brown Truck before the sewer system fell off.

During the season, many fans predicted the demise of the BNS. Au contraire, or whatever that French saying is. Not only are there going to be at least as many full time teams next year as there were this year, it looks as though there will be more. NASCAR has some very exciting announcements about changes in the cars and the touring series’ coming up, also. 2003 is going to be a very exciting year for the BNS and for NASCAR in general, I for one can’t wait for spring to get here and to make the 2003 predictions. My predictions will be just as far off as this year’s were, I’m sure, but you can bet that I will be at more races than I was this year and won’t miss as many columns as I did this summer. My luck couldn’t possibly be that bad two years in a row could it?

 

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