Dear FOTers,
My son and I made it to the Double Regional at Watkins Glen with my ancient
TR-3 and his somewhat elderly RX-7 Mazda. Neither of us received
applications for this race, and thought that the event might have been called
off due to our national calamity.
My TR-3 is not too speedy to begin with, but it was even slower this weekend
since I was maintaining the RPM's around 4,000 in an effort to finish some
races, before I start stomping on it again. During the second race, the
transmission started jumping out of overdrive making it necessary to lift in
4 th. gear.
A few BMW guys (and others) took very good care of me by breaking their cars.
As a result, I walked away with a 4 th. place medal on Saturday and a 2 nd.
place medal on Sunday.
My boy got hit from behind in the Eases part of the track, spun around, and
then T-boned by another car. A couple of Mazda guys from the track went home
and brought back a silver painted door which he installed on his red Mazda.
He was then able to run in the Sunday race.
There were some very good looking and interesting cars in the Volvo Historic
races. I never knew about this group until Joe B. mentioned it a few days
ago. Unfortunately, a beautiful Corvette got trashed. I also got to meet
again one of my remote associates from the 70's, Lorne Fritz with his orange
TR-3.
These two days allowed us to temporarily focus on something else besides all
of the ongoing negative news. Our youngest daughter had one of her theater
lighting jobs not far from the World Trade Center. All of the phone lines to
New York City were jammed, and we could not find out if she was all right.
We tried calling our middle daughter in London, and all of the international
lines were jammed. Finally, our son in Williamsport called, said that he
received an e-mail from her, and that she was OK.
Disasters like what happened in NY City suddenly makes a person realize that
the few get-togethers with family members and the resulting memories are even
more valuable than ever. Anyone's life can be eliminated or changed forever.
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