BobMiller

I am scared to death of this virus because I have 4 strikes against me. I am at the younger side of the senior citizen age spectrum, but still categorized in that bracket. Due to poor choices I made in life, I do have moderate levels of COPD. High blood pressure is another weakness in fighting the disease and mine is definitely high. And they have also said that people with compromised kidney function are also at risk. Kidney failure was the primary contributor to my hospital stay last summer. For these reasons, I put myself into voluntary seclusion well before the term "social distancing" became a household term. With the exception of paying a gas station attendant for gas once each in my mom's van and my girlfriend's car, and a meeting with Ryan Phelps about the purchase of a newer van for my mother, I haven't had face to face contact with anyone but my mom and girlfriend since March 15th. What scares me even more is contracting this virus and passing it on to my mother. She is 80 now and probably wouldn't survive should that happen. Mom is basically the only immediate family that I have left. And when you figure that you can be a carrier and not have any symptoms? If you are an unknowing carrier, there is no way to count the numbers of people you pass it on to. I am tired of staring at these same four walls and hardly ever going outside, but it's a sacrifice I need to make if I want to see racing again when it continues.

GT and George... Social distancing works in social media too. Even facebook is monitoring what people are saying these days, editing their posts with stats from various fact check sites, and sending persistent people to facebook prison for a while.

According to the Trump press conference tonight, we may as well consider April as closed. Medical professionals are saying that even if we had full voluntary compliance with self quarantine, the death toll is going to be in the 100,000 to 200,000 range. They say without full compliance, we can expect those numbers to be in the 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 range - with the peak of the curve still being 2 weeks away. With New York leading the country in confirmed cases, nothing short of a complete 30 lockdown is going to help. This is going to require 100& cooperation and sadly, it's just not going to happen. There are far too many people who still believe that this is all a big hoax. Truthfully, I don't see any sort of normalcy until at least June.

Watching Billy Pauch set the 1 mile world record at Syracuse a bunch of years ago will always be near the top of things I'm glad I got to see. That was pretty special. Danny Johnson won 2 of my most favorite events, but I am an Alan Johnson fan. The last to first show in the Bill Trout car at Rolling Wheels will always be one of my favorites. And then again at Syracuse when Danny squeezed he wall to get back by Jimmy Horton was another. That happened on my camera. I was also one of the camera operators at Thompson when Reggie Ruggiero came out of retirement and blistered the field twice - only to get taken out by a lapped car near the end. Reggie really deserved that win and got robbed. I remember going to Hagerstown in March one year and saw an EPIC battle for the lead with Gary Tomkins that lasted 75 to 80 laps of the scheduled 100. I was also at the National Open at Williams Grove when Freddie Rahmer shocked the world and won his first and only Open on his last run there. Traditionally, Williams Grove fans don't care much for Freddie. But this night they were all squeezing for him and there wasn't a dry eye in the place when he pulled it off. I don't ever remember a race carrying that much emotion.

I would assume that it all sits in their studio in Charlotte.

Gary's day job was an office position at Xerox. When they started their new plant in Mexico, Gary was asked to go. At that time, it was he and Brian Spaid handling the announcing duties at Canandaigua, and Gary REALLY didn't want to go. But sometimes you don't get choices in life, so Gary stood in front of the crowd on the front stretch and bid an extremely emotional temporary farewell. I remember the crowd giving him a standing ovation. I remember when Gary returned as promised. He apologized in advance for being rusty on the mic during opening ceremonies. Again, the crowd cheered. Gary had been gone nearly 18 months and you could tell by the excitement in his voice he sure was happy to be back. And it was at this point that Gary declared that he didn't care if he ever went to another race track, as long as he could go to Canandaigua, he'd be happy. And the Canadian co-host that sat in for Gary with Doug Logan was Erik Thomas.

And you're not accepting any blame for not starting threads of the tracks you go to or the drivers that race there either. You want a wider focus of discussion? Start talking about them.

And whose fault is that? People talk most about the tracks they go to, not the ones they don't. And the people who do attend them that also visit this site could change that.

Nobody is.

You are absolutely correct. It was GasketCase.

And you also cried to Mike Mallett to get the suspension lifted. And because of that and a couple of other situations just like yours within a week or two of your offense, I'm not enforcing ANY rules here.

Good luck with that. This place would moderate itself if it were linked to facebook and twitter and people could be held accountable for what they say. A track owner/operator/promoter should have the right to identify and deny admission to people who do nothing but bitch about their services. A driver should have the opportunity to have a face to face discussion with some of his accusers and the purposely hurtful things they say. If that confrontation resulted in a fat lip, black eye or lump on the skull, maybe people wouldn't be so quick to dig so deep into someone else's dirty laundry. Anonymity creates this environment. In recent past, I've removed posting privileges for 30 days to people who purposely break the rules, only to have the offenders cry to an owner to get reinstated. I throw people out for being problem posters and they sign right back up and get approved again under a new alias. Being a moderator/admin is a thankless job. Members constantly ridicule you for everything. If you rule the roost with an iron fist, they say you are being too strict. If you relax and give a little leeway, they say you aren't strict enough and cry favoritism. Benefits for being a Moderator/Admin are plenty. Promoters call you at all hours of the night asking you to take things down or yell at you for allowing something to be said. You get publicly screamed at for allowing people to say hurtful personal shit, even though you can't possibly monitor the website 24/7. Stuff can and does slip by. And your own opinion? You better off not to have one. If you express it here, be prepared for people who don't know you to contradict everything you say. I'm convinced that there is a club of members who do this just by the reading who 'likes' what another member said. It's always the same people. The pay and rewards/benefits program for being an admin/moderator is outstanding. I've had just one DTD hard card in all of the years I've been a moderator and not once did I use it for access to a race track. 2008 and 2009 were the only 2 years where a place to stay during Speed Weeks in Florida were used. I'd shoot the races and work almost non stop editing highlight video for the website. Now do it for 17 years.

You were thinking Ricky Elliott?

Volusia is by far and above my favorite track of all to watch 410 Sprint Cars at. 12 and 13 second laps around that joint is insane. "Racing" usually isn't all that good when tracks are that fast, but for some reason, Volusia stays racy all night long. Love that place! I need to get back there again.