Early April 2017 Report,

This time of year there’s not much racing going on, and my sporting interests, swing towards hockey,  following the fortunes of my favorite team, the Ottawa Senators. I’ve been a Sens Fan for over 20 years, and this season, I  have watched most of the games on TV and attended a couple of home games. On April 6th , they made sure of a Stanley Cup Play off spot and would be playing the Boston Bruins in the first round.

On the negative side, the start of April provided me with plenty of personal problems.  This time, They weren’t all health issues , with my biggest problem being with my PC.  After about 8 years of trusty service my Lap Top became toast, and I was without one for 6 days until a replacement could be bought. This meant I could not down load pictures or edit them, and had to rely on the poor quality pics of my cel phone. Some of my picture editing programs are still yet to be up loaded so, there are some pics in this report I’m not too proud of.

As for my racing activities in April , things got underway on Friday the 17th when I traveled down to the Brockville Ontario Speedway awards banquet with my friend Ron Morin and his wife Reina.

As expected, there were plenty of friends in attendance, 

It was once again held at the hockey arena in town.

The track Champions from all divisions were crowned, with Danny O’Brien taking the Modified spoils,

and Shane Pecore the Sportsman,

The next day, Saturday 8 April, I was invited to the Marc Lalonde Race Teams , Spaghetti Supper and Silent Auction Fund Raiser that was taking place at the Plantaganet Catholic School.

I joined my good friend Don Simpson and is wife Lise for this one.

A good crowd of around 400 people turned out to raise funds for the # 8 Pro Stocks team , that is maintained at the school, by driver/teacher Marc , and the kids. 

After returning home from Plantaganet  , I stayed awake to watch the early morning  TV transmission of the Chinese Grandprix. This provided another win for Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes.

On Tuesday 11th , I did something a bit different , when I joined up with Ron and Reina again to visit the Maple Syrup farm and restaurant at Rigaud , Quebec.

Meantime, the Stanley Cup playoffs had begun, and on Wednesday 12th , the Sens lost game one to the Bruins.

On Thursday , with the Easter weekend approaching, my good friend Chantal Lesage dropped by. She left her car at my place and I drove her over to Masena Airport NY . She was catching a flight down to Albany NY to meet up with her boy friend, Pro Stock driver Rob Yetman.

While she was down there, Rob was taking part in Saturday’s  Lebanon Valley Speedway practice day , so she sent me a few pictures.

While this was going on, I sat at home and watched the afternoon scheduled Game  2 for the Senators and Bruins. The Sens won ths one, making it , one game a piece in the series.

That night, I joined Ron and his brothers at the Cornwall Civic Complex, for something else a bit different . There was a night of Professional Boxing taking place where local guy, Tony ‘Lightening’ Luis was taking on Noe ‘El Dengue’ Nunez from Mexico.

Luis won with a Knock Out 

Easter Sunday , 16th April it was TV time  in the morning for the 11-00 am Eastern, start of the Bahrain Grand Prix. This was a pretty good race with Sebastien Vettel taking the checkers in the Ferrari.

The race was over by about 12-40, and it was time to head across the border to the U.S.A.  Chantal was returning from Albany, and this time I would be picking her up from the Greyhound Bus stop in Plattsburgh. 

I was in Plattsburgh with pleny of time to spare, so went along to the local Airborne Speedway, to check out the new dirt surface. After many years of being a paved track, for 2017, it’s going to be dirt. Many tons have clay have been hauled in, and I wanted to take a look.

I got a couple of pictures before picking up Chantal, and heading back to Canada.

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