25 | April | 2024 | Rick at the Races

April Shower (25th April 2044 Blog)

My last Blog ended on Friday the 12th of April, with grim prospects for the forth coming weekend .

As you can expect in April, rain played a big part, and decimated much of the North East’s racing.

Things dried up a bit, on Sunday the 14th , and the practice day at Airborne Speedway, in Plattsburgh, NY managed to survive ( albeit, postponed from the originally scheduled , Friday or Saturday ).

So, of course, I took a drive over there .

I don’t think they’d had so much rain as other places and on my arrival at 11-00 am the sun was shining .

New promoter Mike Bruno had spent a lot of time prepping the track, and it was in excellent shape.

There were a lot of cars in the pits, and they all went through tech inspection before the scheduled 12-00 track time.

So before taking pics on the center , I had plenty of time to mingle.

You may remember , a couple of months back, I attended a party to celebrate, Billy Cook’s 80th Birthday. Well, he ain’t ready to quit just yet, and was parked in the pits with a brand new car.

Bucko Branham showed me the Rick @ the Races sticker he’d put on his car , that I’d given him the previous week at the Plattsburgh car show .

Just before the cars went on track , Mike held a drivers meeting.

The cars were out for a few laps at time , split into the various divisions.

I stayed on the middle for two complete sessions before calling it a day.

So , the practice at Airborne salvaged the weekend for me.

The following week I had doctors appointments in both Cornwall and Ottawa to keep me busy , plus a gastric virus that ‘knocked me out’ for a few days.

I’d planned a trip to the Albany-Saratoga Speedway (Malta) on Friday and the Fonda Speedway on Saturday, but this failed to materialize . The weather looked very iffy , and I was still feeling the effects of the virus.

After rain just before start time at Malta , they managed to get the show in, but Fonda cancelled in advance of race day.

So I had a weekend , free of racing. Probably a good thing really, as I was still a bit under par.

I had a pre arranged booking at Seaway GM in Cornwall on Monday morning for my Chev Impala, as the engine was well over due for a tune up.

I had a quiet week, spent catching up with jobs that needed doing , as I awaited the coming weekend. It was going to be a busy one , if things went to plan.

R.I.P “Motor Mouth” Brian Goudge

On April the 5th, I learned the sad news via the (defunct) Capital Speedway Face Book Page, that one of my good friends , former racing announcer Brian Goudge had passed away.

He called himself ‘MotorMouth’ and was one of the best in the business . I worked along side Brian at both Capital City and the Brockville Ontario Speedway.