RICK @ the RACES (14 to 18 Jan)

16 Jan       Palais De Congress   Montreal Auto Show

18 Jan      Talisman Travel Lodge, Ottawa.   Capital City Speedway AGM

This past weekend my daughter Carla paid me a visit from her home in Ft Lauderdale, Florida, so there’s no racing for me to report about this week. Carla picked up a bargain ( 82 bucks return) flight with Spirit Airlines into Plattsburgh NY. so I picked her up from the airport after I’d finished work on Friday. It was my first visit to this small and fairly new airport and I was very impressed. The free parking was unbelievable!

On Saturday we spent some quality ‘father and daughter time’ together around the home in Cornwall (Ontario) before setting off for a day trip to Montreal (Quebec) on Sunday.

Our key destination was the Palais De Congress for the annual Montreal Auto Show. I visited this show for the first time last year and quite enjoyed it. This year however, was a bit of a disappointment. In 2010 there was a good display of vintage cars, but for 2011 they were missing.

In their place was a bunch of customized cars , and I’m not really into that kind of stuff .

We wandered around the show, and as usual, my favorites were the Aston Martin’s, while Carla fell in love with an Audi convertible.

Another favorite of mine but on a smaller scale and less expensive was the Fiat (retro 500) . I’ve always been a fan of these small Italian cars and with the current trend of retro ‘lookalikes’ it was something that had to come. There’s a large Italian community in Montreal so their display was very popular.

Carla had to be in Plattsburgh by around midnight on Monday for her flight back to Florida, so we didn’t plan on leaving Cornwall too early (It’s only an hour and a half drive).

Regular readers may recall my report back in November about my trip to Charlotte NC for the Dirt Track World Finals, where I mentioned the stupid headlight bulb replacement procedure needed for my Chevy HHR. ( the front wheel has to be taken off and the inner mud guard of the fender removed).

In Charlotte the drivers side bulb failed at an awkward time for me, and I new it would only be a matter of time before the passenger side would burn out too.

Sure enough, it decided to fail on me at about 5-30 pm on Monday night just as I was about to drive Carla to Plattsburgh. The temperature outside was about minus 14 centigrade and there was snow and ice on the ground. It was not the kind of day I wanted to do a road side repair! Luckily I was out side a Canadian Tire when it happened and I had 30 minutes before they closed. They got me in the workshop straight away and for 18 bucks, fitted my spare bulb which I had in the glove compartment.

That was a close shave ! …. because I wouldn’t have liked to cross the border and drive to Plattsburgh with a headlight out. There are plenty of things I like about my HHR, but I haven’t got a clue how their brains were working when they designed this ridiculous procedure. Carla was dropped off at the airport in good time and I was back in Cornwall by 2-00 am Tuesday morning.

Tuesday is one of my days off from work so I had a long lay in bed before my evening assignment. It was the AGM and ‘information meeting’ of Ottawa’s Capital City Speedway and I wanted to be there to find out what was happening in 2011.

A large group of drivers, race teams, officials and fans turned up at the Talisman Travel Lodge on Carling Avenue to hear new boss Todd Gow outline his plans for the coming season.

Gow, an Ottawa business man, has been one of the regular Legend Car drivers in recent years. The presentation started with facts and figures relating to the financial situation of the track following 2010’s series of rain outs and the measures in place to turn things around for 2011.

It was announced that Tim Dorning would be the new Race Director and Ed Crilly would be the Tech Director.

One piece of news that received a good cheer from the crowd was the fact that Brian ‘Motor Mouth’ Goudge was coming out of retirement and returning as announcer “Pitter Patter , Let’s get at her”.

Another positive thing happening regards the Speedway’s web site. A new look site will soon be up and running that is being designed by Greg Calnan at Image Factor ( www.ontariooval.com).

As many people may know, this year is the 50th anniversary of the Capital City Speedway and to celebrate this great milestone a ‘Hall Of Fame’ for nostalgic artifacts is being set up in one of the ground floor rooms at the track. Any donations of suitable material will be gladly excepted.

I was pleased with what Todd had to say and his vision of the future was what I wanted to hear. Hopefully my work commitments ( and Mother Nature) will allow me to be there more often this year.