In 1994 we made the decision to have an above ground pool installed in our backyard in part because as we were told by our Realtor (longtime Late Model driver, owner and track promoter Lynn Richard) that when you have a pool you will nearly always know where your teenagers are during the summer months. He was right on that point as our three kids and many, many of their friends got plenty of use of the pool until they all grew to adulthood and for the past ten years it has been a nice peaceful place for my wife and I to catch some rays and listen to music while floating the time away.
Since it is twenty-seven years old though, some of the items that we have not already had to replace or renew are falling apart and one of those happened last week when the hose between the pump and the filter sprung a leak that started as a pinhole and then became a full fledged gusher. Rather than transferring over a thousand gallons of water from the pool to my backyard I had to close the valves and shut things down figuring that this should be a simple case of ordering a replacement hose. After all, my pump and filter are less than ten years old and a replacement hose should be easy to find.
A quick search of the internet confirmed that there were several places that I could order from, including Amazon, so I placed my order and paid extra for expedited shipping. The pool would be back up and running by the next evening. The next day though I received an email from Amazon stating that the part was out of stock and with the prospect of it being several weeks before it would be available, they had canceled my order and refunded my money.
My next step was to search out every pool supply place within 150 miles from home to see if anybody had the part in stock where I could just go pick it up, and perhaps tie in a race as well, but after talking to eight different places the answer was the same. "Sorry, we do not have any of those hoses in stock at this time."
So it was back to the internet and every place that I tried to place an order indicated that the part was out of stock and they expected to "have it within two to three weeks". That is similar to when you are at the airport waiting for your delayed to flight to board and they keep telling you that it has been delayed for another twenty minutes. So I went ahead and placed an order and in the meantime I am going to try to MacGyver something so that I can run the pool for a few hours a day at least to keep it from turning into a swamp.
So why did I just tell you all about my problems with getting a part for my swimming pool? It is because I have been told by several drivers and car owners that they are running into the same issues when they are trying to purchase parts for their cars. And that just may be one of the reasons why several tracks are struggling to get more than ten cars per class right now for their weekly shows.
For now I am going to buy that excuse and hope that we see an uptick in counts once the shortage of race car parts, and pump to filter hoses, become more available but in this case I am pessimistic and it may be time for some tracks to start considering a bit of consolidation. I have used the CJ Speedway in Columbus Junction as an example in the past as after struggling along with six classes for several seasons, with two of the classes averaging eight cars or less, they cut loose the Trucks and Mod Lites and moved the bulk of the purse that they had been paying to those two divisions into the other four. The result? The car counts in the four remaining divisions increased over the next few seasons and in 2021 they even added a fifth class, the IMCA Hobby Stocks, that has been drawing better than I had expected in a region where nobody else runs the class.
So if you have a class where you are getting five cars a night and with no clear opportunity to double that number anytime soon, why wouldn't you consider cutting that class and putting the $635 that you are spending on them into something that would boost the car counts in your other divisions? Perhaps make it $100 to start instead of $70 to see if it makes a difference. The only way you spend that money is if more cars actually show up, but when they do that $100 check is more likely to bring them back the next week as well. I get it, making the change mid-season is tough, but as a promoter if you have a class that is plodding along with a car count under ten you should definitely take a look at what your best options are during the offseason. It may not be a popular opinion with some, but many of the race fans that I speak with have absolutely no problem with a three of four division show that is run in 150 minutes or less.
There have been "Bounties" put up on some drivers at a few different tracks already this season after said driver had won three, four or five race nights in a row. Maybe it was just my memories, but I recall a bounty being used to to try to give incentive to the track regulars as well as to attract some outside drivers in to take a shot at the extra money. In most cases the bounty would start at a certain level and then grow by a certain amount each week until the streaking driver was defeated.
With the bounties that I have seen posted so far in 2021 I have noticed a couple of quirks. At one track the "bounty" was $300, but if the driver that had the bounty on his head won he would collect the $300. That's not a bounty, that's just a $300 increase in the winner's purse. Another bounty was put up on a driver at a track where the lineup procedure virtually guaranteed that any new "bounty hunters" would start in front of the hunted. It was claimed on the first night and the hunters did not return the following week, but the hunted driver drew the front row of the feature and started his new streak. Oh well, I guess it boosted the count for a night.
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| Logan Anderson and Herbie The Love Bug have raced their way to the top of the current All Iowa Points Limited Modified standings. Find the All Iowa Points for all nine divisions on the Points page at PositivelyRacing.com - Barry Johnson photo |
If your track uses MyRacePass and you look at the results and notice that your top five finished the feature in the same position as where they started, well........that's just not fan friendly. And it is highly unlikely that you are an IMCA weekly track.
Can you tell that I'm just a bit frustrated with racing right now? And with society as a whole actually. Yes, I will admit that I have watched The Bachelor ever since being lured in when Iowan Chris Soules was in the lead role. That of course did not turn out well in the end, but I have found it very entertaining over the years until this past season when it all just seemed so contrived. It was obvious that the Bachelor was told to keep certain women on the show for awhile because no man in his right mind would have kept "Queen Victoria" around for more than one night and when they brought in extra women after a few weeks that was the last straw for me. I am glad that I had decided to quit watching due to that because after all of the other stuff that happened, ending with the host being dismissed as another victim of cancel culture, it would have definitely made me never watch it again. And that is just one example of how stupid our society seems to be at this point.
And no, I have never watched The Bachelorette because if I wanted to see thirty men chase one woman I would just go up to the West Side Tap on a Friday night. My Mt. Pleasant area friends will understand that one.
I am hoping that my next several races will pull me out of this funk and that will start on Saturday night when I will make my first 2021 trip to the Sprint Car Capital of the World, the Knoxville Raceway for the second night of the World of Outlaws visit and then on Sunday night I will look forward to a return to the Benton County Speedway in Vinton. Next week I plan on taking in both nights of the Dirt Duel at the Stuart Speedway on Tuesday and Wednesday, then on Thursday night I will have a decision to make between the World of Outlaw Sprints at 34 Raceway and the SLMR East Region visit to the Eldon Raceway.
Check the schedules and get out to the track of your choice soon!
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