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Black Bar

The latest update as of March 6, 2000

Monday afternoon already and it's the first of four consecutive days off work for Wilson. Yes, that's almost a record, aside from my extended "vacation" in Australia last year. So what can I do to fill the next ninety-six hours? Finish off all those projects that I never seem to get around to? Not likely, but we'll see how the time goes. We have finished one little item though: the brochure for the Northwest Drag Racing School is posted. Click on the link to read all about it.

I've been pretty much "out of the loop" for information about the local drag racing scene lately, so the school came as quite a surprise. During my visit to the Vancouver Motorsport Show on the weekend, I was able to spend a few minutes with the principals of the school and find out some of the details. "Headmaster" Leo Grocock (long-time Top Alcohol racer and crew chief) and Dean "SpeedZone" Murdoch explained the concept and gave some background on how it came about.

The two school cars, both rear-engine dragsters, were recently purchased and have been set up for the respective classes. Rob Murphy owns the Super Comp car, equipped with an injected BBC and Leo owns the ex-Dave Trimble Top Alcohol (okay purists: Federal-Mogul...) Dragster. The biggest hurdles have almost been cleared, with the required liability insurance in place and only final approval from NHRA and Mission Raceway required to start operations. We'll bring you more details and school dates as they become available.

At the show I picked up a copy of the latest issue of SpeedZone magazine; the first edition of its second year of publication. This one was a special for the motorsport show, but still brought us some news about the coming local drag racing season. And it's coming up soon: the gates open at Mission Raceway this coming Saturday, March 11th. Be there!

I got quite a surprise while leafing through the magazine, as there was even a mention of Northern Thunder. Quite a few nice words too. Thanks very much, Dean. But what about that "you and your web site are a breath of fresh air for the sometimes political drag racing scene" comment? As the season progresses will you still think this place smells so sweet? You must have missed lots of firestorms that I've had the knack for starting over the last few years. And there will be more, guaranteed.

Speaking of fires.... what about that "open letter" to the Santos team? Hang on folks: it's coming tonight. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to hydraulic. Honest. But now it's time to cut out and go scanner shopping. Yeah, all the old equipment is dying in a hurry. The (Epson 700) printer is in the "hospital", the Epson 400 is on the way to the landfill and the ImageWave scanner will be joining it in a few minutes. This is truly a disposable society, when it costs more to fix a piece of hardware than to buy a new -- and improved -- one.

Site News: The Aussie Drag Babes photo gallery has been reorganized and should load (on your screen) a bit quicker. The tradeoff was a lot of small dots on the thumbnails due to the GIF program that I have. The full-size pics will be cleaned up a bit over the next few weeks and more new ones added as soon as possible. Same deal for the North American and International Babes galleries too.

We've also finished updating the Hot Links pages in the new format. Plus, added another hundred or so new links. In total now we have 1130 links. For anyone contemplating putting a links page on their website: DON'T DO IT !!! It will drive you crazy, faster than a Top Fuel car can burn money! Before you even get the page up on the web, at least one link will die, another one will change its URL, and ten more new ones will pop up. It never ends. So don't even start!

Black Bar
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