buckle-up

As I said in the previous post, there will be one additional post published each month in this blog that are re-postings of articles I wrote for the National Auto Sports Association (NASA) digital publication, Speed News. These posts cover outings in High Performance Driving Events (HPDE) over the course of almost a decade. Having been asked how to access these articles and realizing the magazine was a NASA members-only benefit, I have elected to publish them all here in order for there to be a more reader-friendly way to check them out. If you have ever had thoughts about taking the family car onto a race track to circulate for lap after lap with like-minded enthusiasts, then it’s very clear that you have to start somewhere. The value proposition that came from joining NASA is that they provided instructors along with a ladder up which you could progress until you reached a point where you could choose a race group to join. Or not! Readers may recall that I started posting about the...

  This post, which I suspect will be a little shorter than what you normally come across in this blog, could have easily been written as a series of comments to other posts already published. However, it turns out that there is a common theme even if you have to look hard to find it. We have just dodged another snowfall – somehow it’s taking place well to the south of us – but it is mid-January and we have weathered seven snowfalls so it seems as though we should be preparing for the worst to happen deeper into 2021. The picture above may have appeared in previous posts, but I am not sure. Its inclusion here is for no other reason than I wanted something that depicted changes and this kind of fits the bill. Taken less than two years ago, we no longer have anything depicted here; not even the trailer in the background or the garage itself. But then again, spending as much time at home as we have now done, we keep wondering if we should have held on to the RV. And what about the mo...

  While it would be so easy to launch into an examination of all the poorly executed recent initiatives that are mostly reactive to decisions being made outside of China, there is one program that for Margo and me stands head and shoulders above all others. Believe it or not, China is restricting its import of Australian wines and indeed penalizing the Australian wine producers. After years of investment in the China marketplace, often times at the expense of catering to other markets, China has now snubbed one of Australia’s best industries putting in place a trade embargo. Many of Australia’s wines are world class have been caught up in this action with perhaps none more highly regarded globally than Penfolds. China may have something to do with fireworks as I recall, as they invented the firecracker but even so, they cannot put on a show to match that of Sydney when it’s time to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Once again, China Pandemic not withstanding – and yes, I have to admit, I...