So I started this week’s adventure by heading to the Cross Sound Ferry terminal at Orient Point, NY. The cruise to Connecticut was not as smooth as usual. Although it was windy and choppy, it seemed like the ferry was rocking excessively for the sea conditions. I could just see the Captain in the wheelhouse turning the helm back and fourth just to make the boat rock. I spent the trip delving through the day’s newspapers and ruining a few crossword puzzles.

Three folks onboard were on their way to help Glenn Tyler’s attempt to make the Sizzler. Kevin Dickerson had gotten directions that would have taken him to Stafford by way of Massachusetts. I gave him a couple of optional routes and actually caught up to the trio as they approached the track.

This was the first event for “Jack Arute’s Stafford Motor Speedway” without Jack Arute, Sr. I have always loved the county fair atmosphere that Stafford has had. Jack would have reveled in the beautiful weather we had this weekend. I will miss our conversations which ran the gamut from sprint cars to the future of short track racing and reflections on life. Somehow it still felt like he was still there.

So how was the next wave? Well let’s just say that the “young guns” didn’t fair that well in qualifying this week. Less than half of the eligible rookies were able to pass muster and put themselves into the starting lineup for the 35th Annual Spring Sizzler at Stafford Motor Speedway. In fact ten of the fifteen drivers that failed to qualify for the event were rookies and only one rookie managed a top ten qualifying spot, Mike Andrews.

Donny Lia continued his domination of qualifying at Stafford by snatching the pole with a lap of 18.600 seconds. I think that’s Donny’s fifth pole in the last six WMT races at SMS. Lia beat Tony Hirschman for the pole by four thousandths of a second.

Howie introduced me to Bill Shand from National Speed Sport News on Saturday. Later in the day I saw him at the hotel. Shand told me he was going home when I saw him in the hotel lobby Sunday at breakfast. I think he had a misunderstanding about something.

I stayed in Vernon at the place where you are supposed to be smarter for staying there. If one has stayed at this chain they may be familiar will the delicious cinnamon rolls they have at their breakfast bar. The soap in the rooms smells like cinnamon and the body wash and lotion smell like the icing on them. I am certain that is part of this company’s plan for total global domination.

So I leave the hotel to grab a bite to eat Saturday night. To make a long story short, the folks in the supermarket (expletive deleted) me off. As a result I chose to commandeer their shopping cart and took it with me, down the road, back to the hotel and all the way to my hotel room. I walked right through the lobby with it. No one even noticed. Not even the girl at the front desk. It did come in handy when I loaded up to go to the track on Sunday morning.

Before I left for the track, I ran into a bunch of Chuck Hossfeld fans in the lobby of the hotel. I think some of them were actually named Hossfeld and there was a couple with the last name of Clark. The Clark’s apparently travel to many of the Cup races as well and seemed as though they have had their fill of being booted out of hotels at the behest of a particular sanctioning body. Wonder who that might be? It was great to chat with them. They’re great people.

One of the other Hossfeld fans told me he had experienced difficulty getting approved for the MSS message forum. Here is the deal for him and for anyone else who happens to find themselves in similar circumstances. If someone submits all of the information requested at the time they apply for MSS forum access, their account will be approved, usually within twenty-four hours.

If ALL of the information is not filled out completely the applicant will receive an email from an administrator within the same said time. All of the previously submitted information will remain in cue for seventy-two hours from the time of original submission. Some folks have software as a part of their email program that protects them from junk email. This could boot that reply directly to their junk or deleted files. Please be aware of that and submit ALL of the information requested at the time of application for access.

It was great to see Rich Pallai from CAR-QUEST Sunday morning. The folks at CAR-QUEST and TECH-NET are an integral part of putting together programs at Stafford like the Spring Sizzler. I should have gone back to take advantage of the hospitality. It looked like they had quite a spread.

I walked out to the Pit Party and got ready for the MSS meet and greet. As I think I have alluded in the past, tire guys are…well…different. Different from their teammates like kickers are different from the rest of the guys on a football team. It’s probably safe to say that most tire guys walk to the beat of a different drum…or maybe they just beat their drums with tire spoons.

I ran into Jimmy Loomis. Jimmy was Pete Beal’s tire guy and I got to be friendly with him when TB drove for Pete in 2003. Jimmy pointed out the special scheme on Billy “Bear” Calicchio’s #14 car. It was the Garuti & Arute paint scheme in memory of Jack Arute, Sr. Loomis told me those cars had been campaigned out of Ray’s garage in Berlin, CT. The numerals were spot-on and the scheme was complete right down to the gold colored bumpers and wheels. That was a nice thing for Bear to have done.

The meet and greet went very well. It was nice to meet MandyB for the first time. Some of the people there included CTGoldy, Jim DuPont, bowatcher, SteveO, Flawless, TBax, Spotter7ny, CTScribe, ThE sHaDoW, my bobsled buddy Denis, the seemingly ever-present Howie and Fred Wilcox.

I tried to rope Fred and Jim into going to Holland to do the Live Updates there in July. Several of us from the staff will be at Riverhead that night for the Tom Baldwin Memorial 77. Shopgirl will be ready to post those updates from anyone who is willing to assist us.

One of the things that I discovered during the get-together was relevant of John White. He is an SK Modified competitor from my neck of the woods and he has apparently purchased both Chemung and Spencer Speedways. It certainly will be interesting to find out what John’s plans are for the two places.

Much of the conversation in the paddock area related to the article that was published Friday by the Hartford Courant penned by Shawn Courchesne. I think Shawn will have a few voice messages in his mailbox when he gets to the office on Monday. We will be missing Courchesne shortly as he has become the beat reporter for UCONN football. That is a gig that will probably get him some face-time on ESPN.

I’m kind of envious of the fact that Shawn covered the boxing events from Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods this weekend. In particular I would have liked to have seen Samuel Peter’s match on Friday night. Like the guy or not, Shawn calls it the way he sees it. I’m just glad he’s there to wear the black hat.

The Cup and Ernie get a lot of attention at Stafford. That’s because they have my brand on hand. That’s nice; I don’t have to lug the cooler all over the place. Someone only needs about four hundred more bottle caps to get a portable DVD player. Way to go Shawn. I hope everyone in the press box hooked you up this weekend.

Ben Dodge did a great job of remembering Jack. He had all of the fans give the drivers a “thumbs up” at the start of each race. That was a salute for which Jack will be remembered. He used to give that gesture to the competitors as they went off to do battle from his golf cart.

The SK race was a wreck-fest. Ted Christopher pitted early when he realized his car was too loose to get to the front. His team made an adjustment and TC went from worst to first. It was Ted’s all-time track leading ninety-fourth victory and his first in an SK at Stafford since June 3rd of last season. A drought of that length wouldn’t be a big deal for anyone else, for Ted it probably felt like an eternity.

The Whelen Modified Tour race was preceded by a nice video memorial of Jack Arute, Sr. set to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”. Connecticut Governor, M. Jodi Rell gave the command to start engines and before we knew it, the men who live by the grace of God and 600 horsepower were on their way. It looked like the Tour show wouldn’t fall victim to yellow fever as the SK race had. I spoke too soon.

The two-hundred lap affair was plagued by eleven caution periods for fifty-six laps. I hope everyone who couldn’t make it to Stafford enjoyed the Live Updates. I kept Vicki quite busy and she worked her little fingers off to get everything posted as quickly as possible.

With as many times the yellow flew, it could have been even worse. There were several times that cars spun when the caution did not come out. I think everyone seemed to be a little restless out there.

It kind of looked like what we used to call “shopping cart racing” for a couple of laps. That was a term we on Long Island dubbed the way that Robin Vollmoeller and Paul McElearney used to find themselves side-by-side pushing two cars down the straightaway at Riverhead and Islip in their Street Stocks. Those guys were fast and they usually raced like that for the lead. For a while it was Mike Stefanik and Jerry Marquis pushing Jamie Tomaino and Doug Coby.

Coby passed Tomaino with Marquis in tow and then Stefanik found himself in a similar predicament with another competitor to his outside. The aggression got a little too heavy and this resulted in Chuck Hossfled and John Blewett, III briefly locked together spinning out of turn two along with Kirk Alexander on lap 115. Stefanik got a flat right front tire in the incident.

Because Mike stopped to change his tire before the pits were opened he was forced to restart at the tail end of the longest line. When eleven cars chose to pit on the subsequent lap, the opportunity to win this event pretty much went away for the man who seemed to have the fastest car. Mike worked his way through the field to bring home a respectable fourth place finish and will return to Stafford with the point lead.

After a fifteenth place finish at the Modified Tour opener and a disappointing run in his ARCA debut, Donny Lia seemed quite content to finish second. I don’t know whether Lia had anything for Coby at the end of the race but it certainly got interesting in the closing laps as lapped traffic closed up the gaps between the leaders. Donny congratulated Doug on the victory noting that the two had a “history”. He was glad they could race clean for two hundred laps and put that behind them.

Eric Beers was closing at the end, partially due to the lapped traffic. Beers was consistent and passed a bunch of cars on the outside. A third place finish moves Eric into ninth in the point standings.

For any driver there’s only one first win on the Whelen Modified Tour. This will be a memorable one for Doug Coby. Doug was proud of the fact that he won the most celebrated race at the track where he cut his teeth. Jack, Sr. certainly smiled.

It was also a return to Victory Lane for Curt Chase and the #77 team. This team had suffered through a dry spell since winning the New Hampshire 100 at Loudon with John Blewett, III in September of 2003. Way to go guys, you deserve it. Doug moved to fourth in the standings.

James Civali was the rookie of the race for the second time in two shows. His seventh place finish elevates him to third in the points. Although ten rookies went home; three finished in the top ten. Matt Hirschman and Danny Sammons finished eighth and tenth respectively.

Ted Christopher moves up to second in points just thirty markers behind Stefanik by virtue of his sixth place finish. Tony Hirschman rallied to finish eighth and rounds out the top five in the standings.

Something I think debuted this weekend was Rob Summers t-shirts. They feature the moniker “RocketRob”. I can just hear the Old Man laughing in reply, “RocketRob the heart throb”. Rob had a great run at Stafford bringing home a fifth place finish.

I caught the eight o’clock boat back to the island. I got most of this written along the way. The MV John H. swayed a while like it had on Saturday morning. It smoothed out after a while. I guess the Captain got tired of spinning the wheel.

I got one of the prized spots on the ferry. That’s one of those places where your vehicle gets off early. Normally I get parked on the second deck and wind up following several dozen cars as they parade bumper-to-bumper behind the weakest link; single-file on the two-lane road for about a dozen miles before it bursts into a four-lane divided highway on the west side of Southold.

This time there was only one car in front of me and although this person was no Speedy Gonzalez, their pace suited me quite well. One of the first times I saw headlights in my rearview mirror was when I passed him in Peconic. The next was when I got nailed by a Southold Town Police cruiser.

The car I drive now is nearly identical to the death trap in outward appearance. This car is much nicer and probably the smoothest ride I have ever owned. All I could hear over the sound of air whooshing over the car on the highway Sunday night was the light jingle of the zipper tabs on my luggage.

I haven’t come up with a name for this car yet. I had the hotel Cavalier and the death trap. Pig might be good for this one because of its’ voracious appetite for fuel. It is still a peaceful car to drive. That tranquility nearly put me to sleep.

In Mattituck, the speed limit drops from 55 to 45 miles per hour. Hey, I wasn’t in a hurry; but I hadn’t adjusted my speed and a Police car pulled out behind me. For a couple of seconds there I thought he wasn’t going to pull me over; then he “lit ‘em up”.

The officer was cool. He walked back to the cruiser as the theme from final Jeopardy ran in my mind. Before the tune was over, he was walking back. I guess honesty is the best policy…I went home without a ticket.

Then I got stuck behind all of that traffic I had so fortunately avoided earlier as those behind me on the ferry now led me single file behind the weakest link from Mattituck to Northville. Oh well. I still got home a few minutes sooner than I usually would have.

Congratulations to Tour28 and MARKIM1 for being the first two winners in the Precision Automotive Inc. Pick 6 contest. We had over one hundred people participate in both of the pick 6’s so far and a total of one hundred forty participants. Charli B., who called in Live Updates from Motor Mile, almost made it into the top one hundred with a single week of picks and missed the win by just four points.

It’s not too late! Make your picks today so you don’t forget to do it before the next race. ThE sHaDoW has the lead with this week’s winner just one point back.

Thanks to Scott Running for turning on the air conditioning in the press box. Thanks to the cop for letting me go. A special thank you and a one finger salute to the folks at the (expletive deleted) supermarket. They all contributed to this story and a weekend I will not soon forget.

The next chance for us to get together on the WMT will be the Friday night of Memorial Day weekend at Stafford. The TVMRS is racing at Caanan Fair Speedway in New Hampshire this Saturday and the Race of Champions Tour will be at Oswego this Sunday. If anyone has interest in calling in Live Updates from either race, feel free to shoot me an email.