Nancy and I do quite a few volunteer chores when we're at Bonneville -- we don't "just" race.

Here's Nancy up on the deck of the trailer that's used for the radio announcer's "booth". This shot was taken at World Finals, the event in October. Her duty was to operate the little printer that makes a paper copy of the report showing how fast the vehicles go -- the timing slip -- and hand them to the racer when he shows up to get it. The slips are printed on adding machine tape and are a couple of inches long -- so when you see how the flag is flying, in an obviously stiff breeze, you can visualize how much fun she has trying to keep all of those tiny slips in order and not blowing away in the wind. She did well, though, and we had the pleasure of handing out slips for everything from 55-mph tiny motorcycles -- to a streamliner car that went over 350 mph. And up on the trailer the view of the race course is MUCH better than on the ground -- we had "front row seats" for the entire event.

Okay, here's my photo.

You might know that I used to be a radio announcer, and have been a ham radio operator since 1962, too. So - I'm not especially shy when handed a microphone. Back when we started going to Bonneville I got to know Ron Christensen, the guy that usually does the announcing, and I've helped him with the announcing duties many times. Well, it turns out that he wasn't able to attend World Finals this year. The officials of the SCTA (Southern California Timing Ass'n), the organization that sanctions the race events (along with the Bonneville Nationals Inc. - there's a long story of how they share the duties and responsibilities) checked around and found that I knew enough to do the announcing duties -- so I got asked to be the event announcer. It's fun -- I try to not only say which car or bike is going down the course and how fast it went, but also something of the history of the vehicle, if I know it, or how fast is the record that this racer is trying to break, and so on -- anything to help the radio listeners know more about the event and make it more interesting for them. I look kinda natural in this photo, hey?

Oh, yeah -- in the background you can see the (white) printers that did up the timing slips that I was talking about in the first photo.

Just thought I'd mention them . . .