The dreaded off season begins which for a lot of us means doing the chores around home and catching up with the people we have 'abandoned' during the racing season. For me it also means having a look back over the last season and doing a book review (more about that in a moment) and finally after mentioning it to someone last season getting a few of my photos framed and out on display. From the photo above you can see we are also re-gibbing the house - this is the before. We are also re-piling, re-cladding and re-painting which of course also means we are re-financing! Never buy a 90 year old house, no matter how attractive it looks. I'm loving my Peter Rees fundraising poster (number 21/100) and can't believe these weren't snapped up immediately, got mine off TradeMe and there are a few left here. Also three photos I took over the last season in frames I got from the good old Warehouse for about $12.00 each, of the triumphant Panthers team members at the Auckland Teams event, a shot of 1nz Kyle Lane and of Peter Rees coming into the pits at Blenheim at the NZ title 2011. There's also a vintage stockcar, a "Grumpy Old Bastards" racing badge and my Speedway Saturday Night clock. I plan to add to this collection by dusting off some more stuff from the garage over the winter months.
The other major thing I will be doing as I mentioned before is the fourth installment of my Speedway Review. I haven't sold too many of these over the years yet, but the people buying them are a select few with good taste(!) including a few drivers who have appeared on the pages which gave me a great buzz. Last season I managed to get some great contributions from photographers and enthusiasts from around the country which makes it more of a speedway annual than just Gregobro's trips round NZ. Hopefully they will all be on board again this season and already I have some photos from Brendon Learmonth at Palmy who has sent me some awesome shots. If you are keen to send some let me know, the pay is terrible (ie nothing) but you get a credit in the book and a link to your website and the "glory" of having your photos remembered in a book that celebrates the 2010/11 season. Above all else that is the reason I do them, first as a great reminder for myself of what happened and to have something tangible rather than just the reviews on the website, and also they are a great time capsule - the first book from season 07/08 has a number of cars that have been onsold, scrapped or gone MIA, imagine what looking back at these books will be like in 20 years.
Updates will slow down over the next couple of months but I do hope to do a roll call of the Auckland Stockcars that appeared this year, and there were plenty of them, lets hope that rise in numbers continues for season 11/12. Anyway, better go, gotta book to write!
gregobro@xtra.co.nz
