trigun7469 wrote:
I read on the Nelson ledges Facebook that they are closing, can anybody confirm?
to bring this back from the dead …
they aren't closing but here is a first hand report from this past weekend … doesn't look good
The good news is that there has not been a huge degradation in physical structures and Nelson could survive.
The bad news is that we didn't realize how good we had it. And I'm not joking.
Scott and I stopped off at the Winking Lizard in Bedford Falls on the way up. We get a panicked phone call that only a portion of the paddock is mowed and only about 10 feet around the track. Otherwise the grass is 4 feet high. Our normal paddock space is completely unusable unless someone packed a bush hog. He's worried we won't be able to race because the corner workers won't be able to see the cars on track, let along if they get off track.
And yes, the grass was literally 3.5 feet high thru most of the paddock. only the space nearest the showers was mowed. and they left behind 3.5 feet of clippings. We were able to find space for our group of 8, but we had to rake the grass into giant piles. It was a zoo.
And yes, other than the 15 feet around the track that was mowed, the grass was 3.5 feet high. In the first session a car slid off in the rain at 1 and the first time around I couldn't see what the yellow was for. And I'm in a civic. Imagine a FV or SRF.
Friday night and Saturday morning rained, which didn't help. Activity got started on time. First session in the rain. At the impound all meeting we got 3 pieces of instructions: First, if you go off and you can't see a corner station, they might not be able to see you, if you are in a safe spot get out (mental note: no thank you). Second, watch for grass fires when the grass dries out. Third, check each other for ticks.
The track itself is in slightly worse shape than last year, but not much (faint praise, I know). They put in a bunch of small patches, they didn't "pave" any sections. The figure I hear quoted is 1000ft of track. But we think it's more likely they bought 1000 sqft of pavement or some other sqft number. Overall the patches were fine, I was afraid they would tear up the moment a car hit them in anger, but they held up fine. So overall the pavement is bad, but fine to race on. Over the weekend more piece came up, but nothing big enough to really cause us an issue. Knock on wood.
There was a nasty FV rollover incident on Saturday, no one hurt, but they went from 8 FV to 3 and one of those was involved in the incident! Big delay for cleanup and the 1 hour enduro rescheduled for Sun morning.
The conditions of the bathrooms started off ok, if not great. Toilets were clean-ish, they even fixed the third shower that has been broken for the 7 years I've been going. And the one toilet that hasn't worked in 4 years. At some point Saturday someone had some kind of issue and got E36 M3 on the seat in my favorite stall. What is wrong with people, who E36 M3s on a toilet seat and leaves it there? And of course the one "fixed" toilet is already re-broken. I guess that explains why it has been marked out of order for 4 years.
It gets worse. Late Saturday night Scott reports no water in the bathrooms. Nice. I get lucky and pick a toilet that hadn't been flushed yet. But it was probably the last of them. Sunday morning there is still no water so I use the one stall that is a pit toilet. I hear retching as people open stalls to other doors and discover leftovers. While I'm in there I hear water running. Not sure what happened, but water is on. A couple of guys (workers?) are staring at the sink where the tap is on. Between drags on his cigarette one says "I hope that wasn't running all night". I say, the water's been off all night. I leave off the implied "you fricking idiot". they mumble something about maybe that was the problem but I'm thinking "the reason the tap was left on was because there was no water and the person had no clue which was off and which was on". But great, someone flipped a breaker on the water pump and we're good to go. So to speak. For now.
With about 5 minutes left in the enduro a T-4 Cobalt goes off at the kink, goes across track and rolls about 3 times, driver apparently ok, but another delay. One guy wants to blame the long grass for flipping the car, but I saw the skid marks and it looked to me like it just caught the tires in the mud in a small rut/berm (maybe 5 inches high) and over she went.
Finally we get to grid for Sunday qualifying and I hear "blah blah no water in the restrooms. please don't flush the toilets". Just to make sure everyone is irritated, they repeat this 8-10 times. Mentally I'm correcting the announcement from "don't flush the toilets" to "don't E36 M3 in the toilets". I guess that sounded even nastier. but if you don't warn people to use the outhouses, then things are going to get nasty. Which they do, not surprisingly. apparently the problem is in something called an expansion tank on the well and it never did get fixed. Oh, and the porta-johns by grid, the bridge and oak tree are gone so that leaves the one pit stall in the showers and the one outhouse by the crossover.
Apparently a lot of the equipment was 'owned' by the former mgt. The tractor for mowing. The corner communication equipment. Etc etc etc. So things are pretty rudimentary. Which is saying something for Nelson.
The new mgt might have their hearts in the right place, but they clearly have no idea how much work they are in for. They can't even mow the paddock except the part of the paddock the bikes use, which looked like a golf course in comparison to the hay field we were in. And they are going to have to learn about facility maintenance, but they better learn it damn fast. Good intentions only go so far, I think they have AT BEST, one more event to at least get thing back to the bare minimum level we're used to.
