In today’s episode of “Vintage Sled Adventures”, I traveled north to the great racing mecca of Alexandria with Bob Poirier and the rest of his new race team. The idea was that I was going to help them out a little bit and see how the other racers are shaping up. My race sled isn’t ready, nor is my team mates, so it was the only way to spend Sunday smelling race fumes.

A mere mile from the Alexandria exit, we get a phone call: Race cancelled. It seems the ice was great the night before, but this morning it was covered with water. A good call on track owner Scott Tillman’s part, but it left a lot of disappointed racers.

So we trucked on home, hearing that a snowstorm was coming to the Twin Cities. We just beat it, getting into town as the roads had start to become intolerable. I got home and took care of some business, then headed to the garage for a little QGT (That’s Quality Garage Time for those of you living in San Francisco).

The snow did come. Lots and lots of it. Looks like about a foot to me, and it’s still coming down. If I stick my head out side, I can hear sleds running all over the place.

Then it hits me. I have 8 (count ‘em) 8 snowmobiles with me. It’s snowing hard. Not one of the sleds is prepared to go for a ride on the day we finally ge a ton of snow.

Can you say “Irony”?

Nice job! Traffic again took a huge leap on the website, and this time we exceeded the available bandwidth. Sorry for the inconvenience – but that’s a quality problem to have!

HAVE A GREAT 2007!

Time magazine has declared YOU person of the year… Why? Because the Internet has put YOU in control of information. Never before has the control of information been less centralized. No government, no media conglomeration, just you. And you have responded to your new found control in a big, big way. Look at the amazing amount of information and content on sites like YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia and other Web 2.0 sites. For all of your contributions, Time has made you person of the year.

“…for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you.”

When I started doing this site 7 years ago (Oh my God has it really been that long already?), it was largely because I could not believe there wasn’t much (if anything) on the net about old sleds. I soon realized that I needed to encourage as many of you as I could to put the information lurking in your brains, the pictures in your closet and the videos under your bed about old sleds on the net to share. That is now really starting to happen.

Not only do sites like Davids, SnowPOD, and RetroSno give me my daily fix of Sled Porn, the Bull Sessions have proven to be an hourly source of it, and it’s gone beyond just being Sled Porn, and is now officially more addictive than herioin.

Need and example? Here’s one. Garry Merrit (also known as 72tx340 on the Bull Sessions) uploaded these videos. The first two are what was considered to be one of the greatest races of all time: Yvon Duhamel and Mike Trapp battling out in 1971. The second is a prior heat race to the greatest race.

Last, but not least, is Andy Avelis running his sleds. I met Andy several years back and I remained stunned at his collection of rare Cat racing and muscle sleds. But I’d never seen Andy go to a show and fire them all up before! How many chances to do you get to hear an 800 King Kat or 77.5 SnoPro run?

THANKS GARY!