This may have been one of the best years I’ve had at Waconia. I didn’t bring a sled, I didn’t have a booth, I wasn’t racing, and I didn’t get crazy on bids in the silent auction like I normally do. Instead, I just went riding, caught up with dozens and dozens of old friends, watched everyone else race, enjoyed looking at everyone else’s fantastic work on their restorations and just had a dang good time.
Saturday the weather was fantastic for January in Minnesota. Not too cold, and not melting. The Rola Races were a BLAST to watch, and adding in a few of the twin cylinder races for good measure was a welcome addition.
The trail ride was amazing. But me and my group of Polaris fanatics hung back from the main group – which was HUGE – and took a ride later, after the trail had cleared a bit. All that was on the trail was a few stragglers, the unlucky ones who broke down, and a lot of people just watching for fun.
We ran our sleds carefully, not too fast, since none of us bothered to put a helmet on. It just seemed to nice out to be all covered up like that. I have to say, I think that it was the first time I’ve ever ridden a sled without a helmet. What a different experience being able to hear every aspect of the machine running. My thanks to Dale for letting me ride his 77 340 TX and his excellent condition 77 TXL. Lee Resler also let me take his 73 TX out several times. Great fun.
I hung around with friends all late afternoon Saturday, then stayed for about 1/2 of the banquet. I met and talked to so many people that I think I started to lose track of who I was talking to.
One of the BIG highlights for me was the Phil Mickelson Rotax motor collection – wow! Talk about rare motors! Later that night I found out the Clone Blizzard that was being auctioned off for the Make-A-Wish foundation brought in a whopping $4,500!
Sunday morning, I was back bright and early to see the massive array of Ski-Doo sleds on the field. I was NOT disappointed. There was so many I didn’t know where to start. But I took my time and took as many in as I could. One highlight for me was the 76 SnoPro that had and original 76 SnoPro motor in it. Very cool. The lineup of RV’s was pretty amazing, as was the TNT lineup. Very nice sleds all around.
Amongst the non Ski-Doo’s, I took notice of an amazing looking Ski-Whiz up on the hill as well as two stunning 79 Polaris Centurions. Talk about nice. There was a lot of really great sleds up there and a ton of people having a good time seeing old the old stuff
Drag races were the highlight out on the lake on Sunday. Then it was on to the award ceremony. Before they started, I got chance to meet and talk with Girard and randy Karpik, Larry Rugland, John Erlandson and again, many more people I’ve met over the years from the website.
All in all, I greatly enjoyed the weekend, and I thank the Waconia committee that does the show for the incredible hard work they do each and every year to make that show the best it can be, and make so many memories for collectors, enthusiasts, racers and anyone with an interest in old sleds.
Back in the office on Monday I got a pleasant surprise. I took a look at the traffic for the website and what do you know? A new record with 72,383 visitors who looked at a whopping 3.7 million pages in January.
No wonder I had to increase the bandwidth three times! My thanks to everyone who helps out with the site and to those of you who keep checking us out every day – we do appreciate it!