last updated on:
May 1, 2007
Updates, Information, & pages on the LOK Enterprises race team, plus links to a few other teams |
LOK Ent Links |
"Get busy living or get busy dying. That's goddamn right." Red from the movie "The Shawshank Redemption" |
November 21, 2006 "Looking Back at the First Year in Indiana" It's been a full year now since I moved back here in Nov. of 05 to basically set up shop and get some of our projects underway and finished. Linda & our dog Jasmine moved here the end of August after she finished some work commitments. Dec. 2005, A lot has happened in those 12 months. After we bought the house (and its 3+ acres) the main goals were to slowly find furniture that would go with the inside decore, and start the building permit process to build our shop. During the permit process we found out we needed to apply for a height variance as we needed the extra height for our RV. That went really without a hitch and we were approved to build right before Christmas. During this time we leased a shop space in the town of Brownsburg where a few of the race teams were based. We were here till the end of Sept. In January Tom Miller & I traveled to Tulsa, Oklahoma for the 06 version of the Chili Bowl. There we helped the Doug Bock racing team with drivers Glenn Carson & Jeff Griffin. There's a lot that happens during that week and while we didn't get the results we had hoped for, we still for the most part had fun. In March I was getting ready to head to Calif. to pickup the rest of our racing operation when I had a chance conversation with Greg Stanfill at Spike Chassis. He had a cus- tomer who needed a car delivered to California and I was heading that way with an empty trailer. After a few phone calls a deal was struck and I was off with a new Spike midget to the Reddick family of northern California. Clarence meet me in Santa Nella for the car exchange. His 10 year old son Tyler is the driver. I know it's way too young to me, but it's not my call. Clarence was great to deal with and I wish Tyler the best of luck as he continues his racing. Just as we were getting ready to start building our shop the first week of April my dad took ill and passed away. We had talked a few days before his passing and we both agreed I would come over to visit on Thursday...he passed away on Tuesday. All the e-mails & cards we received really helped us during this time. You always think you're ready or prepared for this sort of thing, but none of us really are. It hits you sooner or later. "Get busy living or get busy dying. That's goddamn right." Red from the movie "The Shawshank Redemption" I now understand these words more than ever. Most of you saw the progress of our shop from the photos posted on the LOK site. I won't go into all the problems we had but all in all we have a pretty nice building. We still have a few minor things we're dealing with, but it beats our old 2 car garage back in Union City. Between Dad's passing and different delays and pro- blems with the shop our racing plans for our 2006 summer racing were put on hold. That plus Linda's original plans were to move here the beginning of June. That got delayed to end of August...see a pattern here? I guess it wasn't meant to be. I got some of my racing fix supporting our friend Tom Miller, with his driver for 2006, Kent Christan. They finished 2nd in Bloomington Speedway points, and had 5 main event wins during the season. Kent took a bad spill in Iowa that kept him out for 2 weeks. As of now I'm not sure of their 2007 plans. We started moving things into our new shop in September. We still need to get numerous items and finalize where it will all go. We decided to go ahead and finish our basement build-out before any more is done to the shop...trying to get that done before winter hits hard. The sprinter and Stealth midget are all but done and the CanDo midget is about 90% done. So we're not slowing down the race effort for 2007 by finishing our basement. Plans are for a theater room, game room as well as a half bath. It'll be nice when it's too cold to go out or it will be a great hang-out when we have company. Well anyway as I write this Linda & I have a new challenge as Jasmine (our dog) has bone cancer in her right front leg. We plan to start treatment early next week. Hopefully we can give her a little more pain free time. We all feel at home here and the only bad thing about leaving California is leaving all our friends. As of now we're not planning on starting our racing season at the Chili Bowl, but that could change. We may take the sprinter down to Florida in February...we'll see. I'll have some new photos on the web site soon. Take care, "Happy Thankgiving" Don & Linda |
