Humbled

The other weekend was the CNY SCCA awards dinner. I went to it, knowing that I was winning the class award for our Street Prepared/Street Modified class (a bit of a hollow victory as I was one of only 2 cars to even be eligible for a win, and lost to the guy who got 2nd every event he attended), which is of course a hat. I also was one of three people to win an Iron Man trophy, which is awarded to people who attended every event and took every timed lap available to them, which worked out to 56 runs, most of which were over 60 seconds and 2 of which were our 240+ second enduro event. 

But I was most surprised to be the recipient of the Richard H Posenaur Memorial Outstanding Member Of The Year Award. Every year this award is given to a single person by the previous year's recipient along with a speech. The reasons cited were for being there at every event, being one of the first to arrive and last to leave, working 2 jobs at each event (tech inspector and grid), stopping what I was doing to help fix broken competitor's cars or offer a seat in my car if it was unfixable and spreading awareness of CNY autocross, and autocross in general, at other events and over social media.

In addition to this small plaque, which I get to keep permanently, I also received temporary ownership of a permanent trophy that has the name of every recipient since 1963 engraved on it . To have only been racing for 3 years and already have left a mark with some rather august company is genuinely humbling

The funny thing was, we were sitting through the speech and a fellow racer is looking at me going "Who is this about?" and I'm going "No clue." Then I started going "Is this me? I think it might be me" and then there the was final line about "To the man with the purple rollbar" and it all clicked and I started laughing.

Two weeks later I'm still kind of in awe. The only downside is now that next year I have to select someone and give a speech.

Congratulations!! 

Congratulations, that's awesome. Even better to get recognized for doing something you do because you enjoy it.

Dude, congrats!

Well deserved, I’m sure!  Congratulations. 

Very nice. Congrats. 

Wow, that is really cool!

Congratulations!

Well done!  That's what autocross is all about man, having fun with cars.

Congratulations!

Congrats!!! Super cool

I'm told by previous recipients that the hardest part of giving out the award is not choosing someone, but narrowing it down to just one single person.

Well done and congrats!

I'm honestly a little surprised/disappointed at the fact that none of you have used this as an opportunity to wrangle a drive in my car. Rest assured, it is not a piece of junk either.

Thanks for doing what you're doing. You may not realize it yet, but you're also setting the tone of the event for new people. Having the face of the sport being a nice friendly guy makes that behavior the expectation in new people. They act the same way, and the sport gets better. Positivity feeds upon itself. Good job. 

I will admit that there were a few events where I never even walked the course before my first run. I would drive an hour-plus to the event, unload and setup my car, help set up registration and then do tech and then it would be time for the driver's meeting and the first run group, during which I would be running grid, then strap into my car for second run group with no knowledge of the course

Very cool. Congratulations. 

NickD said:

I will admit that there were a few events where I never even walked the course before my first run. I would drive an hour-plus to the event, unload and setup my car, help set up registration and then do tech and then it would be time for the driver's meeting and the first run group, during which I would be running grid, then strap into my car for second run group with no knowledge of the course

I sometimes think that might actually be better.  Things that seem so obvious at walking speed become a blur at race speed so why not just learn that and throw away your first run as a tire warmer anyway.

KyAllroad (Jeremy) said:

NickD said:

I will admit that there were a few events where I never even walked the course before my first run. I would drive an hour-plus to the event, unload and setup my car, help set up registration and then do tech and then it would be time for the driver's meeting and the first run group, during which I would be running grid, then strap into my car for second run group with no knowledge of the course

I sometimes think that might actually be better.  Things that seem so obvious at walking speed become a blur at race speed so why not just learn that and throw away your first run as a tire warmer anyway.

Also, I think every time I did it was when we were racing at the Fulton County Police EVOC site, which despite it's 0.8 mile length, was limited in course layout, essentially being slalom-big turn-slalom-big turn-slalom-increasing radius turn-straight over bumps through finish. The only real reason you needed to walk it was to know what direction the slaloms started on.

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