I heard the forecaster on TV say that we’re halfway through winter. We certainly seem to be in the “depths” of it here in the Northeast. I talked about ice racing recently? I’d swear it’s TOO COLD for it, although the ice is likely great.
That thought made me realize, though, that there can be racing indoors, and I’m not talking again about slot cars. Years ago, I remember at least one motocross series happening in hockey arenas. There was a touring series, in fact. They (whoever “they” were) called it “Arena-Cross.” In Providence, RI’s Civic Center (now “The AMP”) they pulled back the bottom rows of seats, filled the place with dirt, pushed it around some, and voila! An arena-cross track.
The series attracted some of the top riders in the country – who, in the midst of winter, didn’t have anything better to do. My brother Ward, then the “performance” partner in a performance motorcycle-shop with me, prepped the bikes for future “Hot Shoe Hall of Fame Icon” Donnie Cantaloupi.
Bikes also raced at New York’s Madison Square Garden, home of the B-ball Knicks and hockey Rangers. I joined a bus ride from the old Pawtucket Cycles down to Manhattan, where we gasped at the prices of stuff around the Garden (“Two bucks for a milkshake!?”) and then watched guys flat-track around an oval stuffed into the same space as an arena-cross track.
Don’t know of any of this happening anywhere near here these days. Or even that old hockey rink that held flat-track races where anybody could race. There was no heat at all in that building, wherever it was. That’s almost as bad as ice racing on a lake.
Oh well. We’re halfway to our next green flag.