Meeting 7-9:00pm-ish on June 5th, 2025 with the monthly meeting happening at Laurel Auto Clinic, aka “Carl’s Shop” Laurel, MT. As always. Attendees tonight were Carl, Matt, Dean, Dave R., Briant, Jared, Micah, Lane, Luke, Jess, Kindra and Chris. Tonight we started with smol, overcooked banana bread that sucked, big ol’ cookies that Micah brought and stories of swindling and melted blocks and freezer cookies. Matt drove to SLC to pick up a Colbalt, the guy wanted 5k, but it wasn’t worth 1k. For the first time in a long time, Matt turned it down. As far as melted cookies go, Micah had his cookies in the hot car for too long. But being the genius that he is, put them in the freezer to cool. This idea was genius because Kindra really likes cold cookies. Luke discussed Darrin’s warped SAAB block, and we decided it would be genius to put it in the freezer as well. Works, right?
**CONGRATS LANE AND TRINITY ON YOUR NEW RACECAR DRIVER!**
—-*Carl Jones (El Jefe), Matt Boggio (El Jefito), Lane (Treasurer) and Kindra Munda (Secretary) graced us with their presence this evening*—-
TREASURERS REPORT:
The club’s finances include: $16,549.49. This total includes the sponsorship checks, and possibly the Bridger check. Cotters was paid $170 for Bridger, Airstrip venue was paid $550, recognition plaques for our super awesome sponsors was $76. Microsoft application was $129.99. All is well financially. Wonder why I say this? The end of an era. The saga is finished. Kindra, what are you taking about?!? Did anyone notice that Bridger airstrip payment was a *bit* more this year? I saw you go back and read the beginning again. If you didn’t know, now you do. THE BRIDGER RUNWAY LIGHT IS PAID FOR! Matt was able to finagle a way to pay for the light by just including it in the payment for the venue. Genius, right? We did get great pics of the historic check writing, but they want cash so we will change some things. Pics to follow of this historic occasion. After 3+ years, this story comes to a close. Will someone smash through another light next year? We hope not, but crazier things have happened…..
*Aviators Cup – Bridger season opener was a complete success this season. We had 32 drivers, 8 of those were weekend memberships. Why do we care if they were members or not? Because if we keep seeing and influx of weekend memberships, we may begin to see an increase in region members and that means more drivers!! Yay! Income was $1826.66, and costs were $1368. Net income was $458-ish.
*Timing – Lane will make up some instruction sheets for timing in the event he is unable to attend a meeting. This will help ensure a smooth event with the new equipment. Lane also has voiced his desire to only do timing at AutoX moving forward. He has graciously finished the RallyX season, thank you. We are looking for volunteers to step up and learn some new tricks! The ideal candidate would possess the following:
1. Pulse
2. Fingers (size and number does not matter) at least 2 fingers would be ideal.
3. Interest in learning
4. Show up at 6 am throughout this AutoX season to learn all the intricacies of the timing. Mostly plug and play, however, there is a flow chart and some situations that can arise throughout a season. It is essential the ideal candidate is around consistently to learn all this so they can be better.
5. Possibly be interested in a discount. Talk to Matt or Carl for more information.
*AutoX 2025 – There is a lot gonna happen this season and we have solidified some great dates for the schedule Summer 2025. So, put those engines back together, get those batteries secured and make sure to have a properly functioning distributer! Remember, bungee cords are NOT proper battery tie downs. Remember, YR108 is not the only place to get thrills! Great Falls and Bozeman have events as well. Hope to see ya out there!
*YDS – We have had our first event out at YDS for the season, and CW decided it was cool if we put down cold patch asphalt stuff. So we did. And we burned through the 4 bags we acquired to try. Then Carl went and got 10 more bags, and most of those were all used as well. The event was a success overall. Less holes were in the pad when we left than there were when we arrived. Quite the opposite from last season…. We were able to use the grill and have access to the ice. Thanks CW!
*MSR – It’s open and ready to register. MSR has Bridger up and ready for The Aviator Cup at Bridger Airstrip. Be sure to get registered and look for those emails from Hagerty/MSR. If you think you’ll be traveling or just want to play outside your usual area code (sorry Montana and Wyoming), you can always find events on their website. Our events are listed as well as Bozeman and others. So, check it out, sign up and get ready! Carl has updated the classing online to reflect 2025 rules, so if you see anything that looks too TOO TOO crazy, let him know.
*Starter School – The first Metra and ACF sponsored event will have a Starter School (of sorts) for new drivers and interested people who don’t wanna commit to a full day of racing, or for those who just wanna start slow (no pun intended) and just get their toes a little wet with AutoX. The Starter School will be at one end of the Metra lot with 2-3 simple features for folks to come and give it a go. For this, we WILL need at least 4 Safety Stewards for the June Event at the Metra. We will still need to hash out the actual Starter School design and who will be there for this event. It was discussed also if someone wanted to do the Starter School in the am, and then the actual AutoX in the pm, we would need 2 safety meetings possibly. It was discussed about having School and then rolling their fees from School into their actual Event fees if they want more.
*Archie Cochrane at the Metra – Hooray! We have our event ready to go! We will charge $20 for Saturday this year to accommodate for the MSR fees and the sanctioning fees required by SCCA. If you remember the last newsletter, feels went up this year. There will also be NO 1st time driver discount here, because $20 is pretty darn cheap already. We will have 4 safety stewards at this event, 2 per group. This will be a high energy event so come prepared. Have your snack, eat your banana and juice up on the coffee or Monsters. Sunday will be $55 for members/$70 for non-members. If you choose to run both days, totals will be $65/$80 respectively. Course design will be Lane and Jerod. The design for Starter School will be a separate pair of club members, Matt and another person. Also, we will advertise the Starter School on Facebook. Thanks again Jason for sponsoring us!
*Hot Shots – The Helena event in July will also be shared by the motorcycle club again. They have no affiliation with RMESTC, and have paid for their piece of asphalt the same as us. I wondered if they had some sort of connection with RMESTC. But they don’t. So, we will be on our best behavior but possibly parking as close to them as we can. Maybe if we park out big rigs over there, the trailers will block their view of our activities, since it was reported to us last year that our event was distracting to the riders. Maybe if they picked a cool sport…
*Tech Day – Our annual Tech Day was a screaming success…. Again…. Like always…. You already know. We performed 29 technical inspections to jump start our AutoX season. Thanks again to Jason for allowing us to use his lot for this awesome day filled with camaraderie, Dairy Queen and sunburns.
*Night RallyX – What? Did you just read that right? Maybe you did. Maybe you should come to a meeting. It might be in the works, Briant may have scrubbed the SCCA Rally Rule Book to make sure we’re doing it right….
** IMPORTANT DATES**
June 21-22 – ACF and the Metra Meltdown
July 12-13 – Coneageddon YDS
July 19-20 – Rocky Mountain Rebels Car Club Riverton, Wyo
July 19 – Bozeman at The Commons
July 26-27 – Hot Shots in Helena Meeting adjourned early tonight. There are so many topics and conversation tangents that it is unreal the amount of fun we have. Micah brought cookies and they were completely devoured by the end of the night, again. Thanks, Micah, for the sweets. Wait a minute, I remember him saying this was the long game he devised. To fatten us up and then we would get slow…..