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Fire at Watkins Glen International!!!!!!

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Banjo

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Breaking news on the local networks. The "Glen Club" building is on fire! info is sketchy. The fire started around 9 pm, and it looks to be getting twards the end now from the news footage. the local news crews can't get any good info, but are showing some footage from a little earlier. From what I see the building is a total loss.
I predict the end result will be an all-new, better-than-before Glen Club.
For those who don't know, the "Glen Club" is a building at the lower end of the "esses" that is rented to VIPs and organizations. It has, I think, 4 seperate suites with closed circuit TV,catering and huge viewing windows overlooking the track. the roof is also a viewing deck for wathing the action.
 
Now that they run Nascar races there,
it'll probably come back even grander,
& bigger.

- Doug
 
I just talked to MaryAnn (the WG track manager) a few weeks ago.
I sure hope this doesn't raise our rates! (we're paying around $16,000 a day, plus insurance right now!)
We won't be there until Oct 20-21, so I guess it'll be resolved by then.
 
The old "traditions" are getting more up-scale, eh /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif ? Anyone still remember the "burnings" of the sixties and early seventies before the "facilities" became concrete (back in the day when the "bog" was still a Glen "attraction", hehe? /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/crazyeyes.gif
 
I think the clubhouse made a bigger fire than the grayhound, but it'll never have the same lasting legacy. That was classic.
The "bog" is woods and parking lot now. outside the main fence. It takes one who was there to tell you where it was. I bet a search with a metal detector would be fun.
The roof of that clubhouse was a rubber mat made of ground up tires. I bet that was nice when it went up.
 
The bog. Wow.

/bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/devilgrin.gif
 
bugimike Anyone still remember the "burnings" of the sixties and early seventies said:
only the bra's
Click to expand...
 
bugimike said:
Anyone still remember the "burnings" of the sixties and early seventies before the "facilities" became concrete (back in the day when the "bog" was still a Glen "attraction", hehe? /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/crazyeyes.gif
Click to expand...
A guy I know well claims to have instigated the bus in the bogg idea. (But not the burning)
Charlie Cyphard, if anyone recognizes the name.
He drove a LaDawri at the time.

(And yes...He has muddy pictures of himself near the bus)
 
That was back in the day when I wish I had pictures of half the stuff that went on there! Unfortunately, I wasted all my film of taking pictures of cars and stuff! (I was never too good at capturing the "historic" stuff...do remember it all though!!) /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/devilgrin.gif

PS: well, at least MOST of it!! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif
 
Ah yes, The Bog.

I confess....I have Bogged, but it was towards the end of Bog History (and I never set anything on fire...some of that stuff was out-of-hand).

Here's a "Glen story":

A few years ago we were at the Glen for an EMRA race and a group of us went to eat at the Seneca Lodge.
Everyone in the group was in their 50s and 60s including Bill and Judy, who've been married about 10 years (second time around for both of them)

Bill asks me when was the first time I'd been to The Glen?
"1968" I said.
"Hey! Me too!" he says.
Then his wife, Judy says, "Hey, I was at The Glen in '68 too!"
Bill looks at Judy and says, "Hmmmm...I never knew that!"
I say to Judy, "You didn't by chance meet up with any guys with a black VW, did you?"
"No", she says.
"Good!" says I.

We had a good laught after that, talking about my '68 trip to The Glen in my old black VW.

Check these pages for Bog and Summer Jam pictures (Caution: not all pictures are "work safe").

https://www.glenphotos.com/bog/index.html

https://www.glenphotos.com/summerjam/index.html

The Bog
wg.jpg
 
Oh Ho!!, I will have to post some of my Summer Jam pictures too /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grouphug.gif /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/banana.gif /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/banana.gif !! Were you there /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/cheers.gif ? Dumb question, eh? Half the country was there it seems...camped right where we always camped for the races, on the back straight!! What a week-end THAT was!! I never sat in a traffic jam!! Years of going to the races, and we cruised in on back roads, to within 100yds of the East gate! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/cowboy.gif

PS: I have "toasted a few marshmallows" /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/devilgrin.gif , but was never personally responsible for igniting anything!! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/angel.gif
 
Rats....I didn't realize that there were 600,000 people there.

The way the guy I know told it, it was more like a group of friends.

Of course you people wouldn't know Charley Cyphard.

(You old people were out of control.....WTH?)
 
Control wasn't part of the vocabulary back then, and yeah, it was kinda like a big group of friends getting together /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grouphug.gif ! Amazing thing to experience the whole 2.3 mile road course "bumper-to-bumper" with pedestrians /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/banana.gif /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/banana.gif /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/banana.gif /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/banana.gif !! (Where's that "keep on truckin'" wingding?)
 
I missed the Glen in '73 and '74... /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/cry.gif WAAAH!!! I was off in south east asia. Missed the LAST race too. Had a Buick implant itself into my GTV two blocks from the hovel on the way to the event. Still have the tickets around here someplace. GRRR...
 
Neat photos, I was a Capt. in the Air Force by that time and missed all the fun.
 
Ahh! Ya made me go diggin', but couldn't get deep enough!! Here's some stuff I did manage to find though!
 

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'77 was Horsemits' intro to F-1 racin' "up-close". We parked the GTV in the Lotus enclave (!) and slept onna ground in sleeping bags. Woke to "The Sound." She syas: "WAZZAT?!?!"

"heh... REAL racing engines!" Dragged her to the barrier at the entrance to the esses outta turn one, infield and she about wet herself as Ronnie went SCREAMIN' by in that lovely black cigar-tube Lotus...

WOOHOO!!!!
 
bugimike said:
Control wasn't part of the vocabulary back then, and yeah, it was kinda like a big group of friends getting together /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grouphug.gif ! Amazing thing to experience the whole 2.3 mile road course "bumper-to-bumper" with pedestrians
Click to expand...

I was camping at Summit Point in the mid-eighties and drunken partiers were taking their vehicles onto the track. Two groups of campers were at war with bottle rockets. One group would pile into the bed of a pick-up and the driver would take them on the course at high speed, tires squealing all around the track, to the opposing group, where they would shoot bottle rockets at each other. Then the other group would retaliate. Went on all night.

At the next race, a State Police car was parked across Pit Out after the racing was over.
 
DrEntropy said:
'77 was Horsemits' intro to F-1 racin' "up-close". We parked the GTV in the Lotus enclave (!) and slept onna ground in sleeping bags. Woke to "The Sound." She syas: "WAZZAT?!?!"

"heh... REAL racing engines!" Dragged her to the barrier at the entrance to the esses outta turn one, infield and she about wet herself as Ronnie went SCREAMIN' by in that lovely black cigar-tube Lotus...

WOOHOO!!!!
Click to expand...

I think that was the first one my wife attended also!! Dragged her to the same spot! Walked up to the end of the front straight from there, to the speed traps right before the braking zone, she goes "Oh my God, they're going so fast they're strobing!!" All she remembers today though is that she ran into Paul Newman, literally, POW, face-to-face, knocked each other silly, neither paying attention to where they were walking, lost in conversations, hehe. Ran into him again later in the tower (the old building that used to be where the new one that burned was). He was very gracious, a racing experience she will NEVER forget, hehe!
 
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