Jay and Pat etc...
Before you go and make a lot of assumptions let me give you more of the
story than Jeff did:
The site :
The site was at Southwest Texas State University's football stadium.
They are in the process of changing from NAIA to NCAA division 1. They are
doing everything they can to make the campus and the athletic facilities
look as good as they can to impress the NCAA officials. Last January they
applied a sealer coat to the lot and restriped it. Texas Spokes was unaware
of this until we showed up for our first event at that location for the year
in February. We realized we were in for a probem about half way through the
day when we could see the sealer coat wearing down and the new stripes
beginning to fade. This was not caused by CP cars or ESP cars or Karts... It
was caused by running 133 different cars through the course 5 times each!
665 runs will destroy a thin sealer coat on any lot, regardless of the cars,
be it Miata, Neons, Camaros or karts The damage was minimal at the start
line and most prominant at the tighter turns.
Reaction:
The only thing we could have done better is perhaps call off the event
during the 3rd or 4th heat (we run 8 heats during the day) as soon as we
realized we were doing the damage. We chose to continue. Monday morning our
club president was on the phone to our contact at the stadium. At that time
we offered to restripe the affected areas or do whatever we could to make
things right. We also made several follow up calls to see if any decision
had been reached. We never heard anything back from the University until the
day they recieved our payment and insurance certificate for the event that
was supposed to take in less than one week. At that time we were informed
that the facility was no longer available for autocrosses.
Cost:
Our rental fee was a measley $150 per day. Admittedly not enough to make
them care if they lost the business. HOWEVER....our club has been VERY
active in raising money for a scholarship fund in the name of one of our
past members who was an alumnus of the university. At last count over
$20,000 in the seven years since Steve's death. Our club has been on the
President's or Vice President's List of contributors every year.
Karts:
Beginning this year, our club does run karts. When we approved them, we
decided to only try them at our largest smoothest site while we got a feel
for running them. This site was our second largest and smoothest. We had
decided to allow karts at this site, starting with this (cancelled) event.
Tom
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