Ditto The Back Up Plan

I'm worried that I might be wearing out my back up plan idea as for the second straight night I had to go to plan B in order to see some racing. Wednesday's story was a strange one of apparently missed communications which left more questions than answers.
After the rains went through parts of Iowa on Tuesday night, I was left to hand tough and wait for some word on who might be racing and who was under water. My first choice was to attend the USMTS show at Denison as I was in that area and hadn't been to Denison to a race in many years. In fact, the last time I was at a race in Denison the track was still a half mile and the late Howard Mellinger was running things. That, as they say, was quite some time ago.
I spoke to someone from the track at mid morning and they informed me that the races were on. Later, after traveling down the road quite a distance toward Denison, I called the USMTS home office just to confirm and was told the same thing, the races were on and hot laps were scheduled for 7:15 p.m.
So, with everything under control, or so I thought, I went to lunch and then headed to the local library to get some work done. Imagine my surprise when I opened up my e-mails and found that one of them contained the news that Denison had been rained out! Hoping this was some sort of gag, I then went to the USMTS site where the news was confirmed. I'm not sure what happened or when it happened, but something drastic must have happened to get such a last minute change of heart. I was told by a friend that pictures he saw from the track confirmed that the area was very wet. So, why did they wait so long to pull the plug if indeed the track was that wet? This is probably a question that will never be answered but clearly, at the least, there was some major miscommunications going on somewhere.
The bottom line for me was here I was at mid afternoon on an absolutely gorgeous day and no where to go. But, not so fast, wait a minute. Southern Iowa Speedway is Oskaloosa was scheduled to race on Wednesday and maybe if they didn't get too much rain, they might still be racing. Sure enough, they were still a go so after a quick check of the map, off I went toward central Iowa and about three hours later I rolled into the parking lot at the Mahaska County Fairgrounds.
On tap was a regular night of racing which meant five IMCA sanctioned classes of racing and on this night, an extra grand spread into the purse courtesy of nightly sponsors Bill & Ray's. That is a towing and recovery business in Osky and they had a huge rotater truck parked in the middle of the track with an American flag hanging from it that would be a source of pride for any Perkins in the country.
The car counts on this beautiful night were not spectacular with enough cars signed in for two heats in all classes except the Sport Compacts. There were, however, plenty of strong cars ready to race so while the starting lineups might look real spectacular, there was the promise of plenty of hard racing ahead.
The minor amounts of rain they got earlier plus trying to guess the weather threw them for a bit of a loop as the track was just not wet enough early and required a little more TLC before the races could begin. However, once they got going things flew by with only two yellows total needed in the heats and all the qualifying done in forty one minutes!
A quick break for a candy toss and it was time for feature racing to begin. First up was the Sport Compact main and Jake Benischek held off the challenge of the Whalen brothers in a non stop main event. Shane Evans looked like he might be a real challenger for the win until he lost a right front wheel.
The Sport Mod main was kind of crazy as first Logan Anderson, while battling for second, got turned by another car and had to go to the tail. Then, track kingpin in this class at Osky, Curtis VanDerWal, spun all by himself and had to go tail back too. This allowed Brett Lowry to run off and hide from the field.
Speaking of running off and hiding, the Stock Car feature was a good battle for the first half of the race but then Cayden Carter pulled away from the field. In a rare Stock Car blowout, Carter came from tenth and then stretched his lead to nearly a straightaway in a rare Stock Car snoozer although the battle for second between Mike Hughes and Todd Inman was pretty good. 
The Hobby Stock feature was probably the best race of the night with the drivers swapping positions on the track during the first half of the event. Then, everyone went to the top and left the bottom lane open and Dustin Griffiths came pouring through, racing up from ninth to take the win.
The Modifieds wrapped up the night and it was win number twenty for Ricky Thornton Jr. For a number of laps, Zack VanderBeek held the lead and it looked like he might make the bottom work for the win, but Thornton Jr was persistent and moved to the top and eventually drove around Zack and then pulled away for the win. One reason Thornton Jr is so successful is that he flat out drives harder into the corners than most of the other drivers and he makes up great amounts of time that way. He is determined and never backs off and continues to try until he finds a line that works for him. He's not afraid to search around on the track until he finds a line that helps him pick up speed and he is not satisfied to just trail someone else around the track.
Interestingly, the top three finishers in the Modified feature was likely have not been there if the show at Denison had not be rained out.
A late arrival Wednesday was South Dakota driver Casey Skyberg who got to the track so late he missed his heat race and took a couple of hot laps late in the race. Skyberg, who has raced at tracks under USRA, WISSOTA and IMCA sanctioning already this year, puzzled everyone with his late appearance and it is unknown if Osky was his primary target for the evening or maybe he went to plan B too!
All racing was complete before 10 p.m and a nice sized pre holiday crowd filed out the gates on what was one of the nicest race nights so far this year. Thanks again to Mike V. and his crew.