My Nascar cyber friends

Some background: You might think growing up in Maine is an unlikely place for a 35 year Nascar fan to be from. Well, unlike the rest of New England where the tradition is more open-wheel modifieds, Maine has a stockcar tradition going back at least to my memories of going to Unity Raceway with my dad in the early '70's. I'm not sure how much of a fan he was but he was a tire salesman and had "connections" to race teams. He was at least a casual friend of one of the big names at that time, Pete Silva. I had an uncle who was a Nascar fan, and I remember listening to the races visiting with my cousin, watching the few races that were on TV (Wide World of Sports). Always wanting to be different, everyone around me was a Chevy fan but I kept hearing this guy named Richard Petty in Dodge whipping their butts. Thus the lifelong Mopar and Petty racing loyalties. Then in my teen years my best friend's brother was one of the better local drivers, and we used to go to all the races and help work on the car. His name was Jimmy McGinnis, always drove the A-1; and he was still racing when I took my daughters to Unity a few years ago.
I continued to go to races locally, watch and listen to some others; and went to my first race live at Riverside, CA in 1985. (Why not a few years earlier when I was living in the southeast is still a mystery)

Approximately 10 years ago while surfing the internet, looking for Nascar-related articles I stumbled upon a message board about Nascar at CNN/SI's website. That board no longer exists and I'm not even sure the website still exists. But this was a lively board (you can read lively as positive and negative) that was relatively new when I found it. So I was easily able to get into the beginning of conversations and found these people respected and welcomed my thoughts. These were people like me who had followed the sport for years, were passionate and knowledgeable about it; and we all quickly built up friendships there.
An example, even though this was a monitored board, one of the guys might say something a little too harshly about someone else's driver or something; and somehow the ladies on the board ended up relagating us to "under da porch," a metaphor for going to your room or sitting in the corner.
Eventually CNN/SI stopped hosting message boards. After that we moved from board to board for various reasons, always naming it Under da Porch. Well 10 years later there is still a core of us, approximately 10, that are still very active participants on our message board that were there from the beginning and several other loyalists who've joined along the way. We've lost touch with some dear friends (Graybo, Sprayberry, Big Bill and others) through the years; but we've also become very good friends, the rest of us. Various members meet up at races (usually the 600, which I went to in 2004) or sometimes when someone's just driving through.
We are fans of various drivers. Myself? Anyone who drives the 43, Kyle Petty, still hoping Ricky Craven isn't finished and became one of the earliest members of the Kasey Kahne bandwagon. Gotta love that red Dodge with the Ram on the hood!
We've become somewhat of a secret society in that we like to have control over the types of people we interact with and how we interact; but we've decided that we need some new blood, as it were, to liven up our board. We do talk about other things a little, though we try to steer away from things that people always argue about.
So if you're interested in joining us, you can email me for the map and secret password. We won't let just anyone in. We're only interested in people who love Nascar (newbies and oldtimers), who are respectful of others and their opinions, and who want to join us. Many of them read my blogs and I'm hoping they'll add their comments here to fill in what I've left out. They may say that they'd prefer I add the link in here, with the proviso that new folks read our rules and understand there'll be a probationary period.
Nascar Maine message boards Coke 600 Petty Unity Raceway Under da Porch Nextel Cup Nascar fans