Chesapeake Region
Autocross 2022! Greg Hartke
Welcome to Autocross 2022! I’ve been waiting and waiting on the folks at Prince George’s Stadium (PGS) to work on my scheduling request (they were holding off, awaiting further direction from the County) and with no update, I had this article for the Patter all written and ready to send early to Patter Editor James Beavan. I was (ever hopeful…) holding off ‘til closer to the deadline to submit when, out of the blue, the Director of Ticket Operations at PGS contacted me with the needed information and we began to work in earnest on the schedule. Astonishingly, I was able to close negotiations on the AX schedule in record time and am now able to present the 2022 AX schedule: Venue
Date
Day
Event
PGS PGS PGS RPKN PGS PGS PGS PGS PGS
2022-03-20 2022-04-02 2022-04-16 2022-05-29 2022-06-25 2022-07-09 2022-08-14 2022-09-17 2022-10-22
Sunday Saturday Saturday Sunday Saturday Saturday Sunday Saturday Saturday
Test and Tune AX School AX#1 AX#2 AX#3 AX#4 AX#5 AX#6 AX#7
Scheduling AX is an interesting endeavor because I have to work around the Bowie Baysox home baseball schedule, other events at PGS (of which there are many), the Potomac AX schedule, the Chesapeake PCA event schedule (to a certain extent – I only work around the really major events), and holidays. All these imposed constraints certainly make the task interesting. My original event schedule proposal was sent to PGS right after Thanksgiving (which is fairly early for the next year), so maybe I was near the top of the priority list for scheduling when the word from the County came in. Who knows? Certainly, I have a really good working relationship with the Director of Ticket Operations at PGS (she’s very good – very communicative and has been quick to turn around requests) and that can never hurt. As it turned out, there was no date available at PGS for the month of May, but I expected there to be at least one date that wouldn’t work, so I had a backup plan: If I couldn’t find a date for a particular month, I was just going to try to schedule an event that month at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen. Actually, I was sweating over possible scheduling at Ripken because the delay from PGS this year meant that available dates there had to be shrinking. (It is, after all, a popular facility.) Ripken is a great facility because the lot is huge and is in great shape, not to mention the availability of real rest rooms, of course. ;) The downside is that it is logistically very difficult for us because getting the trailer with all our AX equipment to Ripken for the events is really tough. We haven’t figured out how we’re going to do that yet, but we’ll work something out. We always do. ;) In the end, May was the month that had the scheduling problem at PGS and the only weekend that was available at Ripken (due to the Ironbirds’ home games and other events) was Memorial Day weekend (and a Sunday, at that, which is not my favorite choice). I solicited opinions from AX Co-chair Brad Martinez, President Ron Farb, and fellow AXer (and Patter editor) James on the advisability of holding an event over a holiday weekend and all agreed we should go for it. Let’s think of it as a fun PCA event for those of us who aren’t going anywhere over the (traditional) final weekend of the summer. AX is much more fun (and enormously more exciting) than lying around a beach anyway! ;)
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