SPEEDWAY NIGHT

Scott and Sam headed off for their annual trip to the Speedway Opening Night @ Baypark Stadium.  Its between Mount Maunganui and Papamoa and is about 27km away from Omokoroa.  This has become a bit of a ritual since we arrived in New Zealand, and it gets better every year.

They usually  go to Baypark Stadium, to watch The Bay of Plenty Steamers (Rugby) when they are playing at home, but this is their other passion, a night of crashes and big bangs.

The night starts off with racing and there are 3 different types of cars on the night,  Super Saloons, Stockcars and Sprint Cars.

 As you can imagine, there is always some kind of mayhem, and the night didn't disappoint.  There were plenty of crashes and at one point someone went into the wire fencing and damaged it, so the race was abandoned, while they put the fence back together. There were all kinds of pile ups, but luckily nobody was hurt.

There is one driver that the boys always look out for, his name is "Skinny Colson",  and he is a bit of a celebrity on the race track. Everyone loves him, especially when he wins.  His nickname is Spiderman, because he climbs the wire fence to get the checkered  flag. They play the theme tune when he does his climbing act.  

So after plenty of crashes and all the races complete, it was the big finale of the night. The Fireworks.  This is something Sam really, really enjoys.  They spend an absolute fortune on these things and I am not too sure how long the display lasts, but you can usually hear it from Omokoroa!.  When we lived on the other side of the peninsular, you could actually see it from our living room window, which looked out right across the bay, over to Mount Maungaui and across to Baypark.

Obviously the photos don't do the fireworks any justice, but, here is a little video clip and according to the boys, it was BRILLIANT! I will let you decide...it was definitely loud enough.

So after a long night of "Boy Stuff", Sam is still dead to the world  @ 9:20 am on a Sunday morning and poor Scott has gone off to work. I am sure next years display will be even better and who knows, Callie and I might even go????



Sam & Scott @ Speedway Baypark