My Hero Of The Day

Reedsville, West Virginia (Associated Press) — Mud is flying, smoke and steam are rising, and the deafening roar of V-8 engines all but drowns out 5-year-old Shelby Scott’s screams.

“Get out of there! Get out of there!” she yells at the driver of a battered blue Ford LTD spray-painted with the words “Hillbilly Beer Wagon.” But car No. 42 stalls in the center of the tire-ringed oval, stranded while 11 others smash into each other, over and over, until only one is moving.

Then Dave Cumpston climbs out of No. 29 through the space where the windshield should be and grabs a shiny trophy at the Valley District Fair Demolition Derby.

It’s his first win in six years, he says, and maybe his last: After a decade of building then gleefully crashing cars, the 35-year-old mechanic from Buckhannon is giving up his increasingly unaffordable sport.

Soaring scrap metal prices are making crashable cars more expensive and harder to find. Owners who used to sell their worn-out wheels for $50 to $100 are turning to scrap dealers instead, getting nearly triple the price. That creates a double whammy for drivers like Cumpston, who must burn more high-priced gasoline in an ever-expanding search zone.

read the rest of the story from The Associated Press

My Hero: Demolition derbies. I’ve never been to one, but I can still say without hesitation, “They rule.”  I mean, how awesome are bumper cars?  The good bumper cars, the ones that get up some speed and actually let you give a little wallop on a solid impact.  For years I’ve thought that all cars should be “bumper cars”, solidly buit with a 360 degree rubber bumper.  Why not?  And if we had those same giant tires at the side of the road too, man I bet highway fatalities would go way down. And everyone could let off a little road rage too? Well, no harm done.

To actually go out and get a used car, fix it up so that it is worthy to go out and wreck?  I love it!  When can I play?  Two weeks ago, we got blessed with the term “Redneck Stonehenge”, and now we’re lucky enough for another one?  Come on, for get about it.  For not only creating to destroy year after year and coming away with the big prize, but also for giving us “Hillbilly Beerwagon”, the best term ever for a demolition derby car, you Dave Cumpston, are My Hero of the Day.

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…and look at his skinny legs, how do they do that?

My Hero of the Day

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Washington, D.C. (BBC) - A prayer group in Washington DC is claiming the credit for the recent sharp drop in the US price of petrol.
Rocky Twyman, 59, a veteran community campaigner, started Pray At The Pump meetings at petrol stations in April.

Since then, the average price of what the US calls gasoline has fallen from more than $4 a gallon to $3.80.
“We don’t have anybody else to turn to but God,” Mr Twyman told the BBC. “We have to turn these problems over to God and not to man.”

His first pilgrimage to the pump was prompted by fellow volunteers at the First Seventh Day Adventist Church in Petworth, a working-class neighbourhood of the US capital, who were struggling with higher gasoline prices.

He led them down the block to the local Shell gas station to pray. And over the months since then, he has held similar prayer meetings at pumps all over the US.

Read the full story on the BBC

My Hero: Phew.  It was looking bad.  100, 110, 120 a barrel?  Predictions of the $200 barrel within a few years by many analysts… and then comes along Rocky Tyman.  A man who communicates with The Creator to bring down the price of oil.  If God had anything to do with this, I hope he’s just not being a tease and just bringing us back down under four bucks, which is a great relief to all those gas station owners who had old pumps that only went up to 3.99 a gallon, and is getting down to our real need… more oil.

The fact of the matter is we can dig deep, we can dig close to our shores, in our National Parks, and for some of us right in our own back yard, when can cut up the Rockies for their oil shale and all go out and by hybrids, but the fact of the matter is that we’re running out of black gold.  But now that the line is open with the guy who made the stuff who knows?  Maybe there will be more.  Let’s go git it!  In the meantime for opening up a dialogue with the Man in Charge on the subject that is affecting everyone in the world in one way or another, you Rocky Tyman, are totally My Hero of the Day.

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