Well, after a lot of thought and soul searching, I have decided it is time to close hardcore50.com - that day will be January 1st 2010.
Between having a very active 4 year old daughter now, that is into 4 or 5 after school activities (a child I didn't have when Jason, Ed, and I started up the site, but deserves all the attention I can give her none the less), going to school full time, and beating the bushes for a job for the last 18 months, I find myself with little to no time to work on the site as I used to.
I haven't been to a race in a couple of years, and the last race I attended wasn't about racing, it was about visiting with Jason, who is very much like a son to me. I have made a tremendous amount of new friends in the last 9 years we have run the website. The Mustang knowledge base that we have built together is one of the best on the Internet to this day, but isn't being maintained as it should be anymore mostly due to *my* time constraint's.
My Mustang's are both sitting in the garage on jackstands - no time at all for that either right now.. but I do go out an fondle them fondly from time to time..
This brings me to all of the sponsors, advertisers, administrators, moderators, and friends who took time out of their personal lives to take pictures, get stats, and those who wrote articles (and there were a bunch of you!), or just simply supported us in any way they could. THANK YOU! We couldn't have done any of what we accomplished without each and every one of you!
Some of you have raked us (*me*) over the coals because we weren't like YellowBullet, which is fine with me. I like Monte and YellowBullet, but personally, *I* don't want to run a forum where it is just complete anarchy at all times, and I don't want to run a forum with all the cussing, tits and ass, and vulgarity that is displayed there. As many of you who know me personally can attest to - I am definitely no prude, but I feel a certain amount of social responsibility when hosting a website where teenagers can and do come on all the time (and you aren't really going to ever stop that from happening). This is by no means a slap on YB at all, more an explanation of how and what I asked of the moderators and staff here when it came to running this place. I'm the one that kept the website running somewhat bland and without drama. If there is any blame to be thrown on that front, I am yer guy.
In closing, I will see you guys when I have time and can visit all my old friends. I had hoped to sell HC50 off to keep it alive, but in the end, closing it may be somewhat comforting too. I know we did the very best we could do with very little - and to me, to have lasted for 9 years running on a shoestring we were a success at what we set out to do!
Thanks again!
I had an email half-typed, too. I was more interested in buying the rights to the DB anyway, since I don't need the domain name.
