For a Friend

Last weekend at the track, I got a lot of questions about changing my kart number from #3 to #68.
A few weeks back, a good friend and the person that got me into karting, John Neer, had a severe brain aneurysm. He put me in his kart when he hurt his ribs, I soon bought my own kart and we've been racing together ever since. So, in support of his battle back and simply missing his antics at the track, I changed my number to one less than his, #68. John always races #69.
John and I are old school racing. While most kids grew up on baseball and other games, our Dads brought us to all the great tracks/races in the North East. We lived and remember the glory days (Trans Am, Can Am, and real F1). Oh and both hung with the Bog people at the Glen!
For whatever reason, I remembered two yellow/black AMC Javelins, numbers 68 & 69. I grew up with AMC and Javelins were their racing breed. We met Mark Donahue, Peter Revson and many other great racers of the era. Dad had a '68 Javelin and then a '70 Homologation Javelin (390cu, Hurst Comp+, Ram air & Breedlove wing), wich sits in my garage today and will terrorize my local streets til I pass.
Anyways, I wanted to explain more completely at the track about the #68 & #69 teammates thing, but it was only a very distant memory. Turns out that memory was from 1971, when I was only X yrs. old. Thanks to the internet, I was able to find the #68 &#69 Javelin teammates.
But most importantly, John is fighting back and doing better every day!