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The latest update as of July 27, 2011
End Of An Era
Even though this was a case of simply waiting for the other shoe to drop, the finality of the ending of the much loved, revered, and visited Horsepower Heaven website was still a shock. After 15 years of being the true "go-to" place on the web for all things drag racing, especially when it concerned the Northwest U.S. and Western Canada, the site and the writing and editorializing and photography of Larry Pfister has disappeared into the ether.
There are still fragments of his work floating around in cyberspace and if you're persistent enough in searching them out, his video work is still for sale, but for all intents and purposes, the site that spawned dozens of imitators, and had thousands of followers, has been silenced. I can only think that after all these years, Larry felt that HH had finally run its course and it was time to put it to rest and move on to other pursuits.
When I started this humble hovel on the side of the great information superhighway in 1998, the first person I turned to for help, inspiration - and truth be told - the occasional outright theft of tricks and techniques for constructing web pages from scratch was Larry and Horsepower Heaven. Yes, that's how Northern Thunder got started, and after all this time, every page is still written in html code by hand, with no helper apps or programs to do all the heavy lifting.
But it was Mr. Pfister that got me pointed in the right direction, virtually holding my hand and correcting my multitude of mistakes as I went through a very steep learning curve in putting together this site. Without his help, encouragement, promotion, and occasional prodding, Northern Thunder would long ago have joined all the other defunct sites on the scrap heap of broken dreams and discarded ideas. For all his help, I've got to give him a very big, and very belated, thank you so very much.
Even though I've had some serious help and encouragement from a number of people over the years: racers, fans, photographers, webmasters, business people and others too numerous to mention, it was Larry Pfister that made everything I've done on the net possible, or even feasible. I'll never be able to thank you enough Larry, and now that your site is gone - possibly or even probably - for good, it's time to wish you the very best in your new venture and the very, very best for a long, healthy, and happy life. And I'm so very proud to be able to call you my friend.
And just in case you didn't get a chance to see his final message to the drag racing community before he turned off the lights at Horsepower Heaven, here it is, complete with his signature background colour:
