I usually don’t think too much about career milestones – mine or anyone else’s – but I have to say it will be personally satisfying spotting my 100th major touring division event this weekend when driver Mike Mason and I take the green flag in the USAR Hooters Pro Cup race at Myrtle Beach (SC) Speedway.

One hundred races is a lot of trips up and down the steps to the spotter’s tower. Don't get me wrong - being a part of any race on any level is so cool - but spotting races is among the things I am most proud of in my motorsports career.

It’s hard to explain how exciting and rewarding spotting is, but it sure beats every race I ever covered sitting in the press box or working the public relations angles on pit road. 

Life on the spotter's tower is very competitive and gets heated at times. You’re up there racing your butt off, trying to gain every inch for your driver while letting him know everything that’s going on around him.

Because racing is so hard, you have to have managed expectations. You’ll go nuts if you think you have to win every race and you’ll go even crazier if you can’t let go of the bad finishes, wrecks and mechanical failures.

While the main goal is to finish the best we can in every race, I’ve always stuck to just being concerned about two things as a spotter.

The first – which is ALWAYS first no matter who I am racing with - is bringing my driver safely back to the garage area after the race.

The second is loading a full race vehicle. If I’m able to do that, I’ve done my job that race. The finish – whatever it may be – will take care of itself.

I made his first career touring division start as a spotter in the NASCAR Busch Series Jiffy Lube 300 at Homestead Miami Speedway on November 5, 1995.

After more than a decade serving as a motorsports journalist and team public relations representative, driver Rich Bickle told me I was going to spot after our regular guy, Chuck Joyce, couldn’t make it to the Miami Busch Series event.

Honestly, I was scared to death when we took the green flag that day. It was the first NASCAR race ever at the new Homestead track and nobody - especially me - knew what to expect. Somehow, we managed to get through it as Rich drove our No. 54 Ford (above left) to a very respectable 11th-place finish.

From that day on, I was hooked on being a raceday spotter.

The following season, Bickle got a job driving Richard Petty’s new NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series team and he brought me along for the ride.

Initially hired to do public relations work only, I was back up on the spotter’s tower by midseason after Rich had a hard crash in the Truck race at Nashville and got in an argument with the spotter about it afterwards. As they say, from then on the rest is history.

Thanks to Bickle, I spotted a lot of Truck, Busch and Cup races over the next four seasons (that's me above left in the Cummins shirt at the Las Vegas Truck race in 1996). We had plenty of great finishes – the best being several fifth-place efforts in both Truck and Busch.

We never raced a Cup car good enough to have a Top-10 finish, but just being in the show – competing in the NFL or Major League Baseball equivilant of stock car racing - was victory enough for me.

One of my most memorable days as a spotter came in the Cup race at Talladega in 2000 – Dale Earnhardt’s last win.

I rode on a chartered 737 jet – ‘The Raceday Express’ – from Charlotte to Anniston, AL with about 150 other NASCAR race team members. It was totally strange to see a jet filled with guys wearing team uniforms.

From Anniston, we were transported by bus all the way to pit road at the Talladega track. A short driver’s meeting and long walk to the spotter’s tower located high above the main straight tri-oval area followed before we took the green flag.

Neither Rich’s No. 60 Power Team Chevy (right) or Earnhardt’s famous No. 3 black Chevy would run up front that day and we struggled together, side-by-side and three-wide back in the pack throughout the race.

The event was a spotter’s nightmare, yet it was totally exhilarating. It’s the only race I have ever spotted where I didn’t sleep well the night before. After all, this was my first Talladega race and I didn’t want to be the guy making the call that would lead to ‘The Big One’ – one of those 20 car wrecks Talladega restrictor plate racing is famous for.

Once the green flag fell, all that was a forgotten memory as I settled into the race and tried to be aggressive working Bickle through the insane 200 mph traffic.

As the race unfolded, our car would only run in the middle of the racetrack wanting to bog down in the bottom groove and ‘aeropush’ toward the wall if we were in the top groove. To make matters worse, our black No. 60 Chevy was hard to see. Fortunately, Earnhardt’s car was outside of us most of the day and since he was eligible for the then “Winston Million” bonus, he had a dayglo orange number 3 on his roof.

For a good part of the race, I spotted our car off of Earnhardt’s roof number. If we went into the corner together and the two lines didn’t move, I knew we were okay. Thinking back now, that’s some scary stuff, but I was too busy at the time to be worried about it.

With 15 laps to go, Earnhardt somehow found the speed he didn’t have (showed?) all day and managed to drive by everyone and win the race. I told Rich to go with Earnhardt in the draft when he made his final break, but our car just wasn’t up to it and we finished 21st – less than one second behind Earnhardt at the finish.

Racing three-wide in a 200 miles an hour pack formation for three hours that day was incredibly fun and having 19 cars grouped one second between us and the winner at the finish still blows my mind.

Finishing 21st wasn’t a disappointment. The victory that day was just in the racing and I was exhausted afterward despite doing nothing more than intently watching a car race.

While Rich and I (left) never won a NASCAR race together, we have had our share of victories in the short-track ranks. Capturing the Miller Nationals in front of the home folks back at Slinger (WI) Superspeedway and then winning the biggest short track race of them all – The Snowball Derby in Pensacola, FL in 2001 – are easily the two biggest victories I ever spotted.

I’ve spotted Bickle more than any driver – 54 touring series starts in all - and he is easily the best driver I have ever worked with.

On the short tracks, he’s a dominating talent winning more than 250 races in his career. When I pulled into the pit area with Rich at a short track race, I always figured everyone else was racing for second. Fortunately, I was right nine times spotting short track wins for Rich later that evening or weekend.

Since Rich backed away from racing full-time a couple of years ago, I have been a part-time spotter serving as a ‘hired gun’ when someone needed to help groom a young driver or fill in for a veteran shoe. I never get nervous anymore. Spotting is second nature for me now. I’d like to think I’m pretty good at it too.

In all, I’ve spotted 18 different drivers in my 99 previous NASCAR, ARCA, ASA and Hooters Pro Cup touring events. That means I’ve taken the tower for a number of young talents such as Timothy Peters, Shane Sieg, Jody Lavender and Sean Murphy while spotting NASCAR veterans Bobby Hamilton, Jr., Steve Portenga, Andy Houston, Lonnie Rush, Jr. and Jimmy Spencer.

This season, I have a new spotting project in Mike Mason (right). A 19-year-old rookie in the Hooters Pro Cup Series, Mike has shown some real promise as we’ve raced to two Top-10 finishes in six races this year. That’s pretty good, especially considering Mike never raced this kind of car (similar to a NASCAR Busch Series car) full-time prior to this season.

Best of all, racing with Mike in the Hooters division has me back competing on the short tracks. That’s where the action is. Every lap is a test to stay out of trouble and not wreck.

Don’t get me wrong – spotting a driver into the corner three-wide at 200 miles per hour at Daytona, Talladgea, Charlotte or Atlanta is a rush, but the short tracks is where the real racing is.

That’s why I love short track racing the most and coincidentally, that’s where all but one of my 17 career Top-5 finishes has come.

Anybody who makes it this far in racing started their careers at a weekly short track somewhere. For me, that was at Columbus 151 Speedway outside Madison, WI. There, I wrote the event stories and took all the track photography for $35 a week. Honestly, those were some of the best times of my life and if it would have never gotten better than that, I’m pretty sure I’d still be happy.

But to say that spotting 75 NASCAR Cup, Busch and Truck Series events at places like Daytona, Talladega, Bristol, Charlotte and 31 other current and former NASCAR tracks and 100 total events is beyond any dreams I could have ever had.

Most of the credit for making those dreams come true goes to Bickle (right). Rich gave me the chance to be more than reporter – an observer - of the race. By making me his spotter, he put me in the race.

I’ve had countless personal highs racing with Rich – on and off the track. There aren’t enough ‘thank you’s’ to repay him for the impact he had on my career and life.

The fact my wife Gail has allowed me to wander the country chasing racecars for the last decade also can’t be ignored. Her love, patience and understanding have always made life easier. It also helps that she loves racing too.

Finally, spotting has brought me closer to my father, Lou. That might sound a little strange giving my dad passed away 30 years ago this fall, but he’s the one who got me mixed up in this racing stuff to begin with building and racing jalopy-style stock cars when I was a kid back in the 1950s.

My dad (at left working on engine on our family stock car in 1957) passed his love of racing to me and somehow I have been lucky make it a 20-year-plus career of writing about, promoting and spotting races. 

I think my father would be pleased I have been able to carry on his love of racing to this level.

On Saturday, I’ll head to the spotter’s stand for my 100th career race. The record says my drivers have finished in the Top-5 nearly 20 percent of the time and in the Top-10 30 percent of the events I’ve spotted.

More important than any finish, of the 11 accidents that have ended the previous 99 races that ended the day for me and my driver, none of them have ever caused an injury. Of those 11, eight of them were caused by mechanical failures like a flat tire or blown engine - nothing the driver or the spotter could control.

I’ve always tried to be a clean and fair racer – just the way my dad was. I’ve never lost my cool and run my guy into anyone intentionally (that would be just plain stupid) and I move my driver out of the way of the leaders when it’s not our day.

It’s been awhile since I’ve raced at Myrtle Beach finishing fifth in the NASCAR Busch Series race with Bickle the last time I was there in 2000.

With any luck, young Mr. Mason and I will be able to equal or better that this Saturday evening.

Whatever the outcome – short of an injury to my driver or a destroyed race car – I will be happy with the end result. Racing my ass off every lap instead of sitting on it dashing out a news story or press release is more fun than a guy could ever dream of having.

That will never change whether it's one race or a hundred of them.