(Thunder Valley) I am pleased to announce that Karen Salvaggio has taken over as the Editor-in-Chief of Thunder Valley Racing. She and Laurel Viera have swapped places, Karen taking position one with Laurel becoming an Editor. Both will continue to add strength to our community of women racers and their fans.

Karen has already introduced herself to you and has shown you a glimpse of where Thunder Valley Racing is headed. With Karen's permission, then, let me use this Editor's Notebook column to talk take a quick look back.

About five years ago a friend gave me a book by Frances Cairncross entitled 'The Death of Distance'. I haven't read it, at least not yet, but I like the title and recommend that you get it and put it on your shelf.

The dust jacket says that the book is about how the communications revolution will change our lives. I suspect the contents are a little outdated, since the communications revolution, if that means the growth of the Internet, has already changed our lives in immeasurable ways.

Here at Thunder Valley, we've built a community of women racers and their fans that has no geographic boundaries. For us, distance is the length of the race track, not the geographic space between us.

The racers we profile are not only engaged in an extremely broad range of racing, but they come from every corner of the English-speaking world. Our writers, editors, and technical staff work seamlessly together, even though they have, for the most part, never met. Currently, information flows among volunteers from a number of U.S. states, from various Canadian provinces, and from Australia and New Zealand.

If you remember, as I do, when we launched Thunder Valley Racing in 1996, I was forever extolling the virtues of Thunder Valley, the sweetest spot on Earth. Nestled between wooded hillsides formed ages ago by glaciers receding from what is now Wisconsin in the United States, Thunder Valley is that ribbon of asphalt between Turn 12 (Canada Corner) and Turn 13 (the Billy Mitchell Bridge) at Road America.

Well, my wife, Susan, and I have long since moved far from Wisconsin and are now within the gravitational field of Laguna Seca just outside Monterey, California. Thunder Valley, the place in Wisconsin, has become less important to me (and, I'm sure, it was never very important to you). What has become ever more important, to me and I hope to you, is the community that Karen, Laurel, and so many others continue to create with their energy, creativity, commitment, and with the joy of belonging to our very special community of racers.