Wow, am I behind on the blog again? It’s not from laziness; I just haven’t been near my computer. Let’s get caught up with another two-part special.

Our trip to Phoenix was a bit more eventful than planned, and though it’s only 425 miles from our home, it took us about 13 hours instead of the usual seven. Where’s the extra time, you ask? I can answer that. It took an extra hour initially because we had to pick up the RV at Pomona, drive to Fontana to get the tow dolly, and then hook up and load everything. Jenna did the loading; I did the hooking up stuff. Remember that. We then stopped in Indio at a rest area for a prearranged meeting with portable tech Mike Flowerday. He is “the man” when it comes to fixing RV “Hydro-Hot” units, and he made ours all better. Turns out the factory plastic drain plug tends to crack, so in two hours he did all of the upgrades and field-tested everything. Jason and I kept a close eye just in case we ever need to do any repairs on our own. Now we are at plus 3 hours.

The next two hour delay was caused by an emergency roadside “we have to watch American Idol NOW” stop. Jenna caused this, but we made dinner and enjoyed the show. I should say that we ate dinner......I don’t know that I ever have made dinner. Then on to the racetrack. Oops, we still have one hour of delay unaccounted for. Once we were done with dinner we did a U-turn in a hotel parking lot, and once we exited there was a loud noise. It kinda sounded like the hitch fell off of the motorhome. However, that would be impossible, because I ALWAYS put the hitch pin clip in all of the way. So, clearly someone had sabotaged our hitch while we were pulled over. Still, here we were in the middle of the street with the tow dolly under the RV. Thank goodness there was no damage, but this could be really embarrassing if made public (oops!).

I searched around for the missing pin, but to no avail. Since we were adjacent to a truck stop, I just ran in to buy another. They always have them in stock, except this time. The clerk tells me there is a Wal-Mart less than a mile away, so we need a temporary way to secure the hitch. My roadside tool-buddy kit yields a Taiwan-made 3/8 ratchet, and that roll of duct tape that I convinced Jenna we needed last year now becomes priceless. One hour, $2.44 later, and it’s like it never happened. Let’s keep that our little secret.

We needed to be in Phoenix by Wednesday, as I was a guest at the NHRA media luncheon in downtown. I got to hang out with Del Worsham and Bob Wilber, the CSK team PR guru. Bob is by far the most prolific blogger of the bunch of us, and he makes us look like third graders with his skills. I really wanted to see that team do well, and I felt bad when they didn’t qualify. Once back at the track we got the RV parked right next to Firebird Lake. Though only used for the boat drags, it did provide a nice backdrop and cut down on noise.

Thursday I didn’t have much to do, so I took friend Wally Cahill up on his offer to make a school appearance locally. Wally does the Motorsports Mania program from Phoenix, and I even did a segment with them later in the weekend. The school function was for 100 sixth graders and was set up by their science teacher, a die-hard motorsports guy who they all call “Mr. G.” We played an NHRA DVD for them and I spent about an hour and a half talking about life lessons and racecars.

Thursday evening we did our annual Mopar Guild meeting with the area dealers, servicemen, and salespeople. Allen Johnson, Ron Capps, Gary Scelzi and I were all guest speakers and really enjoyed this group of car nuts. I bet they liked the final round on Sunday! Gary’s family flew in and arrived just as we were starting our speeches, and my boy Jason just loves the Scelzi kids. Both Dominic and Giovanni are great around him and helped keep him entertained during the evening. The guy with the big moustache in the background is Dominic’s father.