You have to hand it to the entire NAPA Funny Car team, they’re having a tremendous year, already winning five times in 13 races. However, when is “enough enough”? Not that I’m complaining, mind you, as we haven’t exactly had a bad season, winning twice in three final rounds and sitting a pretty solid fourth in the points right now. I just think that, as a teammate, perhaps Ron should learn to share more often with Matt Hagan and me. By my calculations, our matchup in Denver was supposed to have been won by the MTS/Valvoline car. Anyway, someone please remind Ron next time you speak with him to play more fairly.

At the Gates/DSR dinner many awards were given out, including "best dressed" to the Oakley quadruplets. See if you can spot them.

Johnny, the "Extra Large Sunglass Patrol" called, and your citation is in the mail.

My buddies Jim and Andy from Twin Palms RV & Boat Storage finished 1-2 in the "thick moustache" contest. I wasn't even top 10, but I did get to crown both of them with their MTS hats!

How about this for a photo? OCIR in it's heyday, and look at the players in the lanes: Johnny Abbott (his grandson Chris is on our team), Jeb Allen (his son Troy is on our team), Raymond Beadle, and Lee Shepherd. If this is 1981, and I think it is, the three in the background all ended up as champs that year. Thanks to Tim Charlet for the pic.

I just had to run and get my camera when this guy came by the pits. This will begin my new "best T-shirt" contest, and so far he's in the lead.

Also a contender.

Jenni and Sue fought over me all weekend, but I'm still a married man.

My dad sent me home with two presents for Jason, and the little guy seemed to love them both. (No, that's not a hooka pipe)

I know there will come a day when my new backyard will have grass, the driveway will be all concreted, I won't be standing so straight, and my precious little child won't look so tiny and loveable!

I had another rewarding and busy weekend. I arrived at Denver Int’l Airport (which I think is located somewhere in Wyoming) and was picked up by Zak Elcock, a media relations ace with NHRA. We headed straight down (that’s south for those of you not familiar with map layouts) to Colorado Springs to do a newspaper and a TV news interview to promote the race (you know, the one that Capps won… again). From there, Zak took me back to Denver and dropped me off at the annual DSR/Gates Belts and Hose dinner. No, no, I don’t mean to say that we ate rubber and Kevlar for dinner, but we were hosted by one of the best sponsors in all of motorsports. We are always treated like family around all the Gates’ management and employees, and I hope we continue our relationship for many more years.

From dinner (mind you, I haven’t got a car yet and still have my luggage from the flight in) LuAnn Bishop from DSR whisked Matt Hagan and me off to Golden for the Mopar Block Party. I was actually a little glad to arrive late, as two years ago I, along with Scelzi, Alan Johnson, and Richie Stevens, were “volunteered” for a bathing suit contest and COLD water inner tube race. My testes still haven’t fully dropped from that experience! (Or maybe it’s the excessive G-Forces?).

My dad and Teri drove up from Dallas and spent the weekend, so they met me in Golden. Friend Peg Gorsky, who goes way back with Karen Comstock and was a huge help on our Mail from Home campaign last year, turned out to be my “Knight in shining armor.” She loaned me her car for the rest of the weekend, saving me many a long walk in Colorado. Just to pay her back, we let her volunteer to work the race for us again (hey, at least no cold water was involved). Peg also had her sons, Scott and John, assist the MTS employees throughout the event, and they did an outstanding job, collecting around 4,000 postcards for the troops… thanks, guys!

As we weren’t scheduled to run until 5:30 pm on Friday, it was nice to be able to sleep in… not. Apparently the good folks at Gates didn’t get their fill of us the night before, so Tony Schumacher, Cory Mac, and I were invited out to their headquarters building for coffee and autographs… early! VP Steve, one of the funniest guys I know (just ask his wife), and motorsports chief Jim, one of the nicest humans around, let us get up and speak to the employees and showed us around one of the most impressive company buildings I have ever seen. The exercise room on the first floor would put many professional gyms to shame. It was so clean I dared not touch any of the equipment (kind of what I’ve been doing with my weights lately).

The Mile-Highs was the first race in recent memory that scheduled two night sessions. With the crazy weather in Denver we didn’t even run the Friday night session until 11:15 at night, and the dragsters were even later. By the time the dust settled, we ended up number four with a great run that also held for top speed of the meet (despite the fact that buddy Paul Page gave that honor to Ashley during the coverage, I have the time slip to prove we did it). In fact, the DSR Funny Cars ended qualifying 1, 3, and 4. I certainly hope that trend continues down in sea level country, and it really would be nice if Mr. Capps would pass that No. 1 spot around to Matt and me once in a while.

In our ongoing musical-crewmember shuffle, Chris Abbott joined us at this race. Seems our contract calls for two Chris’ on the team, so the hiring process was pretty straightforward once we found him. His grandpa, John, was quite the terror around the Midwest during his Top Fuel career, and I finally got to meet him face to face.

Sunday was another ever-changing day for the crew chiefs as the sun, clouds, rain, and temperature didn’t stay constant long enough to have complete confidence in the tune-up. Still, we had low e.t. of race day on a monster second-round run (if you saw the coverage on ESPN, how about our car pulling the left front tire three times downtrack!). That dreaded Capps put an end to our race in the semi’s, where three long oil delays and the emergence of the sun spelled the demise of our aggressive clutch setup. Thinking that we didn’t have time to dive into the bellhousing and remove weight off of the levers, we tried to compensate for the higher track temp by slowing our clutch application, but all that did was put us further downtrack before we overpowered our lane.

Aside from another solid performance from the entire team, it was cool to see so many of you have bought our Valvoline diecast. That’s very humbling to me to get to sign quite a few for you fans, and the MTS car should be out on the souvenir trailer by Seattle. I already got it okayed through DSR to do another half-price special for you readers, and I will give you the details as soon as they give me the green light (or would that be the three amber lights?).

I have spoken to so many people with cancer and other serious illnesses these past few years, whether it be e-mail, a phone call, or at the races. It warms my heart that all of DSR is so supportive of our efforts to brighten people’s day. VP Mike Lewis has been instrumental in coordinating so many wonderful experiences, and we had another in Denver. Jenni is going through stage 4 (about as bad as it gets) breast cancer right now and attended the race with her son Cody and parents Bob and Sue (sounds like a boxer and a lawyer… get it?) We let Jenni and Sue tune the car for the first pass Friday, and, frankly, they stunk. Nice ladies but no future in the nitro tuning career field! Still, they got to ride in the Suburban, and we got to hang out and talk a whole bunch during the day. Great people in a tough position, and I want to thank my former students, the Andersons, for introducing us.

Thanks to that rude dismissal by my colleague Mr. Capps, I was able to hitch a ride with Karen Comstock and get to the airport plenty early to make my flight (thanks, Ron). I even got home at a reasonable hour Sunday night and got to bed before 2:30. Good thing, because we had “house stuff” to do during the week. We finally funded on our new house, but not without plenty of stress, hassle, misrepresentation, and I’d even go so far as to call “Shenanigans.” Without mentioning the loan company that gave us the old “bait and switch” tactic, let me just say that they rhyme with “Bending Me,” as in “bending me over”. Knowing I can’t be held for slander if I stick to the facts (and the truth), I think I could give you another hint and tell you that the initials are, “L.T.,” and the second word is, “tree.” I’m sorry, but I just don’t think I should divulge their complete name at this time, though I would strongly suggest that you take your business (and money) somewhere else if you don’t want any unpleasant surprises on what should be your signing day at escrow. Not sure how the bill ended up $2,200 more than what we were quoted, but we decided to “walk” before signing any documents. Did I mention that they also wasted seven hours of our day on Monday “attempting” to right their mistake? Well, let’s just get past the sugar-coating then! Tuesday, after multiple calls and e-mails to all involved parties, we again drove the 58 miles to the escrow office and again were delayed for 2 ½ hours while “Blending Tea” (name changed to protect the offender) completed their “it won’t even take an hour, so just go ahead and come on down” paperwork. We still took a hit of a few hundred dollars, and it’s enough to make me want to scream, but at some point we’d lose our deposit or face late fines from the bank if we didn’t close. Fun stuff. So, the moral of this story: I wouldn’t use “Sending Fees” (not actual name) anytime soon.

The sale on our house seems to be progressing well. The buyer has had their home inspection, we got the list, and I got everything handled in pretty short order. The place has been well maintained, and for a house that’s 56 years old, it really doesn’t have much wrong with it.

It’s 1 a.m., I have to be up before 5 to fly to Seattle, and this cold is still hanging on to me, so I suppose I should sign off. I headed over to the doctor today just to make sure nothing serious is wrong, as after going through cancer, it’s tough not to be a bit of a hypochondriac. Turns out I’m just suffering from a case of Capps-whipped-me-itus, and I hope to cure that in Seattle!

Stay tuned.

P.S. Jenna and I want to express our sorrow for the loss of her Aunt Kathy two days ago (to pancreatic cancer). Cindy was able to be with her sister just hours before she passed, and she is staying in Delaware for the funeral. To all of the friends and family that are suffering right now, God Bless you guys.