I’m going to start this blog out by giving a shout out to my boy, Lee. The weekend after the Houston race, the Beard family, from Colorado, ventured home to surprise Lee’s mom, Mary Jo, on her 80th birthday. They spent the weekend skiing and my boy Lee was tearing up the black diamonds. He was doing it up at Breckinridge. He had been away from skiing, but took back to it like a duck does to water. Check him out on the slopes.
While Lee was skiing, I spent the week in Louisiana with my family down there soaking up some of the hot sun rays. We left LA and got home to Indiana the weekend following the Houston race on Saturday. We came home and opened the door to a big surprise. There were banners and all this stuff to celebrate the win. To my surprise, I thought I was helping out my home girl Kelly Kel by letting her use my computer, but she decorated the house after the Houston win. I want to thank Kel for all the kind thoughts. While we were unloading from our lengthy 14-hour trip, my daughter, Arianna, decided to help me and the wife out and watch her baby brother, Adler, was he was sleeping. To our surprise, it looked more like Adler was watching Arianna.
Lee flew back from Denver Sunday night on April 6 and PR Ted and I were there to scoop him up to head to downtown Indy to hit up some local TV stations and do Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain. It felt good to represent our Matco Tools team after a great and deserving win at Houston. Thanks to my boy Ted for working all the pub and helping put NHRA drag racing in some more prime time arenas. There was a nice deal in USA Today on us last Friday before the Vegas race. In between our interviews, we were all a little hungry, so we had to swing by La Bamba on 38th Street for some “Burritos as big as your head.” The media night was a fun night for us. We worked some OT from about 7 p.m. to midnight and it was well worth it.
After that, we got our stuff together and got ready to fly to Vegas. We got into Vegas on Wednesday and did the NHRA press conference at Morton’s and talked up the race and my transition from bikes to Top Fuel, again. We moved on and went straight over to the Golden Nugget to do an autograph session on Freemont Street outside the Nugget. It was cool to see how many fans came out mid-day from 2-4 p.m. to get autographs and take pictures next to the Caterpillar and Matco dragsters.
On Thursday morning, I woke up and was outside by 7:30 a.m. to jump on the Matco truck with my main man Sal who does the Eastside of Vegas. It was fun to get out on the tool truck and use some of my sales skills with Sal to help give the service to all the great Matco Tools customers. This is a pic of Sal, me and two of his customers at the track on Saturday. Later that night, we got dressed up and I headed over with Ted, Diana and Stan from Caterpillar to meet Hot Rod and a load of other drivers to do the NHRA Fan Fest at The Palms. It was exciting to see so many fans. I mean, there were a lot of fans lined up to where you couldn’t see the end of the line.
We had to cut out around 8 p.m. to head over to Bucca di Beppo for our Matco dinner with my boy Chris “not Craig” Lamb. We hung out with Chris, a customer of his, Matco regional manager Allen Plunk and district manager Jerry Young. We got to sit at the “Pope” table with the lazy susan. The dinner was tight like that. The family-style food and the pizza was dynamite. I should have ordered a large pizza for myself.
My buddy Jeff from Insane Boats got in Thursday night and my East Coast boys Caleb and Tom got in on Friday. We hung out at the Nugget and did a little gambling to have some fun. It was cool to catch up on old times, but needless to say, I can tell you that the casinos must be having hard times right now. Every one of us made a nice deposit at the Golden Nugget, but I will make an effort to get it back in the fall when we go back.
To wrap up the weekend in Vegas, we had another strong outing in the Matco Tools dragster by making it to the finals and putting on a great drag race against Cory Mac.
So now, we are back at the shop in Indy preparing for the Atl. We can’t wait to get out there and on that new track at Atlanta Dragway. I’m anxious to get back out to burn some more VP nitro and Goodyear rubber. We’re off to Lee’s pad to watch UFC on Saturday night and we’re having a get together at my house on Sunday afternoon. My wife (Billie Jo) and mom (Ms. Judy), are going to fry up some chicken wing dings and make some homemade cornbread for all the boys.
With that, I’m gonna leave you with these few words. Love, peace and cheeseburger grease (for Big Tom from NJ), and I’m out like shout. Have a good weekend.