We’re back from the Atl and I’m here to bring ya’ll up to speed on the events in the life of AB that happened the past few weeks. We first went to hang out at cool Lee’s pad to watch a little UFC. It was Serra versus St. Pierre. We’re big UFC fans. To my surprise, I lost $5 to Lee’s youngest son, Nick. I made a bad bet and picked Matt Serra and he got whupped. GSP was on his game. Us being new parents for the third time, we called it an early night to get home. To our surprise we weren’t the only ones that were tired that Saturday night. Lee was out cold and before the main event happened. Then when he awoke, he turned into Bruce Leeroy. LOL Lee is a funny dude.

This is one of the things that I really enjoy being part of this race team at DPM. We have just as much fun away from the track as we do while racing. It was really cool to go through all of Lee’s old pictures from his many years of racing. I learned he used to be part of a team called Beard & Brown. It’s funny that the Beard & Brown connection has been reunited in ‘08.

The next day, we had our wing ding cookout at my house. We had some chicken wings, compliments of my wife Billie Jo, some cornbread, cake and mac & cheese thanks to momma Brown. All I can say was that everyone took food home and it was finger-lickin’ good. We played some football and cornhole and baseball while the food was cooking. It was nice to be outside with the sun shining after our cold winter. It felt like being back at the park as a teenager. My boy PR Ted and I showed the rest of our teammates how to throw it down in cornhole. Even though we borrowed Brad Mason’s overhand throwing style, we took it home with two wins to close out the day.

After a weekend of fun, we got serious about racing. We got back to the shop and finished up for the Atlanta race. We flew out Thursday morning from Indy to Atlanta. As soon as I got my luggage, I headed out to meet up with my good friend and Matco distributor Ronnie Johnson. Ronnie was real cool to hang out with. He had great energy and awesome customer service qualities. I have not met one Matco distributor yet that doesn’t have a customer-first attitude. We stopped by a custom fabrication shop and see some really cool things at the shop from old Mustangs and Barracudas to Porches. It’s so cool to see how many mechanics and technicians follow NHRA drag racing.

The weather was beautiful in Commerce. The sun was shining and it was in the mid 70s, so I was excited to jump into our Matco Tools dragster. We laid down a nice first run at 4.753 to be fifth quick of the first session. On Friday night, we had a little malfunction that I caused with my foot pedal. We didn’t make it down the track and it moved us back to No. 11 in the field. That didn’t slow us down. On Saturday, we picked up the pace and moved into the No. 9 spot and were the fourth fastest car of the day.

Our team felt real confident going into race day. We just wanted to take things one round at a time. We had some unbelievable races from start to finish. Starting out with David Grubnic, a great side-by-side race, 4.58 to 4.59. In the second round, we lined up against Cory Mac again for the fourth time this year. They had lane choice over us. We knew it would be a drag race. We held Cory off and got a triumphant win over the No. 1 qualifier. This year, that FRAM team with Mike Green turning the screws is no joke. As always, Cory is one of the best. In the semifinals, we raced Bob Vandergriff, and I sure didn’t want him to show us “what Brown can do for me” in that UPS car. We ran identical to half track, but snuck it out the back door running 4.55 at 330.

It was another great job by Lee and the team. That lined us up for the final throw down match of the day with no other than Alan Johnson and Tony Schumacher with the U.S. Army dragster. We went into the round knowing we couldn’t leave anything on the table. Lee turned the screws and laid it all down to give us the performance edge we needed. I just dug deep and put myself in the zone to pull everything out I had for that lap. Everything that we threw at it came out at the end by beating the five-time championship team at the stripe to bring our Matco distributors a well deserved win for everything they do to make this Matco Tools car successful. Go Matco! As you could see on TV, I was very excited. I was shadow boxing in the air going crazy with excitement and joy of the accomplishment of our team.

After the race, we had a victory dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse in Commerce. I must say, I had some steak and lobster. It was much rewarding since I missed all my meals all day long from the adrenaline rush I get from racing. After we won, my appetite came back. I have to thank the staff at Longhorn for staying open late for us. We didn’t leave until after midnight and they did an awesome job serving nearly 30 people.

I want to send out a shout out from the Atlanta race to all the Army reserve soldiers. Being a part of the U.S. Army race team for many years, I take my hat off with respect to all of our Army soldiers. I want to extend “hooah” to all of our U.S. Army soldiers past and present. Thanks for everything you do for us.

We flew home on Monday and I got home and met my beautiful wife and two of our kids, Arianna and Anson, at swim lessons at Brownsburg High School. It touches your heart to see them jump in and learn how to swim. It feels like time flies when I see them growing so quickly. We got a few days of R&R and we left for St. Louis this morning. We spent some time out with a few boys from the shop. I went to the Reds/Cardinals game at Busch Stadium with Ted, Mighty Mike and Cameron “Don’t call me Carmen” Beer. The Cards won 5-2 and that made Mike happy. Cameron is a Cubs fan, so they were talking NL Central smack. After that we walked around downtown St. Louis. We bumped into Brandon Bernstein at Mike Shannon’s restaurant. We had a drink and dinner and now we’re back at the hotel laying back and relaxing with our blog. We have a full itinerary tomorrow, so stay tuned for the next blog.

With that said, I’ll see you back on the blog soon enough. So, love, peace and hair grease to all, and I’m out like shout.