There’s been a lot going on since we left off. We had fourth birthday party for my son, Anson, at the house. We had all the neighborhood kids over. There were more than 24 kids at our house. We had a humongous train-themed jumper. It took up half my back yard. The party was all themed around trains. It really takes you back into a different state when you see your son turn four-years-old. It felt like yesterday when he was a newborn. To see them grow up and develop with their different personality traits is cool. He reminds me of myself. I don’t know if that’s good or bad for this world to have another Antron. LOL

Then it was off for my first full Western Swing since the bikes don’t race at Seattle. I rode on the truck with Nate Dogg, Nathan Rains, in Colorado Springs on the tool truck before Denver. It was a lot of fun. To be out there, enjoying some time with his customers and learning about Nathan. He’s got a wild 4x4. The thing can climb some big Colorado rocks. Off to the races in Denver. We had a good outing at Bandimere. We had great fan support between Matco and Wagner Cat. The new track proved to be an asset to keeping the starting line cooler. We qualified third and ended up with a runner-up against Tony the Schu. That was a great outing for our Matco Tools dragster.

From there it was off to Seattle. It’s the first time I had ever been in the Pacific Northwest. It was cool to get out there and meet my boy Jesse Broadhead. He had a little party for all his Matco customers at Brad Hadman’s shop. It was cool to see Brad’s shop and see where all the magic is done and they build our super-fast dragsters. I have a lot of respect for Brad seeing all the hands-on work he does. I’m glad we use his chassis. That afternoon, I had a really cool experience doing the NHRA press conference at the Space Needle. When I got there, it was overcast, but by the time the press conference was over, the marine layer blew out and I could see how big and beautiful Seattle is. That evening, Ted and myself cruised down to Tacoma to have dinner at Stanley & Seaforts with a group of Matco folks like Jim, Dave and Steve. The food was phenomenal. That’s a place I’ll take my wife to next year. The race was an ok outing. We qualified third again, but had a mishap in the first round and lost to Bob Vandergriff. We maintained our second-place ranking. I must say, the fans were unbelievable. They really made me feel like I was John Force. I look forward to going back to Pacific Raceways next July.

On to Sonoma and off to the vineyards. My wife met me there on Tuesday evening. We came in early and ate at the Seafood Peddler in San Rafael. It’s one of my favorite little restaurants on tour. The next morning, I rode with Dixon Cheal, the Matco district manager, from the hotel in Petaluma to San Jose to meet Jeff Sheldon on his tool truck. We had a really good time meeting his customers and his family. He’s very supportive of us. He showed me a lot of his toys, so we know Matco has been good to Jeff. One of the stops we made on his route was a Mercedes Benz dealership. I had my eye on the new S63 AMG and I was close to driving back to Indy, just don’t tell my wife. LOL After the ride, Jeff had a dinner for his customers at Round Table Pizza. It was cool to see all the support from all of Jeff’s customers to Matco and our race team. We had a little drag racing pow-wow and it was good to talk to a bunch of nitro-holics like myself.

They next day, I had a nice relaxing day with my lovely wife, Billie Jo, in Sonoma. We walked around downtown Sonoma and hit up a few wineries. That night, we met up with more of my great Matco friends. Matco Tools president Tom Willis and his beautiful wife, Becky, joined us and some of the Nor Cal Matco folks for dinner at The Depot in Sonoma. We dined right next to the pool with Dixon and Dewayne Herbert, who are district managers, and my distributors Curtis and Jim. It was a good time and the sole was awesome. Sonoma was another good race for our team. We gained some ground on Larry Dixon and Snake’s boys, finally. We got our third pole of the season and that was No. 1 qualifier No. 60 for Lee Beard. We lost a close race on the semis after I made a rookie mistake. That’s one I’ll learn from. We felt we could have given the Army guys a good run in that final round. But congrats to Tony on the sweep.

After a relaxing off weekend where I rode dirt bikes with some of the guys from my team and a few of my guys went to the Cubs game at Wrigley Field on Saturday, we’re getting ready for Brainerd this weekend. We’ve done well there with four wins, so we’d like to do well there again. With that, it’s time for a little Love, Peace and Hair Grease! I’m out.

Antron