Hello again. We’re back from rainy California. When we left Indy to go out for the Winternationals it was nine degrees and snowing and we got into Cali and it was 79 degrees. That was on Feb. 3, which was the eighth wedding anniversary for me and my beautiful wife, Billie Jo. We had a nice, relaxing dinner at Red Lobster in Montclair. I need to give thanks to our new team chefs Rick, Joe and Alvaro for hooking us up with this anniversary cake on Saturday at the track.

Wednesday morning we were back on the Matco truck with my boy Arsen in Fontana. We visited some rental shops and got to meet a lot of his customers who were NHRA enthusiasts. Then I headed over to the track at Pomona to do the press conference with the Force family. It was John, Ashley and Robert and me. By all means, it was a funny session. John was typical John. He made a comment of me being in shape and him getting in shape and not wanting to stand naked next to me. We were all laughing, but we all know how John is. Then he was taking about Obama. I felt bad for Robert and Ashley in between our comedy show. It was a great kick-off for the 49th annual Winternationals. That night I, Billie Jo and PR Ted headed out to Beverly Hills to meet our close friend Laurie Frazier of Motorsports Travel Service. We got our grub on at Mastro’s. It was outrageously good. The dessert tray was phenomenal. I need the recipe for the Mastro’s butter cake. We drove back to the Sheraton Fairplex and it was on to the race.

Despite the rain, we had some fun on Friday morning with my girl Gayle Anderson from KTLA’s morning show in LA. We met Gayle, a fellow New Jersey native, at the Finals in November and she loved us so much, she came all the way back out to the track to help us promote the Winternationals. Gayle is crazy. She did a snow angel in the water on the race track and got soaking wet. It was better her than me. She’s cool people and we don’t mind getting up at 5:15 a.m. to have some fun with Gayle and help promote the NHRA races.

We basically waited around until Saturday for one nerve-wracking qualifying pass. We only had one shot to get in and we powered our Matco dragster to the pole position. Then we got in one run on Sunday and got by Steve Faria even though we dropped a hole at the hit. Never in the world would I imagine that California would be colder than Indy in the winter time. It even hailed on Monday. The weekend was a great weekend for our MAR Matco Tools dragster by us finishing runner-up to Doug Kalitta. We ran a mind-boggling 3.778 in the semis to run the second quickest ever 1,000-foot pass. In the final, it was a great race. We both left great on the starting line and I tip my hat to the entire Kalitta team for doing a great job at Pomona. I look forward to many more great drag races against Doug in the future.

We got home to Indy on Wednesday afternoon and then Thursday morning I flew out on an early morning flight to shoot a Matco Tools DVD with my sister-sister Courtney Hanson. You may know her from Spike TV’s Powerblock. We had a lot of fun talking about all the new products coming out on the tool trucks. They also hooked us up with some delicious Mediterranean food. I got back on the flight later that night to finally get home and chill out with the family on Thursday night. I came home to some strong 60-mph winds where we lost the majority of the shingles on the roof. We lost the shingles, but it ain’t nothing that I can’t fix.

I’m going to spend the weekend home with the family after the marathon race at Pomona to get energized for Phoenix. So until next week, I want to wish everyone some love, peace and hair grease. If you ain’t got none, you better get some. And I’m out like shout.