Hello again. Okay, we’re going back to Thursday of the Las Vegas race. It was Thursday morning and the brothaman was up early in the morning. Jeff Motley from LVMS picked us up at 6 a.m. to hit up a few radio stations in Vegas. It was just after 9 a.m. (ET) and I looked at the phone and saw a 352 area code. I had no idea who was calling me from Florida that early. I let it go to voicemail and it checked it a little later and it was the man himself, “Big Daddy” Don Garlits.
My racing hero and the legend himself called, of all people, me. I was a little star-struck, so I got myself together and I called him back a few minutes later. “Big” left his phone number and we talked about drag racing in general. He told me about some runs back in the day when he was driving. He also gave me a lot of compliments on how I drive the race car and how I race. That was mind-boggling to me because this was a guy I’ve always looked up to. I remember way back in 1986 at the Summernationals in Englishtown and "Big Daddy" flipped his Super Shops dragster over. That was a race that stayed in my memory. I even remember that K.B. won in Funny Car, but it was so cool when "Big Daddy" jumped out the car and got a standing ovation. Then, he went back home to Florida and fixed his own chassis and went on to win the world championship that year in Top Fuel. He led the points standings after all but the first race of the ’86 season. The line that stood out the most on the phone was how he used to “weld them to the starting line.” He didn’t just beat people, but he left on them, too. That’s one thing he noticed about me, that I was a good leaver. All I was thinking in my mind was that I want to be like “Big Daddy;” not Mike, but Big Daddy.
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And then on Monday after the Vegas race, me and my boy TY strolled over to meet up with our good friend Craig Darling and his family and we stopped off at the UFC gym where they film the reality TV show
The Ultimate Fighter. Craig is the guy that builds the “Octagon” before each UFC fight. The facility is first class.
Brothaman was ready to put on some gym clothes and get to working out. They had it all to get your workout on. One of the coolest deals they had was a peg board where you could climb to the top and I wanted to see if I still had it in me. I know I’m still in decent shape, but I wanted to see if I could climb to the top.
I made the climb to the top and climbed back down safely without any injuries. Just to let all the UFC boys know, if I was younger, those boys would be in trouble. LOL I just really admire all the fighters in the UFC and MMA because those guys are very intense and outstanding athletes. I give those cats the upmost respect.
That’s all for now. But first I got to give a shout out to all my new friends from Linn State Technical College. We had a great Matco Tools TechEd visit at LSTC yesterday and it was great getting to meet everybody. Now, I’m out like shout and we’ll be back on the blog after St. Louis.