Hello again all my NHRA.com Nitrohaulics. After three weeks on the road, I’m finally back home in Indy, but I’m very glad to be home sleeping in my own bed and hanging with the wife and kids. What a three weeks it was. I headed to the Deep South before Easter to spend the holiday with my wife’s family in Louisiana.

It was good to catch-up with the fam and check out things in my old stomping grounds. Before we moved to Indy, we lived in Louisiana, so I still have a lot of friends and family there. The Monday after Easter I spent fishing with my co-crew chief Mark Oswald. Marky Mark lives near Houma, La., so we spent some time catching up and doing some R&R on the water. Mark is an awesome dude. He’s so mellow and even keeled all the time and just a pleasure to work around and we’re very fortunate to have him on our Matco Tools team.

My wife, Billie Jo, and our littlest Brown, Adler, loaded up in the rent car on April 7 and we made the four-hour drive over to Baytown to get ready for the O’Reilly Spring Nationals at Houston Raceway Park. On April 8, we got up early and met up with my boy Trevor from ESPN and Bob Tasca at NASA’s Johnson Space Center near Clear Lake.

We spent nearly half a day at NASA. We started at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. Let me tell you, that’s the biggest swimming pool I’ve ever seen. I thought it was a lake. Then both Bob and I got to land the NASA flight simulator. The brothaman landed, but it wasn’t the smoothest shuttle landing. I’m sure with a little practice it would be all good though. Then we got to tour the Mission Control Center to see where the folks from Houston communicate with the astronauts and the International Space Station. We finished by driving the electric Lunar Rover. It was an awesome experience and I want to thanks Dave Dobson at ESPN for making it happen.

Houston was a really good race for our DSR Matco Tools team. It started on Thursday evening at the track with our Matco Tools Customer Appreciation Dinner. I need to give a shout out to my boy Bryan Robinson. Bryan is a Matco distributor near the track in Baytown and he sold more than 100 tickets to the race this year. That’s just awesome. I think Bryan sold more than 70 tickets last year and he gets it. He sees the value in bringing his customers to the track and entertaining them in our Iron Eagle Club hospitality. Thanks to Bryan for all you do for Matco and our DSR race team.

Our Matco car ran great again at Houston. We got the provisional pole on Friday night running 3.80 and clicked off two runs in the 3.70s on Saturday. Larry Dixon and that Al-Anabi team nipped us for the pole on Saturday when we ran 3.777 and they ran 3.772. That was a personal-best E.T. for me and we also ran our fastest 1,000-foot speed at 321.96 mph on Saturday. We advanced to our third straight final round on Sunday and came up short against the Al-Anabi team. I thought it was ours for the taking when Larry lost traction, but we broke a clutch lever and that sealed our fate. Let me tell you, our Matco team is tired of playing bridesmaid after three straight runner-ups. We ready to hold the ‘Wally’ again. Our car is running great and it will happen very soon.

I’ve got to give it up to Seth Angel and the staff at Houston Raceway Park. The new Tower Club is tight. We got to sign autographs for the TEC guests at the Tower Club and it’s a really nice building and the Dyson hand dryers in the bathroom are tight. It’s got a bar and great food and is a great place to hang at HRP.

So, my son, Adler, who’s now 2 years old, came to Houston with us. Let me tell you, that little joker is ready to be a Top Fuel driver. He loves sitting in cockpit of the race car. And, he won’t get out of the car. If you try and take him out, he says ‘no’ and pushes your hands away. He’ll sit in the car all day long if you let him. I think he’d even take a nap in there.

Monday, instead of heading home to Indy for a few days, my boy TY and I had to go to El Paso to visit Western Technical College. Before we hit Hobby airport we met up with my old buddy Harry Lartigue for lunch at Pei Wei. We were all finished with lunch and a random guy walks up and says, “Hey, you’re Antron Brown.” Then he proceeds to pull out a chair and sit down next to us to talk motorcycles and Suzukis. It was one of those you had to be there moments. He basically invited himself to sit with us to talk and he did most of the talking for like 40 minutes. He was very passionate and that’s great to see. After we left Pei Wei, we were in the Vitamin Shoppe, I needed some multi-vitamins, and TY and I were joking about the dude sitting at our table and the guy in front of us checking out goes, “I know who you are too. You almost got it done yesterday.” I don’t know if y’all Texans are bigger drag racing fans or if the Brothaman is just blowing up.

So, we flew to El Paso where we got picked up by Matco district manager Mike Zappia. Mike drove us to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant with all the folks from Western Technical College. Then it was off to the motel for some rest and then up early for a full day at WTC. Western Tech is awesome. Allan Sharpe, Bill Terrell and the entire group at WTC are awesome to us. The school even has its own Matco Tools bookstore. We spent the day speaking to groups of students from WTC’s automotive, HVAC, diesel, welding, tuner and nursing program. There were a lot of kids who listened to us speak and came to see our Matco Tools/U.S. Army dragster. I want to thank all the students for stopping by to say hello and let me tell you, y’all couldn’t have picked a better school to start your career.

That afternoon at 3 p.m. we headed back to the airport to fly to Las Vegas. Vegas baby, Vegas. At the El Paso airport, we ran by Starbucks to grab a quick Vivanno smoothie. TY has me hooked on the Strawberry Banana smoothie. He calls it, “his little cup of healthy.” The Vivanno  is a great way to start your day rather than a big, heavy breakfast. Trust me, the Brothaman still needs an occasional visit to Cracker Barrel or Waffle House. Then it happened again. We sat down to chill for a few minutes and a gentleman says, “Are you Antron Brown?” Three guys on their way to work at a convention in Vegas spotted us. They were really cool. We took pictures on the cell phones and said hello, then it was time to take off on our Southwest flight.

We got into Vegas, checked into the New York, New York, home to team DSR at the two Las Vegas races. Then I met up with TY and Red – Red’s my boy. He builds motors and pulls a cylinder head on our Matco dragster – for dinner. We walked over to the MGM Grand and ate at Wolfgang Puck’s and I had me an awesome pizza. The NYNY was tight. There are some good eats in there. The pizza at Sirrico’s is slammin’. I felt like I was back in Jersey.

Alright kids, that takes us through April 13. We’ll pick up again in a few days and talk about our week in Las Vegas. We had some fun times in Vegas both before and after the race and I’m sure the NHRA.com blog readers will be excited to read about them.

With that, it’s time for a little love, peace and Valvoline grease, and I’m out like shout. For now.

God bless.