Hello again all my NHRA.com nitrohaulics. We’re back on the blog after a week away and the brothaman has kept pretty busy since the St. Louis race. St. Louis obviously wasn’t one of the better outings for our DSR Matco Tools/U.S. Army team. We seemed to struggle all weekend long, but we won a round and didn’t take too much of a hit in the Top Fuel standings, so despite our performance, it wasn’t all that bad a weekend for us. And our DSR teammates, the U.S. Army team took home the Wally trophy, so it’s always good to keep those wins in-house at DSR. We have our heads held high and we’re going to Atlanta with a solid hot-weather tune-up in the books. We tested great after Las Vegas and we’re confident that the post-Vegas test will help us run well this weekend where they’re calling for temperatures in the high 80s in Commerce and all summer long.

I had the family with me during the St. Louis race; all but our little guy Adler. He stayed home with my mom in Indy. We drove home after the race on Sunday night and stopped for dinner at Cracker Barrel in Effingham, Ill. I’m a creature of habit. I love the Cracker Barrel and Waffle House. We got home on Sunday evening and it was great to sleep in our own beds after a weekend at the track.

After a few days at home, it was an early wake-up call for the brothaman last Thursday on May 6. I had to fly to Cleveland for our second Matco Tools Torque DVD shoot with my girl Courtney Hansen and my flight was early, 6 a.m. Court and I demo new products for Matco Tools and the DVDs go to all 1,500 distributors to play on their tool trucks. It makes for a long day, but we have a lot of fun. Last Thursday, we demo’d more than 30 new products that Matco sells. Needless to say, I was ready to get home and just made my 9 p.m. flight back to Indy. Here’s a link to Matco’s Torque website: http://torque.matcotools.com/. Check it out!
 
 

Last weekend I had a major honey-do project. We had a leak from the bathroom in our second story and the brothaman had to play Bob Vila. We had water stains on the kitchen ceiling and I had to figure out where the water coming from. I started by cutting a small 1x1 hole in the ceiling and didn’t see any leaks, so I had to make it bigger. I cut a 2x2 hole found the leak. It ended up being a hairline crack between the grout in shower that we couldn’t see. It was a real small crack. I had to re-grout and re-seal the tile and installed a new showerhead and changed direction of the water flow from the showerhead. Then I had to fix a u-trap that came out of the shower where it was leaking. By the time I was finished, we ended up with a 4x4 area of dry wall cut out of my ceiling. I found three leaks and that’s what “Big Daddy’s” been doing at the house. There wasn’t a lot of lounging around time on the couch.

I had to take a break from my water leak project last Saturday to cruise by the shop to say hello to our local Matco Tools district the “Indy Winners.” I rolled up in my hot new white Toyota Sequoia and hung out with our district manager Nathan Pershing and his distributors. We even had two Matco distributors who drove all the way up from Louisville to see our DSR shop. We love the support that our entire Matco family shows to our DSR racing program. We showed up in time to eat up some Pizza Hut for lunch. We talked about our race program and our Iron Eagle Club hospitality area as well. Then I gave the group a tour of our DSR shop and we started with the new machine shop and fab shop where we make Top Fuel and Funny Car chassis in-house here in Brownsburg, then we saw all the race trailers and, of course, our Matco Tools dragster.

I have to end by giving some major props to my boy Ted. I call him TY. He’s my right-hand man here at DSR and keeps me on point. He and my wife joke that he’s my babysitter. Last Saturday morning TY was up early to head to downtown Indy for the 500 Festival Mini Marathon. My boy ran 13.1 miles and he did it in under two hours. He’s turned into a distance runner lately. He said he hadn’t run more than six miles before the mini and still tore it up. It was cold last Saturday, in the 40s, and the winds were up to 30 mph. TY finished in 1:55:06. He said his goal was 2:10, so awesome job! We’re proud of you. And, after running 13 miles, he came to the shop for our Matco meeting. I think he came just for the pizza and ate like two pizzas all by himself. My boy can put away the food. He’s even talking about running a few more half marathons this year. I might have to start calling him Forrest. Run Forrest Run.

Speaking of sports, it’s Tuesday and that means Tuesday hoops. There’s a group of us, including TY, that play on Tuesday nights when were in town. I’m going to take some pictures tonight and do a blog on our Tuesday hoops and I have to give a plug to my boy Kevin Knock. Kevin is neighbors with Tommy Johnson and he’s a pretty good baller. He’s got a funky shot, but he can knock down the three-pointers. He plays pretty darn physical too. Lucky for me, I’m still quick and can blow by most of those jokers when they try and hack the brothaman. Last week Shawn Langdon played with us. You wouldn’t think Shawn was very athletic with that hockey playoff beard he has going, but not only is he the best leaver in Top Fuel, but he’s got some game too.

We’ll, that’s it for now. We’re off to Atlanta on Thursday morning where will meet up with Matco distributor Joe Shay for a tool truck ride before we head up to Commerce.

So, we’ll end with a little love, peace and Valvoline grease, and I’m out like shout.

God bless.