Wassup, wassup. Hello again NHRA.com blog readers. After a busy few weeks, we’re back on the blog. I’m riding along to Bristol in our brand new black 2010 Toyota Tundra. My boy TY is at the wheel, so I can blog away. We’re riding along from Indy to Bristol, and it’s me, TY, and Rippy Rip. Rip Reynolds works on the Yas Marina team but was one of my mentors my rookie season in Top Fuel back with David Powers Motorsports. Rip is going to hang with us for the weekend at Bristol before the Yas dragster makes its NHRA season-debut next month during the Western Swing.
It’s a seven- to eight-hour drive from Indy to Bristol, and TY says we’re making a pit stop at a place called Buffalo Trace. I’m not a drinker. On the rare occasion I do have a drink, it’s Malibu rum for me with some pineapple and cranberry juice. They both like bourbon, so we’re going to hit up Kentucky’s famous Bourbon Trail. Buffalo Trace is their favorite of the distillery, so we’re going to bust out the Flip cam and shoot some footage for ESPN. Maybe they’ll use it in an upcoming Getting Down With Brown.
Let’s back up a few weeks to right after Topeka. On May 25, DSR hosted the second annual Bowling for Riley charity bowling event. We filled up all 28 lanes at Brownsburg Bowl and had an awesome time. Hopefully you got to see our Getting Down with Brown segment on ESPN from the bowling event. We raised more than $12,000 for Riley Hospital for Children, and it was a great time for an even greater cause.
Over Memorial Day weekend the brothaman did honey-do’s and lots of them. My big project was building a play set for my kids. It took me 30 hours. That’s right 30 hours. But it turned out really good and my kids love it. All the hard work paid off.
We rolled up to Joliet on Thursday morning with my wife, Billie Jo, and my two oldest kids, Arianna and Anson. The GPS took us some funky route and it turned a three-hour drive into a much longer road trip. We had to rush from the track into the Windy City, which is no easy trip. It took us 80 minutes to get to Geno’s East where we met up with Morgan Lucas and my homegirl Jayme Lawson from Toyota. Morgan and I were shooting a Chicago deep dish pizza piece for the ToyotaRacing.com website. We ate at Geno’s and then Lou Malnati’s and then we had to get back to the track for our Matco customer appreciation dinner that night. Chicago has some unbearable traffic. I don’t think I could do that on a daily basis.
The Joliet race was an important race for us and Matco Tools. We shed our normal paint scheme and flew the colors of John Wolfe, Matco’s top distributor. John is the man. He has been No. 1 for Matco the last four years. The car looked great and it turned out to be a great weekend. We unveiled the John Wolfe dragster on Thursday night at our customer appreciation dinner and then even gave John a little drama during qualifying. We entered the final qualifying session on the outside looking in and made a nice pass to qualify eighth. On race day, we ran into the Larry Dixon/Al-Anabi juggernaut again and got beat 3.830 to 3.839. The John Wolfe weekend worked out great for John and 150 of his best Matco Tools customers. Having Matco recognize John with the primary paint scheme for a race really turned a lot of heads with many of the others sponsors. I think it was a great decision by Matco and I couldn’t be more proud to fly those Matco Tools colors. I hope this is something Matco does annually.
After Joliet, we tested for NHRA on Monday with a restrictor plate that limited amount of air that goes through the supercharger. We made two runs and went 3.89 on our only full pass. It was home to Indy for a few days then off to Englishtown on Wednesday. Our flight was delayed and then we rushed to the track for the presser with my DSR teammate and new record holder Matt Hagan and my fellow Garden Stater Eddie Krawiec. After chilling with the Jersey media, it was off to visit my family for a few days and you know what that means, Grandma Brown or as we call her “Lossie.”
Grandma had to be the star of the weekend. She got a lot of TV time. Shoot, if she went on tour with us, she might get more TV time than John Force. It was the Grandma Lossie show on ESPN2 this weekend and we’re not mad. We got tons of great feedback from Grandma, but don’t tell her. I think she signed as many autographs as I did. She’ll get a break because she won’t be at another race until Reading in October.
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We also had our youngest son, Adler, with us for the Englishtown race. Billie and I had TY on baby duty. We’re prepping him for fatherhood, now we just have to find him a nice gal. I don’t know if he’s ready to change diapers yet though.
The E-town race was somber all weekend, and we send our prayers and condolences to the family of racer Neal Parker. Our Matco Tools/U.S. Army car ran great all weekend long. We celebrated the 235th birthday of the Army on Saturday and qualified fourth. We got back to another final round and it’s been way too long, since Houston in April. Mother Nature bit us again on Sunday and Dixon and the Al-Anabi boys bit us on Monday.
After the final round, we hooked up with my brother, Carlos, and my cousin, Andrea, and had lunch at Iccara in Yardville, N.J., and then stopped by Grandma’s place before we headed to the airport in Philly. We finally got to Indy about 9:30. Let’s just say we miss flying Southwest.
Yesterday I ran some errands and stopped by the ATT store in Avon to order my new iPhone 4. My wife loves her iPhone 3GS and I’m pretty much the only guy on our team without an iPhone, so I had to join all the cool kids. I’ll get my new phone after Norwalk, and I can’t wait. Let me give ya’ll with kids a tip on an app. Talking Carl will entertain your kids for hours and it’s only .99. That’s your friendly tip of the day from the brothaman. Download Talking Carl.
That’s all for now. We’ll check back in after Norwalk. I’m ready for Thunder Valley and with that, a little love, peace and Valvoline grease, and I’m out like shout.
God bless.