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Greetings from the brothaman. I’m chilling in my Hampton Inn hotel room in Denver after a nice, healthy dinner at PF Chang’s. TY and I flew from Sonoma to Denver this afternoon, and the brothaman is going to have himself a few days of rest and relaxation before we complete the Western Swing at Denver.
We’re licking our wounds right now after our first-round loss at Sonoma. We dropped a cylinder at the hit of the throttle and lost traction and that proved to be our downfall. I can’t remember the last time we did that. It seems to be our luck this year that it would happen during eliminations and not qualifying. Our Matco Tools/U.S. Army car had been running so great. We qualified second and hadn’t lost in the first round since Atlanta. A week earlier, we advanced to our sixth final round of the season and fell in a close race to Cory Mac, our DSR teammate, at Seattle. We’ve got that runner-up monkey on our back. … 0-6 in final rounds, who would have imagined that?
I’m sitting in my room playing Words With Friends on my iPhone 4. My wife turned me on to this game. It’s like Scrabble and you can play with friends all over the world. Since my wife is on the plane. I’m playing with TY. Let me tell you, the brothaman has more points right now. You would think the PR guy would have a larger vocabulary than the driver. LOL
My lovely wife, Billie Jo, came to Seattle and Sonoma with me. We flew from Indy to San Francisco on July 7 to do media to promote the Sonoma race at Infineon Raceway. It was an awesome day of great press. They honestly made the brothaman feel like LeBron James. I walked into the press conference and they had press waiting for me. I couldn’t believe it. Reporters, TV cameras, I was shocked. Drag racers aren’t used to that type of attention unless their last name is Force. I have to thank John Cardinale and Diana Brennan of Infineon. They do an awesome job and we’re lucky to have them promoting NHRA drag racing.
We flew to Seattle on Thursday and did the press conference at the Space Needle with Cory Mac and Johnny and Shane Gray. It’s an awesome view from atop the Needle and we couldn’t have picked a better day to be up there. It’s was hot and there were no clouds in the Pacific Northwest. It was beautiful. That night we hosted a Matco Tools customer appreciation dinner at the track with our buddy Matco Tools district manager Dave Weber. The Seattle race was good for us. We qualified fifth which was our lowest starting spot since Joliet. We got back to another final round, but came up just short to Cory Mac and the FRAM boys. We were left as the bridesmaid again. That seems to be our theme in 2010.
The wife and I went whale watching in Seattle on Monday and flew to SFO on Tuesday. We had to stop at one of my favorite restaurants, the Seafood Peddler, in San Rafael, CA. They cook up some awesome grilled seafood and the brothaman can get down with some seafood, let me tell you. On Wednesday, it was our annual wine tasting trip. My sista, sista Joanne Reynolds hooked up a bus trip for 17 of us. It was like a who’s who of NHRA drag racing. I was there, along with Billie, and Brian Corradi, Mark Oswald, David Baca and his wife Michelle and their daughter Alex, Rahn and Ellen Tobler, Lee Beard and his wife Joyce, Joanne and her husband Rip, who is the assistant crew chief on Hot Rod’s Yas Marina car, and a few others including TY. It was a really fun day and I have to give a shout out to my boy Dominic from Foppoli from Foppoli Wines. Dominic hooks it up with white wine, let me tell you. He had an awesome story and it was a great day in the Russian River Valley.
The next day, I relaxed and then headed to the track for another Matco Tools customer appreciation dinner. We hosted 175 Matco Tools customers and guests at our Iron Eagle Club hospitality last Thursday evening and it was an awesome event. I have to thank district managers Dixon Cheal and DeWayne Herbert for all their support. They do an awesome job each year support our race program. Sonoma is one of the best Matco markets on tour and we love our trip there each year.
Well, we already talked about the race. No need to dwell on that. We’re looking ahead to Denver this weekend. The Matco Tools car has been to the final round at Bandimere Speedway the last three years and I’ve had a lot of success on the mountain, so hopefully we can keep that going. With that, it’s time for some love, peace and Valvoline grease, and I’m out like shout. We're going whitewater rafting tomorrow, so I'll fill you in on that next time on the blog.
God bless