Any trip to the ACDelco NHRA Gatornationals is a blessing. The event is just so steeped in myth and legend and history that, as in Pomona, Indy, and Englishtown, you literally can feel it when you're there. I've attended more than a dozen Gatornationals, and it always seems that you leave Gainesville Raceway with at least one indelible memory etched into your mental life journal.

Historical firsts such as the breaking of the 260-, 270-, and 300-mph barriers, thrilling final rounds, and the prestige of winning one of NHRA's most fabled events ratchet up the enjoyment for the fans who flock to sunny Florida for the event.

This year certainly was no exception for me. Seeing Bob Tasca III score his first nitro Funny Car win, Bobby Lagana Jr.'s run to the semifinals in Top Fuel, and Hector Arana's Pro Stock Motorcycle victory were truly enjoyable moments.

Not to toot my own horn, but I'm beginning to think that I'm a bit of a good-luck charm for first-time winners. Last year alone, I was in Bristol when Melanie Troxel scored her first victory in Funny Car, in Norwalk when Arana earned the first triumph of his 18-year career, and in Dallas when Greg Stanfield scored his initial Pro Stock victory, so I wasn't surprised to see Tasca score his breakthrough win. On the way to Gainesville Raceway Sunday morning, fellow staffer Kelly Wade had predicted a first-time winner, and even though she was thinking Spencer Massey, I'll give her half credit.

Tasca is no stranger to success at Gainesville Raceway. He still owns the quickest Top Alcohol Funny Car time slip ever printed – yes, quicker than any of Frank Manzo's, about the only claim anyone in that class has over him – based on a sterling 5.451 recorded there in 2007, and the win was even more special to him because he beat his best friend, Tony Pedregon, in the final. Tasca was best man at Pedregon's wedding. Additionally, Tasca is the first Funny Car driver since Frank Hawley in 1982 to score his first win at the Gatornationals.

Bob Tasca III and Chris Cunningham basking in some Gatornationals glory.

Bobby Lagana Jr., smiling all the way to the semifinals.

Happy Hector!

Tasca's crew chief, Chris Cunningham, also is no stranger to success at Gainesville. But it was good to see him win. I remember Chris as young crewmember on Darrell Gwynn's Top Alcohol Dragster when "the Kid" scored a popular Gatornationals win way back in 1984 and was with him for both Top Fuel wins, in 1989 and 1990. Cunningham had won three titles as co-crew chief while a member of the Checker Schuck's Kragen team, but I believe it was his first victory as sole leader of a team.

Lagana warmed my heart for other reasons. I remember the struggles of his father, East Coast Funny Car match racer Bobby Sr., and his sometimes star-crossed Twilight Zone machines of the 1980s. Lagana Jr. also suffered a severe crash a few years ago in a Top Fueler but made a courageous comeback and almost had a career day with the Tire Kingdom dragster, which is tuned by his 24-year-old brother Dom. As Jr. said in his top-end interview after upsetting Antron Brown (and, before that, killing Kelly's prophecy by beating Massey), "I know my dad is proud."

The Gators has a pretty good history for long-shot finalists, from Don Campanello and Kenny Delco, who won their only Pro Stock titles at the 1986 and 1990 events, to surprise runner-ups such as Jim Bucher (Top Fuel, 1973), Roger Lindamood (Funny Car, 1977), Bill Pryor (Top Fuel, 1979), Pat Musi (Pro Stock, 1981), Cory Lee (Funny Car, 1999), Tony Mullen (Pro Stock Motorcycle, 2000), John Smith (Top Fuel, 2003) Bob Gilbertson (Funny Car, 2005), and Erica Enders (Pro Stock, 2006) – so it wasn't a total surprise to see Tasca, Lagana, Rickie Jones (Pro Stock), and Shawn Gann (Pro Stock Motorcycle) in the semifinals.

Arana, however, was the total wild card in the Pro Stock Motorcycle deck. After qualifying No. 2, we knew he had a good bike, but we all shrugged our shoulders after two reaction times in the triple digits. Arana was a notorious red-lighter last season – he caught crimson a whopping nine times – and all bets were on him to foul away the final against Matt Smith, but he didn't. 

As you will read later this week on NHRA.com, NHRA has launched a social-media campaign to reach out to our dedicated fans. It encompasses a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and a YouTube channel and should be fully revved up before long.

Some of us have been playing with the new toys for a while on a personal basis and are growing more familiar with the strengths and potential uses. I started a Twitter page right after the Kragen O'Reilly NHRA Winternationals that has a modest following where interested readers can find out what's going on at my job, at home, or on the road. For those unfamiliar with Twitter, establishing an account allows the user to send short (140-word) tweets to anyone who has subscribed to his or her page. Interested readers can see the newest entries on the Web or, better yet, have them sent to their cell phone (hence the 140-character limit).

Michael Padian from NHRA's Communications Department started an NHRA Twitter account before that and provided updates at the season opener regarding the rain, rescheduling, TV airdates, and other such information. He found it to be a convenient and fast way to communicate the latest updates and made sure it was included in NHRA's social-media plans.

Me and "K-Mac," doing our thing in the media center. Kelly Wade photo!

I took over for him in Gainesville, posting a series of tweets each day, and honed what I wanted to say each day. Qualifying days featured just a session-by-session report on who was leading, but come eliminations day, I developed a pretty good method for posting results. The 140-character limit makes it impossible to list the results of all eight first-round races, so I settled instead for listing the second-round pairings; that way, people would know if their favorite had advanced and, if so, who he or she would face in the next round. It still got pretty tricky, and I found myself abbreviating things like "T-Ped" for Tony Pedregon, "BB" for Brandon Bernstein, and things like "v" for versus or "d." for defeated to stay under the limit. I continued that through the end of the race and got it down pretty good, and, of course, with fewer names each round, it only got easier.

It became just one more thing to do as I covered the race for NHRA.com, which also included an event notebook feature that was updated multiple times throughout the day. Instead of trying to do a play-by-play as we did at the Winternationals, which was very labor intensive and had visitors repeatedly refreshing the page for results from the next pair, I updated it after each round of each class, summarizing what had happened, giving the next round pairings (with lane choice), and talking in a little more depth about the round's highlight. I sprinkled it with funny notes and quotes (at least I hope they were funny) and other items of interest and observation. I've seen this format used on some sports Web sites, branded as "glogs" (game logs). They're not play-by-play but more like pointed observations of good plays or even things happening off the playing surface. We're still experimenting with it, but I think we're homing in on a format. Your feedback, as always, is appreciated.

Say hello to my little friends. Well, some of them.

Between all of that frantic post-round posting, I also was trying to keep up with my own Facebook page. NHRA's Facebook page will be a lot more informative and a good way for NHRA and fans to interact, and while it was under construction I signed up for a personal account and am quite amazed at it all. As the father of a MySpace-crazy daughter, I always looked down on these kinds of sites, but after getting a gander at who was Facebooking, I thought I owed it to myself to check it out.

There's quite a burgeoning NHRA community already, thanks to earlier adopters, and within two weeks, I already had requested or accepted more than 200 "friends," to whom I'm now connected. We can exchange private messages, chat live, or simply let one another know what we're doing at any given moment (a sort of Twitter-like deal, but with a larger word count; some people can be pretty creative; see the example at right). Already I've used it to do mini interviews, both in chat and via private message, and catch up with everyone from old racer friends to old high school friends. You can check me out there; how about those cute baby pictures?

Who are my friends? How about  Full Throttle aces such as Antron Brown, David Baca, Matt Smith, Angie McBride, George and Jackie Bryce, Rod Fuller, Doug Herbert, Hillary Will, Alan Johnson Racing, Allen Johnson, Steve Johnson, Shawn Langdon, Peggy Llewellyn, Spencer Massey, Terry Mc Millen, Chrisman Racing, Mike Ashley Racing, Reggie Showers, Bob Vandergriff Jr., Jon Capps, Fred Collis, Doug Foley, and Mark Whisnant; Sportsman racers such as Tom Conway, Brad Plourd, Kyle Seipel, Luke Shumard, Keeter Ray, Clint Neff, Karen Benkovich Stalba; nostalgia racers such as Mendy Fry, Adam Sorokin, and Jeff Utterback; former sport compact pals Lisa Kubo, Brad Personett, and Angela Proudfoot; and crew chiefs such as Brian Corradi, Rob Flynn, Shane Maloney, Howard Moon, and John Bodie Smith.

Of course, my current co-workers such as DRAGSTER staffers Kevin McKenna, Jeff Morton, Jade Davidson, Jerry Foss, Marc Gewertz, Duke Ritenhouse, Juan Torres, Kelly Wade, and Richard Wong are all there, plus NHRA regulars such as Jeff Foster, Michael Padian, Halie Schmidt, Scott Smith, and Division 4's Craig Hutchinson and Dale House, not to mention more than a dozen former NHRA employees. My friends also include a lot of media and PR types: Cam Evans, Matthew Brammer, Jon Knapp, Julie Mosher, Todd Myers, Susan Pollack, Bob Wilber, Ted Yerzyk, Norman Blake, Francis Butler, Cole Coonce, John Drummond, Phil Elliott , Rob Geiger, Darr Hawthorne, Dawn Mazi-Hovsepian, Joe Jackson, Roland Osborne, Matt Polito, Bill Pratt, Roger Richards, Evan Smith, Richard Shute, Dave Kommel, Danny White, and Greg Zyla .

There are tons of former racers, such as Johnny Abbott , Gordie Bonin, Don Ewald, Betty Green, Rhonda Hartman-Smith, Virgil Hartman, Arnie Karp, "Jungle Pam" Hardy, and Roland Forsberg; friends and family of racers current and past, such as Windy Arend, Jackee Allen, Lana Chrisman, Teri Ferrell Sewell, Lisa Sewell, Jake Gilbertson, Susan Kopp, Zoe Oswald, Burnell Russell, and too many more to mention.

We're also pretty excited about the new YouTube channel, which will host all sorts of NHRA videos and expose our sport to the legion of users who enjoy watching their pictures move. I'll keep you abreast on the latest developments over there as they happen.

Back to Twitter for a moment. It has been interesting to see some of the NHRA race teams that are early adopters of the tool, including John Force Racing, Kalitta Motorsports, and Terry McMillen.

Force publicist Elon Werner is far and away the most prolific tweeter out there, sharing the latest snippets about the progress of the four Force drivers, links to articles about them, and more. Werner also was instrumental in the Twitter live chat that Ashley Force Hood took part in Friday on the FordRacing Twitter page.

Werner also was behind an interesting stunt at the track. He sent out a tweet to all of his followers (more than 900!) telling them to meet at the Force Racing compound in an hour. An hour later, he sent out another tweet looking for any of the followers who had caught his earlier message on their cell phones. Melissa Waterman shot up her hand first, and, as a reward, the Rhode Island resident, on her first trip to Gainesville Raceway, earned a personal visit with Ashley.

McMillen, who qualified for Top Fuel, tried a similar experiment from his Amalie Oil pit but didn't give any advance warning. He just tweeted that the first two followers to come to his pit would receive a stuffed alligator, the team mascot. Both were gone within a few minutes. "I love it," said McMillen. "It really goes to show you the power of the new technology."

As great as the Gatornationals can be, the event, as many have discovered, can sometimes seem cursed. If you read my top 50 Gatornationals moments last week, you know that the event has had more than its fair share of thrills and spills -- other than the now-defunct Ontario Motor Speedway in California that hosted the NHRA Supernationals/World Finals for 10 years, I'd guess that Gainesville has consumed more Funny Cars in flames than any other venue – but you also may have heard of the mythical Curse of the Gators, as the National DRAGSTER staff has dubbed the mysterious series of ailments that can affect the human body there.

Gee, Mr. Neff, you don't look so good ...

While I've never personally flambéed a flopper, I have witnessed firsthand this curse, which affects the body in many ways. This year's random victim was Funny Car racer Mike Neff, who battled a "flu-like virus" all weekend. I got my first taste of it in 1984, when I was crewing for Top Alcohol Funny Car racer Jim DePasse, who got gout in his big toe during the event. Gout occurs when urate crystals accumulate around a joint, and the doctors told him that some out-of-staters can come down with it simply by drinking the water. The next year, it was my turn to get socked. I'm still blaming it on the fruit pie I ate that night, but I've never been more sick in my life. I was so sick that I literally could not make it out to the track the next morning, the one and only time that has happened to me in a 27-year career here. Other staffers throughout the years have fallen victim to various maladies. It's kind of odd, and we laugh about it with a cautious gallows humor while silently praying that we're not next. The curse has manifested itself in many ways that most would chalk up to bad luck, but we know better.

Although none of the ND staff was struck down this year, I thought I'd close this column with a little self-deprecating humor about how I was at least a little cursed at the event.

Travel stories can be pretty funny, and people like me who are blessed to be able to travel to exotic destinations as part of their job should never complain, but this stuff was too good to pass up. Individually, this series of traumas was probably nothing, but once they started mounting, I was fearing what was next.

It started innocently enough Thursday. Due to the overall belt-tightening, we're all booked on the most economical flights that can be found, and in this case, that meant a 6 a.m. departure instead of the typical 8 or 9 a.m. takeoff. Getting up at 4 a.m. wouldn't have been so bad had not my grandson decided he didn't want to sleep the night before; I think I copped all of about 90 minutes of sleep before setting off to the airport. I had cut it kind of close already to catch the maximum amount of z's I could and still was looking good until a huge traffic jam materialized (at 4:45 a.m.? Are you kidding me?) where none usually exist. I flipped on the nav system I had purchased just last week and found a detour around the mess on side streets, but it still put me behind schedule.

By the time I arrived at the Park 'N Fly remote parking, I had just enough time to grab my stuff and board the bus, forgetting to take off the sweatshirt I had worn that chilly morning (I had a "real" jacket in my suitcase). It wasn't until the shuttle bus left the lot that I realized I'd be carrying the sweatshirt along. Ten seconds later, I was suddenly thankful that I had NOT removed it as I had placed my cell phone in the pocket that morning. Whew. It's almost impossible to go anywhere without a cell phone these days, let alone a race away from home.

Thinking that the loose pocket was not a safe place for my phone on the bus, I tucked it into the neat phone pocket on the outside of my laptop case, and all was right with the world. I checked my bags and, feeling warm in the terminal, took off the sweatshirt and immediately had a weird feeling; it felt too light. In what is surely an approaching case of CRS, I forgot that I had put my phone in the laptop bag and thought that I must have left it at the airline counter. I doubled back, but no luck. So I assumed it must have fallen out onto the seat in the bus. There was no time to catch a ride back to the shuttle lot nor any hope that I'd even find the same bus, so I resigned myself to the fact that I would, after all, have to go cell-less. Five minutes later, I remembered it was actually in the laptop bag. Doh!

The flight to Houston went fine other than that I was sitting next to bulky-wool-coat lady who not only insisted on hogging the armrest (when she wasn't elbowing me in the ribs) but whose sleeves were super-itchy wool stuff that should be used by secret operatives to interrogate spies; Jack Bauer would love this material. 

Remind me again ... which one is mine?

I scratched my way to Houston and had lunch with my hockey teammate, NHRA Vice President Glen Cromwell, the only other NHRA employee on the flight. We had a three-hour layover in H-town, so we settled down at the gate to work a little. Feeling nature's call, I glanced up and spotted a restroom just across the aisle. I sauntered in and did my business, thinking it quite unusual that the restroom had no urinals. Anyway, I exited the stall and, yep, realized that I was in the ladies room. There was a woman washing her face at the sink, but I don't think she saw me, so I slinked out as quickly as I could, then later saw her (of course, she was on my flight) giving me the evil eye 10 minutes later. Cromwell got up to use the facilities and returned and told me, "Boy, did I almost make a mistake. I almost went into the ladies room!" I feigned surprise and laughed at his folly, not ready to divulge my own error. Don't need that story going round the ol' hockey locker room.

So we arrived in Jacksonville, and I deplaned and started heading for baggage claim and suddenly got that familiar "light" feeling. I somehow had forgotten that cursed sweatshirt on the plane. I doubled back, and, of course, they had already closed the jetway. I finally found a nice worker who fetched me my jacket.

I met up with Kelly, who had been on a different flight, and regaled her with my tale and told her to stay her distance from me; I had no idea what I was capable of. She laughed in that Kelly way, ever the optimist. The next day, as we were preparing to leave the track, she realized what a foolish, foolish girl she was. Somehow, somewhere, I had lost the rental-car keys. Yes, the rental-car keys with the pretty tags that read "Minimum cost for key replacement $250."

We searched high and low, stopped by numerous lost-and-found kiosks and the Gainesville Raceway offices, all in vain. I was just about to call it a loss and go through the hassle of calling the rental-car company when someone remembered that there was a set of keys in Race Control. I ran up the stairs, and, yes, there was a set of keys, but, no, they weren't mine. Crestfallen, I stood there shell-shocked until someone remembered that there was, indeed, another set of lost keys; mercifully, they were mine, and I thought "Now I'll only have to endure a weekend full of jokes instead of a year or more." Did I mention it also was Friday the 13th?

So we headed off to dinner with Senior Editor Kevin McKenna to Carrabba's, a popular Italian restaurant.  It was going to be a little bit of a wait. So we settled into some seats in the lobby with Angelle Sampey and her boyfriend, Seth. Angelle and Seth got their table ahead of us, but they were given a huge table, so they invited the DRAGSTER Trio to join them. I got up and promptly left the rental-car keys on the seat. Fortunately, a Good Samaritan standing nearby saw this and brought them to our table. Kelly confiscated the keys.

We enjoyed a nice dinner with Angelle, who was in Florida to see her old pals but mostly to see her old monkey, Andy, whom she was forced to surrender to a wildlife refuge in Florida. Monkeys just don't make good pets. Angelle entertained us with stories of her trials and tribulations during three championships and told us about her and Seth's new sideline, breeding and selling saltwater fish. Angelle has really high hopes for her racing future, and I think you might be hearing something exciting from her in the not-too-distant future.

Anyway, the rest of the weekend was free from any additional embarrassments. We even managed to get in and out of Gainesville without a speeding ticket, which, if you've ever been there, you know is a major accomplishment. The main thoroughfare between Jacksonville (where we fly to) and Gainesville is Highway 301, and I don't know a more tightly policed stretch of highway. Coming in, we heard word that undercover cars were being deployed this year in addition to state and local troopers. I told Kelly that I wasn't going to go over the speed limit even 1 mph, so sit back and enjoy the long ride.

The highway is dotted with small towns along the way, so one minute you’re required to do no more than 65, then 45, then 25, then 55. The speed limit goes up and down like the stock market, and I can honestly say that I've never seen a group of motorists so staunchly adhere to the speed limits as do the travelers along this road. People have either heard or learned the hard way that you just can't get away very often with speeding there. The towns of Lawtey and Waldo are so notorious that people start slowing down well before they hit the speed-limit signs, and the road to Lawtey is dotted with billboards such as the accompanying, posted as a public-service message. They don't mess around down there.

We flew out on a late flight Monday, and "K-Wade" and I even had built in enough time to shop for souvenirs for our kids at the infamous Florida Souvenir Land shack along 301. Where else can you buy genuine preserved alligator feet for $1.49? And who wouldn't like a foot-long alligator head on his or her desk?

I actually started writing this on the flight from Jacksonville to Houston, where I met up with McKenna, and, amazingly, the plane was still aloft. I finished it and posted it first thing Tuesday; then, in nine days, I'll be heading to Houston for more misadventures!