You may not believe this, but I have a life beyond this column and another job hooking up words and phrases and clauses on some long-running drag racing magazine you may have heard of.

I don't get out as much as I used to in my pre-big-boss days when it wasn't uncommon for me to hit well over half of the stops on the national event tour, but they still do let me out of my cage every now and then. Like every good citizen, I have a camera everywhere I go because it's built right into my cell phone, and I chronicled a few of my journeys and experiences this year. With the season now complete and me deskbound for the next three months, I thought I'd trot out this little collection of small-scale pics to show you how my year went. No cell phones were harmed in the making of this column. Here we go ...

Well, unlike this past weekend, February in Pomona could be described in one word: wet. I have a few other words for it, but let's stick with that one. Thursday's qualifying rained out. Friday's qualifying rained out. We actually got in a session Saturday morning but lost Saturday afternoon to more of Mother Nature's moisture. My parking pass also became quite saturated yet proved an appropriate image for the weekend. 

After a four-hour Sunday morning delay, we actually got in the first rounds of Top Fuel and Funny Car and two of the eight first-round pairings in Pro Stock before rain brought an end to the day's activity. We tried again Monday but got completely rained out, but I did spy the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile on the drive home down Arrow Highway. Hot dog!

We didn't finish the race until Tuesday. We were glad we finally got 'er in the books, but it was only the start of a long season of sitting around watching the rain fall.

A month later, I was in Gainesville after a dizzying series of travel woes (click here and scroll to the third segment), where, despite the staffwide horror stories of the past two decades that have been astutely attributed to "The Curse of the Gators," it actually didn't rain. Maybe Mother Nature had the week off or something. Not only did it not rain, but no one that I knew got a speeding ticket on Highway 301;  I'm not sure which is the bigger accomplishment. As we rolled outta town Monday morning up Speedway 301 – I mean Highway 301 – K-Wade and I even had a chance to stop and shop for trinkets for our kids at the kitschy Florida Souvenir Stand along 301. The kids got Florida playing cards, a grandson got a Nemo-themed Florida T-shirt, and no one (despite much temptation) ended up with a dried alligator-foot paperweight. Maybe next year.

Less than two weeks later, I was off to Houston, where even monsoon-like rain upon our arrival and a rain-shortened day Friday (or even photog Jerry Foss' speeding ticket) couldn't dampen the thrill of our behind-the-scenes tour at NASA, courtesy of longtime e-mail pal and Insider fan Todd Bailey. Bailey has worked for NASA at the Johnson Space Center for 20 years, most lately at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (the NBL, as insiders call it), a ginormous swimming pool (40 feet deep, 202 feet wide, and 101 feet across filled with 6.2 million gallons of water) where astronauts practice spacewalks on full-size mock-ups in full space-suit regalia in the simulated weightlessness.

We got to meet and have our photos taken with space-shuttle veteran Michael Foreman, a Navy captain who was on STS-123 Endeavor in March 2008 and just the other day blasted back into space aboard STS-129 Atlantis. We checked out Rocket Park and took refuge from a driving rain inside the huge building that houses a full-size mock-up of a Saturn V rocket. It's a full 36 stories tall and then some. We visited the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, filled with various hatches, airlocks, and other components for astronauts to train with and, had it not been for a mission currently in space, could have flown one of the space-shuttle simulators. Like I said earlier, there's always next year.

You can read my recap of our space adventure and see a bunch of other outta-this-world pics here.

I didn't have another national event on my schedule until the Chicago event in June but kept the ol' cell-phone camera clicking anyway. I celebrated tax day by attending my gazillionth Bruce Springsteen concert, at the L.A. Sports Arena. I've probably seen Bruce more times than anyone else in the current NHRA world save for Stat Guy, Lewis Bloom (who's seen Bruce scores of times in everything from Jersey Shore bars to huge arenas), and, thanks to tickets from old friend Ken Landerman, a longtime fixture at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park, I got to take in one of the best and uplifting Bruce shows I've been to. I first saw him at the quite-rundown Sports Arena on The River tour (I went four of six nights!), and having seen him at posh palaces like Staples Center and Honda Center (and even the L.A. Coliseum) between, it was great to see him again in a more intimate setting (read: no skyboxes) in the place he lovingly referred to as "the dump that jumps." It was a masterful concert (read my Facebook review here if you're a tramp like me), and he barely looked like a guy about to turn 60.

Perhaps inspired by the youthfulness of "the Boss," three days later, I took a deep breath and shaved off the mustache I'd worn since high school (30-plus years) and turned the camera on myself for this quite unflattering photo to show the world my new look. It was quite unsettling (still is, on occasion) to see the smooth face, but I wanted to get the pic out there to get people used to seeing my new mug before I encountered them in Chicago. I posted it (and a humorous story) on my Facebook page.

 
When I finally did hit Chicago six weeks later, racers whom I've known for more than 25 years walked right by me in the pits without even glancing my way. I was the invisible man. It wasn't until some of them were forced to confront me face to face in the media center that I got the double takes and the "What, did you lose a bet?" comments that I so expected. Surprisingly, I didn't get hassled by any security types for the remainder of the year despite my hard-card credential showing that big ol' mustache, and, perhaps even more thankfully, I wasn't detained at any airport security posts nor did I end up on any watch lists. (Maybe next year.)

A week and a half after seeing his new driver, Spencer Massey, win his first Top Fuel crown in Chicago (where -- go figure --  it rained Saturday and Sunday), Don Prudhomme played gracious host to me and Photo Editor Teresa Long for a dream story for this lifelong "Snake" fan. He has accumulated quite a collection of his old race cars and agreed to let T.L. and me come down to his Vista, Calif., shop and roll them out for a photo shoot for National DRAGSTER.

Not only did I get the full guided tour and first-person remembrances of this historic icon, but I also got to help "the Snake" push the cars around the parking lot and actually sit behind the wheel of the fabled white Barracuda. You can read the story of our day here.

The topper to a great day was a ride with "Snake" to lunch in his newly (and lovingly) restored Dodge D-100 ramp truck with the big 'ol yellow Hot Wheels Cuda strapped to its back. You can check out a quick video of that ride above and see what it's like to ride shotgun with Prudhomme.

 

A few weeks later, it was off to Norwalk for one of my favorite events. Norwalk has held a special place in my heart for more than 25 years as it was the place where I first drove a fast drag race car, the amazing short-wheelbased supercharged BB/A Opel of the Mazi family, way back in the summer of 1984. I've remained friends with the Bader family, who helped make that special moment (and the storied article it spawned) possible, even through their time with the IHRA, and I look forward to seeing Bill Sr. and Jr. each year.

We landed, absorbed the breaking news that Michael Jackson had suffered a heart attack, and (stop me if you've heard this before) soon found ourselves in the eye of a deluge. We barely made it to the rental car before the skies let loose in a Noah's Ark-worthy blast. The highway was at a near standstill, so we pulled off for a bite and then learned that the King of Pop had left us.

It was a rough week for celebrities. On the way there, we heard that Farrah Fawcett had died and not long after that super pitchman Billy Mays had died, too. Ironically, I had read a profile of Mays on the flight in the American Airlines magazine. I snapped this photo of the magazine on the way home. We'll need some Mighty MendIt to fix the holes in our hearts.

We were treated to great racing as well as one of the trademark Bader family fireworks shows Friday night. They probably spend more money on this end-of-night add-on to the show than some promoters do on their entire advertising budget, but you seldom hear of a fan leaving the Norwalk facility who didn't think he got his money's worth and then some.

It was a heckuva lot better Friday than the one we experienced the year before in Norwalk when water continually seeped up through cracks in the top end and all manner of drainage -- from Top Alcohol Funny Car star Frank Manzo manning a backhoe to Bader Sr. drilling relief holes in the racing surface -- couldn't save the day. (You can relieve that not-so-great day here.)
 
It always seems to rain in Ohio in June -- I remember well that it rained in 1984, postponing my first rides in the Mazi Opel -- and although this year was better than last, we still were betrayed again by Mother Nature.

We fought the rain on and off in Norwalk, including Sunday morning. The forecast looked terrible coming into Sunday, then it miraculously cleared up, and all of the weather Web sites were saying we were fine, even though it was lightly misting during pre-race.

Billy Jr. asked me what I knew about the forecast, and I shared with him what I had heard, which he then shared with a large group of fans bordering the stage while he thanked them for attending the event. I think he said something like, "Don't worry about this mist; I have it on good authority that this will blow through pretty quick, and then we're good for the rest of the day." Of course, within a few minutes, it poured and poured, soaking the track and delaying the start of eliminations by about 90 minutes, and I have the photographic proof below. Sorry, Billy.

Some things never change.

I got the summer off from travel and got to take a swell road trip with my boy – shown here gassin' up the Pontiac -- to Sonoma in late August to catch some Formula Drift action (my new second-favorite motorsport). I wrote about it and got a lot of great feedback from dads like me about guy road trips and their coolness and counted my blessings that, even at 20 years old, he still thinks it's cool to pal around with his pops.

I hit the friendly skies again in September for my 27th straight U.S. Nationals, where, of course, it rained. The wet stuff came down Sunday morning and cost us a qualifying session. I snapped the photo below from the third floor of the Parks Tower, and I don't know if there's a sadder site in all of drag racing than a wet track in Indy. Am I wrong?

Fortunately, the wet stuff was relatively short-lived, and we made history there with Ashley Force Hood's first Funny Car win.

Three weeks later, it was back to the digs, this time in Dallas. Going to the Motorplex has always been a treat – I was there for the first NHRA race in 1986 and have an affinity for Texas – because you just never know what you’re going to see, though there's a pretty good bet you're not going to see any rain.

So, it was with great chagrin that I, Waldron, and K-Wade observed this scary-looking set of clouds upon landing – dig that crazy upside-down triangle thing in the middle – that had me feeling like I was in the middle of an episode of Storm Chasers. Unfortunately, instead of a tornado-proof, armored-car-like TIV (tornado intercept vehicle; what a riot that thing is), I was taking my first ride in a lightweight little Toyota hybrid (see photos below), complete with a video-game-like instrument panel and a bird-like appetite for gasoline. Hey, my posse may have been getting laughed at, but we were rolling green and helping reduce our carbon footprint. Either that or they were out of Mustangs; maybe next year.

Other than our Thursday travel day, it didn't rain in Dallas (yeah!).

A traditional highlight for me in Dallas is the opportunity to take in a little other motorsports action, in the form of an annual trip to Cowtown Speedway in Kennedale, about a half-hour ride from the Plex.

Cowtown ("the Fastest Lil' Dirt Track In Texas!") is right across the street from that eighth-mile birthplace of E.T. champions, Texas Raceway, and always seems to have a big show on the same weekend as our Dallas event. This year, it was a full-boat show of everything from winged sprint cars to "bomber" street-type cars and even the small mini sprints, which are powered by 200cc motorcycle engines. Jeromy Hefler, of the legendary Texas drag racing clan, a longtime Division 4 hitter and Texas Raceway mainstay, was racing that night, so it was cool to have someone to root for. He didn't win, but, hey, maybe next year.

The boy and I took in the Formula Drift finale at Irwindale in mid-October. I had to bypass a return trip to the California Hot Rod Reunion to take him there, but I felt I owed it to him for two reasons: One, I'd promised him last year we could go this year (it's five miles from our house) way before I knew the Reunion dates, and, two, I wanted to continue the legacy passed down to me by my stepfather, who used to take me out to Irwindale as a young kid. Sure, it’s not the same place – the home of the grand old dame is about a half-mile east of the new speedway – and, sure, we weren't going there to watch Pete's Lil Demon or Mr. C, but the sentiment was the same in a weird little way. Former NHRA sport compact racer Ed Bergenholtz had introduced us to Formula Drift's Andy Luk in Sonoma, and Andy took good care of us in Irwindale. Mindful of my drag racing roots, he got us into the swell trackside hospitality tent of Tanaka Racing -- Team manager Dwight Tanaka, the VP/director of operations for the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach, is a former drag racer -- which fields a truly bad-ass C5R-edition Corvette Z06. It truly stands out in a sea of Nissan 350ZXs and other foreign iron and gives us someone else to root for beyond Chris' favorite, Vaughn Gittin Jr. and his equally ripping '10 Mustang.

 
We caught two days of great action, rooted for our faves as well as the special-edition Shaun Carlson memorial car of Sam Hubinette, and said goodbye to our new friends on that circuit until next year.

Finally, it was Finals time. I won’t go into great detail because, well, it's fresh in all of our minds, but here's the year's last racing cell-phone pic, which I snapped during a highlight-filled pre-race ceremony. It shows Kenny Bernstein acknowledging the fans in his final race with Budweiser with wife Sheryl at his side. They already were on the verge of tearing up, and then that guy in the background with the spiffy green pants walked up and presented them with their very own Clydesdale. We all thought that was pretty cool – and even funny when the Technicoat Cowboys presented him with a shovel and rake for upcoming "cleanups" – but I don't think any of us knew what a high honor it is to receive from Budweiser one of these beautiful animals. KB knew and just about lost it, his voice breaking as he thanked Corey Christanell, director of sports and entertainment marketing at Anheuser-Busch Inc. In all my years of covering Bernstein, even through his retirement and Brandon's 2003 crash, I've never seem him like that. It was awesome.

And so was this year (despite the rain). Hope you enjoyed the pics. I'll see ya later this week.