Wow, sorry about the long pause in posting anything here. As you know, I spent the weekend in Lake Placid, N.Y., at the annual Lucas Oil Geoff Bodine Bobsled Challenge and traveled back yesterday. I've been paying for taking three days out of the office ever since; you know how that goes.

Still, I wouldn’t trade all the extra work I'm thrashing to do for this past weekend. I was going to write a long and detailed report about it here, but after getting halfway through it, I wondered if anyone would really care (if I get enough votes for it, I'll finish it, so let me hear from you). Some of the photos are pretty cool (so to speak), so I might throw a few of those at you later this week. In a nutshell, it was an amazing weekend, despite – or maybe because of -- temperatures that dipped into the negative digits. The sledding competition was first-rate and the event a real hoot. Thanks to the generosity of Jeg Coughlin and his PR ringleader Scott "Woody" Woodruff, I flew with them from Columbus, Ohio, to Lake Placid in their time-share Lear 45 jet after spending the night at Jeg's amazing house.

Sledding rookie Melanie Troxel, the first woman in the competition, showed the boys the fast way home almost all weekend and, like almost all of the drivers, got the fun experience of tipping 'er over once on the tricky course. Morgan Lucas flipped three (!) times and Shawn Langdon once, and at least four other drivers also went on their heads. I walked the fabled course and took two rides, the first as brakeman in a two-person sled for Funny Car racer Phil Burkart Jr., who drove over from Utica to help with the event, and the second in one of the four-person sleds. I'll be sharing the story of that in next week's National DRAGSTER.

What I really want to talk about today is the announcement that hit me like a ton of bricks when I stopped to check my e-mail in the Dallas airport Thursday on the way out, and that, of course, is Don Prudhomme's retirement announcement.

I guess it didn't really take me by surprise; after all, in this economy, trying to put together a major sponsorship in just the three months since he learned in Indy that U.S. Smokeless would not be back is a daunting challenge for anyone, even "the Snake."

Still, it kind of struck me at the moment that "the Snake" is probably the last of the iconic household drag racing names to hang 'em up, in the footprints of Don Garlits, Shirley Muldowney, Tom McEwen, and Bill Jenkins. OK, I know that legends like Connie Kalitta and Jim Dunn are still racing and racing well, and no offense surely to them, nor to even Bob Glidden or Joe Amato or anyone else, but "the Snake" and "Big Daddy" and "Cha-Cha" and "the Mongoose" and "Grumpy" will always be on an iconic plateau just a bit above everyone else, at least in my mind.

Shortly after the announcement, I got a message from Skip Allum, Prudhomme's longtime team manager, that "the Snake" wanted to chat, which dovetailed nicely into the plan I already had hatched in my mind for a send-off in National DRAGSTER next week.

I spent an amazing hour on the phone with "the Snake" this afternoon as he explained the reasons behind his tough decision, and I don't think I've ever heard him so relaxed. I'm sure that the toll of months of hard work trying to land a deal was considerable, but, well, because he was in such a good mood, I figured it was a good time to get his thoughts about great moments in his career. As we wound up the "news"  part of the interview, I was hastily scribbling notes to myself -- "Greer-Black-Prudhomme, Roland/Hawaiian, Indy wins, 1975-78, the Monza, first 5, first 250, return to Top Fuel, McEwen, Dixon/Capps/Massey" – to make sure I covered as many highlights as I could quickly remember, and I'm sure I forgot a few, but he was amazingly candid and told me some things I had never heard. It's priceless stuff. The plan is to run this in-depth interview next week in National DRAGSTER, along with a photo-filled career retrospective. This week, we're running this awesome Leslie Lovett photo in our Hot Shots slot.

Although his phone continues to buzz and, I guess, there exists the minuscule chance that some multibillionaire could ring him in the next day and all of this will become a bad nightmare, it looks as if "the Snake" is really hanging 'em up. I asked him about hanging in there for just the historic Winternationals, and he was adamant that he's not going to do some one-, three-, five, or 10-race deal just to do it. Like always, he wants to win and, in his own famous words, "rip their throats out."

He also didn't totally rule out a return to the sport well down the line if the current climate changes. I guess the most comforting thing he said to me was this: "The door's closed, but the doorbell still works."

OK, back to work. Issue 1 of 2010 ships tomorrow, and we can’t be late out of the gate to start our season.