Hey everyone, BB back with ya after an action packed week for this old guy.

As I mentioned in our last blog I spent the past week in Orlando for the 21st annual Performance Racing Industry trade show. In case you don't know what it is, it's the largest hard-core racing trade show in the world, unlike SEMA, no bling here, just racing parts. Over 1,500 booths in the 1.2 million square foot Orange County Convention Center and I went down to man the Trick Tank booth.

The week started off last Monday afternoon when Ron Hammell of 10,000 RPM, our major associate sponsor who we were sharing a booth with, and I hopped into his pick-up truck loaded to the gills with the stuff for our display and headed south. Charlotte to Orlando is 520 miles and I drove the whole way, stopping only once for gas and we did the trip in seven hours, an average of 74 mph -- got the hammer down!

We checked into the hotel Monday evening then headed to the hotel's sports bar and watched the Carolina Panthers beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday Night Football. There were a lot of racers there and we got pretty rowdy; it was a good time.

Tuesday morning we got up and went to breakfast where I was recognized by Ulf Leanders who runs an Alcohol Funny Car in Sweden. Ulf and his brother had a booth there for the clutches they build and they flew over 24 hours to get to Orlando. He told me how much he enjoys our blog, especially the "Jungle" stories, and how he checks in at NHRA.com every day. He said it would be cool to be the first Swedish dude to be in an NHRA blog so here you go Ulf, say hi to all those tall Swedish blonds for me.

We spent the rest of the day setting up our booth then had a little time off to enjoy all Orlando has to offer as the show didn't start until Thursday morning. We did a little sightseeing, a lot of eating and enjoyed ourselves as we knew we had three long days of the show ahead of us.

The doors opened up Thursday morning and it was a mob scene, cool thing about PRI is that it's an opportunity to see people away from the track and folks you haven't seen in years. Case in point, Dan Pastorini, former NFL star and Top Fuel racer stopped by and while touring the aisles I got to hook up with Don Garlits, one of his many crew chiefs, T.C. Lemmons, and Tom McEwen, who were signing autographs in TA/FC racer Dennis Taylor's booth. Boy, there were a lot of war stories being told and I enjoyed every minute of it.

I don't know how many of you have heard this before but I figured I'd pass this tale along from T.C.

When he went on the road with Garlits, T.C. didn't want to tell his mother that he went drag racing so he told her that he was in prison, every time he tells the story it cracks me up. By the way T.C., who has had some health issues the past few years, told me that he's beat the big "C" and wants to thank all the fans who sent him their well wishes.

The show ended at 5 p.m. on Saturday and teardown is another mob scene. The deal is that all the rigs line up Saturday afternoon to claim their spot in the parking lot and once the show is over it's every man for himself. Being the enterprising guy I am, I slipped the parking lot dude a 10 spot, got my pass and got parked right away. We tore our booth down, loaded it up in a monster box on wheels that's about 4x 8x10 built especially for the display and wheeled it out to the truck.

Here's where we got lucky, right next to where I parked the pickup there was a unattended fork lift with the key in it. I commandeered it, hopped into the driver's seat, picked up our box and loaded it in about two minutes and then parked the lift truck right back where I found it.

Then we went out to a nice dinner at a great Italian restaurant and retired for the evening as we had a 3 a.m. wake-up call Sunday morning so we could take Hammel's daughter Becki, who worked the booth with us, to the airport for a 5:30 AM flight back to California. After dropping her off we split out of the airport about 4:15 a.m. and headed back to Charlotte. Again I drove the whole way back, another 520 miles in seven hours arriving home before noon where I crashed and burned for a couple of hours before getting up to type this blog.

In closing I want to thank everyone who stopped by our booth to say hi. Most all of the folks mentioned how much they dug the "Jungle" photos and stories and due to popular request I'm going to keep them coming in the next few weeks for your listening and dancing pleasure.

I'll be typing at you soon...

BB