Happy Monday everyone, hope you all had a good weekend.

It's starting to get a little crazy around here as we ramp up to return to the NHRA tour at the race here in Charlotte next month.  As I type this, our car chief, Kevin Fenstermaker, is on his way back from Murf McKinney's shop in Lafayette, Ind., with our updated chassis required by the NHRA rules and he should be back in town tonight.  The guys will start assembling the car tomorrow and hopefully we'll be ready to go as the race starts a month from today so we should have plenty of time to prepare.  If you're attending the Charlotte race you'll see a lot of new things going on around our pit as we've got a special one-race sponsor for the Carolinas Nationals along with the Homewood Suites (more on that later this week) and hospitality for a whole bunch of folks.  Should be fun.

In other news Gilby called me late Friday afternoon and asked me if I wanted his tickets for the season opening Carolina Panthers pre-season football game on Saturday night against the Indianapolis Colts.  He was going motocross racing with Jake and he couldn't go so I jumped at the chance and 15 minutes later I was in his office to pick up the tickets.  It's been a long time since I've been to a pro football game and I had a great time. 

His seats are in the end zone on the lower level and I sat there for the first quarter until I snuck down to the sidelines where I found a seat in the fifth row on the 35-yard line behind the Panthers bench and sat there for the rest of the game.  It went into overtime where our kicker John Kasay won the game with a field goal, pretty exciting.  Hopefully Gilby will offer me tickets again (hint).  By the way, one of the Panther's defensive ends, Tyler Brayton, is a big-time drag racing fan and we invited him to join us at the Carolinas Nationals but he'll be in Minnesota that weekend; maybe next year, dude.

That's it for now, stay tuned for more later this week.

BB