As Frank Barone used to say on the TV show Everybody Loves Raymond "Holy Crap". Where do I start with this blog? There's so much stuff to tell you about our weekend at zMax Dragway so here's part one, part two coming up soon.
First off Rinnai Tankless Water Heaters, who was our marketing partner last year at the Inaugural NHRA Carolinas Nationals, returned this year to back us and I just can't tell you guys how much we appreciate their support. Since Bob's wife Sally passed away earlier this year Gilby has been in a funk but with Rinnai's help getting him back on track here at our home-town race at zMax this been the best therapy for the dude.
Our weekend started out on Wednesday as we parked the transporter in our assigned pit spot and set up our hospitality tent. This process takes about four hours and we finished just in the nick of time as we were getting ready to leave when the rain started.
Thursday we went through tech as mentioned in our previous blog then loaded the car in our show car trailer and headed out to our host hotel, the Hampton Inn University for a display and to kick off the hotel's "Nitro Blast Off" party.
This is the second year we've done something like this and I've got to give a big shout out to Terri Gaeta, the hotel's Sales Manager. She put together a great party with free food and drinks and everyone who attended got a ticket for a door prize drawing for a bunch of really cool stuff including t-shirts, free room nights and a few gag gifts.
After she test drove the driver's seat we headed inside for the drawing. It was a lot of fun as many of the nitro teams were staying there including Wilkerson, Kalitta, Dunn and others.
I'm not sure, but I think the fix was in so that Gilby and I both won the same prizes, a skull cap with an attached red foil mullet wig. Terri insisted that both Gilby and I put them on for a photo op and she also gave me a pair of goofy looking sunglasses which made me look like an older Hulk Hogan, huh?
Friday morning we get to the track, yank the car out of the trailer and start preparing for our first qualifying lap. The local NBC affiliate, News 6, stopped by our pit for an interview that aired on the evening news and it was repeated all weekend during the stations local morning shows on both Saturday and Sunday.
Ron Hunter, the vice-president of sales and marketing for Rinnai, came out for his first drag race and was blown away by the experience. We put him in the car and Gilby gave him a quick tutorial on what it takes to drive one of these monsters.
It was then time to hit the track. I'll get into the particulars in the next blog but we had a great weekend and we've got to give all the credit to the one and only Paul Smith. I've known Paul for over 40 years and it was great to work with him again.
That's it for now, I'm heading down to Florida for a little mini vacation tomorrow but I'll try to post part two later this week from pool side. Oh I almost forgot, if you want to see some great photos from zMax check out the photo page at:
www.bobgilbertson.com
Type at you soon...
BB