Hi, everyone,

So, I am on my way to Sonoma to finish up the Western Swing. I tell you, it has been an experience between Denver with the altitude and getting used to breathing up there and then coming down to sea level for the Seattle race. There were some adjustments that needed to be made along the way.

It has been great to be on the Western Swing. I have not been to the West Coast a lot but the scenery is amazing, especially in Denver. The mountains were great and I was very surprised how green everything was there.

In Denver we qualified No. 3, which was great. I felt like we were getting our old car back, the one we ran so well with at the beginning of the year.  When I say that I mean we got back to our old routine. Right after Bristol we started testing a lot of new stuff because of the new rule limiting the number of days we could test, so we were learning at the races. Even though we still did well with the new stuff I had to learn a new feel to the car and Tommy had a lot of new variables to deal with. So, it's back to what we know and Tommy is picking up were we left off. He has put us right up there in the No. 3 spot two weekends in a row.

At Denver it was great to get past Grant Downing in the first round. We had been coming up on six first-round losses in a row, so it was great to break that. After the first round I got out of the car and said to myself, We have the car to win the race, I was cutting great lights and the car was running great; we just had to keep it going. 

Heading into the next round we started off great. I had a .03 light and was way ahead of Robert Hight but then the car slowed down allowing Robert to get the win. It ended up that the air bottle that sets off the timers and runs the car had a leak. So we just had bad luck. So I tried to look at the positive side: we got around first round. I put the rest of that behind me and moved on to Seattle. 

When I arrived there the first thing I saw was a huge mountain that was covered in snow. It really was beautiful. During qualifying our car was running great right out of the box. We were in the top of the pack but then the next lap we had a safety box malfunction that kept triggering the parachutes to come out. It happened twice and we were not able to make our night run. We ended up No. 3 qualifier for the second straight week. We only got bumped out of the No. 2 spot by mph.

We paired up with my teammate Jack Beckman first round. You always hate to race your team cars, but you end up doing that more often than not. One good thing about it is that teammates don't play starting line games. You just go up there and race and that's what we did. I had Jack off the line and our numbers were better earlier, but then we both struck the tires and Jack did a great job pedaling to get around us. Ours blew up. If you saw it on TV it wasn't pretty.

When you get back to the pits it's so easy to hang your head and be upset about the situation. You think to yourself, I have to have the worst luck ever. It's OK to think that and to be very competitive about what we are doing. But I also think it is a time to be thankful for everything else that is going your way. I do realize that it could always be worse.

When I was on the first airplane on my way to Sonoma I was sitting across from a couple - one was blind and the other was deaf - and they had a small child. It was very humbling to me and made me realize that all the trouble that I think I have had is nothing compared to what they must go though day to day. So, I guess what I am saying is, when it seems like nothing is going my way, I should be grateful just to have the opportunity to do what I do for a living.

Well, I am in-between flights now and trying to get on the plane to San Francisco. I will have another blog for you after this race.