A double blog! After a busy day, Doug and I are sitting here blogging away. He is filling you in on his perspective of everything that has happened in the past few weeks, and I am going to give you my thoughts on the past week and a half.

We had some special guests with us for the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis. Doug’s business, Doug Herbert Performance Parts (www.dougherbert.com), holds a contest every year that gives people the opportunity to spend a weekend at the track. Michael Kreisher and Kelly Veit were our first set of contest winners, and we tried to give them a racing experience like no other. They rode in the return van for one of Doug’s runs (which you know, if you are a faithful blog reader, is my personal favorite), watched from the starting line, got up close to all the drivers at driver introductions on Sunday, we fed them, and hopefully treated them like VIPs. They posed for this picture with Doug on Sunday afternoon. We didn’t get them to winner’s circle like we wanted, but I think they had a pretty good time.

The past week and a half since Indy has simply flown by. Doug and I headed back from Indy on Monday afternoon, and the guys packed up and headed back to North Carolina the next day.

The guys arrived in Olive Branch, Mississippi, on Tuesday, to get ready for an event we had today at one of Snap-on’s velocity centers. Dwayne Napper, the operations manager, invited us to be a part of his employee appreciation day. By the time Doug and I arrived, the guys already had the Snap-on Tools dragster unloaded and ready to go. We got there just in time for Dwayne to take us on a tour of the huge facility. Wow…those folks know what they are doing, and know how to get tools out the door! Soon enough it was time to fire the up the Snap-on dragster for all of the employees. It was the first time several of them had heard and seen a Top Fueler fire up, and I think they were pretty awed by what they saw, heard and smelled! We had a great time with everyone at the Olive Branch facility. They work hard and have a good time doing it!

Doug and I are headed back out to Memphis on Friday morning, where hopefully we will wrap up the weekend in winner’s circle! I’ll have more for you soon.

Until then, be good,

LP