I have so much to catch you guys up on I’m going to do two blogs to get it all in. I want to start off by talking about all the stuff we did all week leading up to the race weekend in Charlotte. Two weekends ago we had an off weekend so I had some downtime at home. On Saturday we went out to Lowe’s Motor Speedway for the huge AutoFair show they have out there. We had a booth set up for my business, Doug Herbert Performance Parts, and another booth for BRAKES. We also had the 1964 Cadillac Convertible on display that we auctioned off that week at our BRAKES charity dinner. While we were out there I ran into some of my heroes Bruton Smith and Carroll Shelby. When I was introduced to Carroll Shelby he said to me, "Hey, Doug Herbert, how’s the drag racing going?" I thought that was like the coolest thing because he’s such an automotive icon and he took the time to ask me about what I do.

So that Tuesday night we went to a deal at zMax Dragway where NHRA and NASCAR drivers could come out and drive their own cars, that was really cool. I was going to take my Dodge Viper over there but the transmission broke on it so my buddies at Underground Racing, Kevin and KC, they let me borrow a twin turbo Lamborghini. That thing was fast, it was the fastest real street car out there. Marcus Smith and his brother David were out there with some of their cars. It was just a lot of fun, just a bunch of guys racing their street cars. It was really cool that the folks at the dragway put that on for all of us and it is great that everyone in the Charlotte area has a great place to bring the car that you drive out to the track!

Wednesday we went to a NHRA press conference in downtown Charlotte. It was really cool; they had all of the top 10 drivers from each Pro class, all of the drivers in the countdown were there to hang out with the fans and introduce Nitro cars to Charlotte. They asked us to start the dragster so we showed everybody in downtown Charlotte what a Top Fuel car sounds like. After the display I picked up Jessie from school and spent the afternoon with her. We did what she likes to do best, go out on the lake and get pulled around on the inner tube. Since everybody was going to be in town I invited some of my friends over to the house and we had a great time. Jessie played the Wii with Grubnic and she beat him up pretty bad and after she beat him she made him admit that he got beat by a little girl and she thought that was really funny. Then Steve Johnson the comedian and most recent Pro Stock Bike winner entertained all the kids for a while, everyone had a great time! Before the end of the weekend I’ll write another blog to finish catching you guys up on everything we did in Charlotte.