Hi guys, Jeff here … Well, I guess it’s been a while since I blogged, so I’ll just start off at Pomona. I love the Pomona races because we happen to live so close (less than five miles). The Thursday and Friday were a lot of fun because I got to play golf with a few friends BEFORE we raced. On Thursday I golfed with Alan Johnson, a.k.a. AJ (or God, as Paul Smith used to call him), and a few of his buddies from Santa Maria. Alan is a very good golfer and let’s just say that AJ and I did pretty well that day in the $$ game. The next day, I took my buddy Ray Donahue from DHL and Bob Vandergriff Jr. to play at my home course. Alan and his friends came out again and we all had a great time. The weather was perfect and we still had lots of time to race in the afternoon.
Our car was giving us a bit of a hard time those first couple of days … maybe it was jealous that I didn’t take IT golfing! Anyways we ended up going into the final session not in and without any kind of a baseline. In my opinion, as a driver, nothing sucks more than going into the last qualifying session unqualified. I don’t really feel stress any other time, but our DHL Toyota team came through and we squeaked into the last spot by 2 thousands of a second. Sunday we plain just got our butts kicked by Mike Neff as he ran low ET of the event against us in the first round. Sunday night I attended Del’s annual “end of the year” party in his pit. It was fun, but I got out of there pretty early before I got into any trouble.
Monday night was the NHRA banquet. As you can see anybody can clean up pretty well when you put on a tux. My wife and I had a great time and we ended up sitting with Grubby and his girlfriend Brandi. Afterwards we hung out with the Oberhofers, Hillary, AJ and a few other Team Kalitta members.
On Wednesday, after promising my wife and daughter a nice vacation for 10 years, we hopped on a plane and flew to Hawaii. We ended up staying at the Embassy Suites in Waikiki. It was a real nice place and any hotel that has a Ruth’s Chris steakhouse and a Yardhouse downstairs has to be good. It even had a Wyland gallery. If you have never seen his paintings before, they are pretty wicked. Windy and Jenna ran into him on the street and he invited us to a signing at the gallery. Jenna even got her picture with him.
We did all the touristy stuff like the Aquarium, Zoo, Polynesian Cultural Center, beach walking and shopping, but didn’t really seem to relax much. That all changed when our friend Dan Hayes called us up. Dan is a longtime friend of Team Kalitta and has built Connie’s race shop as well as some other hangers and buildings. A few years ago Dan formed a company called Hawaiian Industrial Structures and believe me he keeps busy in Hawaii. Dan sent over a little tour bus to pick us up and told me to check out of our hotel as he had a nice condo for us to stay at. The bus brought us to an office building and hanger that Dan had just built for Makani Kai helicopters. Dan set up a nice hour long flight for us around the island and Richard who owns the business was nice enough to personally fly the helicopter himself! I was pretty impressed with my daughter Jenna as this was her first helicopter flight and she handled it like a champ. The island of Oahu is beautiful and if you ever get a chance to go there you have to look up Richard’s company and go for a flight. Absolutely spectacular!
Next Dan took us for a nice dinner cruise and then we ended up back at his condo. His place is up in Ko’olina. The condo was awesome and decked out to the nines. It had a view of the ocean and a beautiful pool and hot tub. We didn’t waste anytime getting down there! We ended up doing the USS Arizona tour the next day and I am glad that we did it. There is a lot to see and learn there and the monument itself is very overwhelming. Just another reminder of the old saying, “Freedom is not free.”
For the last couple of days we just hung out close to the condo. There are three or four beautiful man made coves close by. They are sheltered from the waves and it is all sand for as far as you can walk out into the ocean. My wife, daughter and I all had a great time just relaxing, swimming in the ocean and building sand castles. Unfortunately it ended too soon. Dan and his lovely wife Sandy are already tempting us to come back. They won’t have to work too hard at it, trust me.
Anyways, it was back to reality and sunny southern California. Did I mention how tough my life was? After a few months of working two jobs, the “honey do” list had gotten pretty big so I have spent the last little while catching up. Throw in a few days of working at Del’s (Worsham) shop and you are all caught up in what I have been up to. I am flying back to the race shop in Michigan on Monday just to hang out for a few days. Lots of cool stuff going on!
Blog at ya later!
Jeff
P.S. If you read Wilber’s blog, let me show you what the TOP of our hockey pool standings look like, as you never get to see that when he shows his name. haha