Hello, Team Kalitta fans! It’s your resident PR guy chiming in again. We’ve had a few guest appearances on our little chunk of literary real estate lately, so I thought it was about time for the sun to shine on the publicist again for a moment…well, the sun is shining here in Vegas and on everyone here, so I can’t feel too special, but this installment has more to do with two bright yellow cars, mountains and wind…lots and lots of wind!

One of the great things about coming to Vegas, besides a great track, great facility and all the obvious glittering distractions is the desert scenery at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It’s really quite something to see two nitro cars blasting down the quarter-mile toward a row of picturesque mountains. Sometimes those giant protruding rocks are hard to see with all the nitro fumes, but they are there, and they provide the marketing and PR folks, like myself, those little light bulb ideas like, “Wouldn’t it be great to get some photos of the race cars with the mountains in the background?” So, Friday morning the decision was made to take our rare opportunity to get some photographs of our two DHL race cars with Scott and Grubby so that DHL would have some great imagery for possible promotional materials in the future. The call was made to our team photog, Gary Nastase, and off we went.

Now, the sky was a magnificent blue, the mountains were doing their part, and everything looked like we had dreamed it up. There was only one little “hitch in the giddy up” (like they say where I’m from), and that was wind…and I mean WIND! After we got the cars in place and the drivers hit their marks, Gary got out the ladder to get some overhead shots. I’m guessing Gary goes about a buck-sixty so it didn’t occur to me that he would have trouble standing on the ladder in the gales. Wrong. After Gary had done a few shutterbugging clicks, he turned to me and said, “Hey, Todd. Do you mind coming over here and holding the ladder? I’m afraid I’m going to get blown over.” I thought my talented friend might be exaggerating a smidge, but I obliged. I knew the wind was blowing hard, but surely not that hard. I have quite a bit more girth than Gary, so I had not doubts that my addition as a pseudo-sandbag would certainly solve our gusty issues. At first I just stood there and held on to the ladder with my feet solidly on terra firma. Then, after a few anxious moments of ladder rocking, I decided to put one foot on a rung…then both feet and holding on for dear life (okay, maybe not that severe, but please allow my embellishment).

Scott and Grubby were good sports about the whole affair, but it was definitely not a very pleasant experience for them. Gary had two commands for the warm-blooded subjects… “Okay, guys. Look at me.”, and “Relax.” Relax was code for “turn away from the wind so your eyeballs don’t turn into raisins.” Grubby, being the fun-loving fellow that he is, kept calling his PR guy for make-up, knowing full well that I did not have, nor did I want to have, anything to help freshen up his appearance, but it interjected some humor into our slightly frustrating photographic foray, and despite dodging the occasional piece of refuse that came whizzing by, everything turned out great and Gary got some amazing imagery.

One of the local TV meteorologists summed things up “nice and tidy” about the wind out here on the morning broadcast this morning, and being a resident of what has been a really snowy Michigan this winter, his summary gave me a rolling eyes-smile. Paraphrasing, he said one of the drawbacks of Vegas in April are the winds that brings us spring, but at least we don’t have snow shovels in our garages. What a great way of rubbing it in…Thanks!

Take care, all. Todd has left, or possibly got blown out of, the building!