Alright, maybe that headline was a little deceiving, but back to that in a bit. The Western Swing is always a grueling race, especially for the crew guys that have to drive and work a lot in a short period of time. I don't think that they ever get enough credit, but here I am giving our guys some. The Kalitta crew guys rock and in my opinion are second to none!

Denver went pretty well for us in qualifying. We ran some of best numbers there, which is pretty amazing considering the corrected altitude can get up close to 9,000 feet sometimes! We also got to make two real nighttime qualifiers there and let me tell you that driving a Funny Car at night is an experience second to none. NHRA and the people at Bandimere Speedway did an excellent job with the track surface and the fans there were as good as I have seen. Even after a lengthy rain delay on Friday, when we finally got to run pretty late at night, the stands were packed. On Sunday, we made a nice lap against the Cruzer with our DHL Toyota but again just came up a hundredth or so short. I promise, one of these days our team is going to start winning those close ones and then watch out.

I flew home after Denver and then a couple of days later flew up to Seattle with my wife Windy and daughter Jenna. At the race on Friday we came out of the box with a strong lap that gave all of us some confidence. Unfortunately, the rest of the weekend didn't go quite as well. We have been struggling to get some better early numbers out of our DHL Funny Car to improve our overall performance, but it has been trickier than we thought. We had to race Mike Neff in the first round, and while I got a good jump on him at the line, we both had to pedal our cars pretty early in the run and he got his car to hook up better for the round-win.

My family and I had lots of cool stuff planned for the week off between Seattle and Sonoma, so Monday morning we were kind of excited to get things under way. My team was nice enough to let me and my family use one of the Toyota Sequoias that we have for our little venture. Now I know I drive a Funny Car, but that Toyota has lots of power and I had to keep and eye on the old speedometer to keep us out of trouble. The first day we drove down to Salem, Ore., home of the world famous Walery's Pizza. Dave Walery has been involved as an associate sponsor in drag racing for quite some time now and currently is on Matt Hagan's car. I met him through Del Worsham when I drove for CSK back in 2007. At many of the races, Dave would fly in some of his delicious pizzas for the team, and we even had a pizza oven put in the CSK hospitality trailer. Most of the Team Schumacher crew guys also came down to the pizza place. We got the royal tour of the pizza parlor, and we even got to make our own pizzas. Dave's pizzas are made from all fresh ingredients, and they even make their own crust from scratch, which is a rarity these days… probably why they taste so good. Later, we were all invited back to Dave's house for a big party. I got to know a lot more of the DSR guys there, and a lot of them played some catch with the old baseball and football. I even contributed a bit by grabbing a golf club and a few golf balls and seeing how good they were at catching golf balls from 50 to 150 yards away! That was fun… for me anyways.

Tuesday we headed on down the road to Redding, Calif., to meet some other friends of ours, Boris and Julie from T Shirts Unlimited. Boris does a lot of the T-shirts and designs for some of the top racing teams out there. Well about a year ago, Boris decided to open and invest in an indoor go-kart place that he called Need 2 Speed. I asked my guys about bringing the rig down there to do a display and in turn they could do some go-karting and race on some of the cool simulators he had there as well. Now, I had never driven an electric kart before, and I will tell you that they are way faster than I thought they would be. Their top speed is about 45 mph, and on a tight track indoors, you are never full throttle for more than a few seconds. It's not like the normal outdoor deals where you can run around the track with your foot on the floor and really never use the brake; you better know how to drive. We had some people from the local radio and TV stations there as well as a bunch of "regulars" from the kart track that were ready to take on yours truly. They let me have a couple of sessions to warm up, and then I raced with Boris and his buddies. It was good to learn the lines from following them, and by the end of our short race, I had posted a couple of better lap times than Boris and some of his buddies. Well, now it was on. Twelve of us lined up for an 18-lap race, and I started about in the middle. Somehow by then end of the race, I ended up in first place much to the amazement of both myself and the other competitors! They about wore me out the rest of the day wanting more races, and when it was all said and done, we all had a great time and some stories to tell. I even convinced my wife and daughter to give them a try. Jenna really enjoyed it, and I think was turning faster lap times then my wife! Now she wants to go there for her birthday party. Nice idea, but the 11 or so hour drive from home might be a little long.

On Wednesday, Boris and Julie had invited us to come out on their ski boat to Lake Shasta. What a beautiful place that was. Although the lake is looking a little low, it is huge and the water was just that perfect temperature. It was nice to just relax and hang out with some friends for the day. Boris even convinced me to try his Sky Ski. I had never seen anything that even looked like this, but I gave it a try anyways. It kind of has this horizontal fin on the bottom and then attached to that is about a 3-foot vertical fin. That's attached to what looks like a wake board and then on top of that is about a 2-foot high seat that you strap yourself into. I got up the first time but never really was able to ride it for very long. If you lean back a bit you end up about 5 feet out of the water and then when you lean forward it's going back down. My wife managed to get a pic that almost made me look like I knew what I was doing in maybe the 5 or so seconds that I actually was riding it before crashing! After about 10 times eating the water, I had them throw the kneeboard out, and I was good to go for the rest of the afternoon. Later that night, we went back to Boris and Julie’s for a nice barbeque. He has this wicked racing simulator at home that you can race in almost any kind of car and at any type of track (sorry, no drag racing). This is a big deal that Dale Earnhardt Jr. has some involvement in, and you can race people from around the world. You can also set your car and suspension up just like you would with a real race car. It is so realistic that it's unbelievable and obviously very addicting. The wife had to drag me out of there as it was approaching midnight… now if only I had an extra 20k for the simulator and a place to put it.

Thursday, we got back on the road towards Sonoma. We had set up a dinner for all our team and a few friends at a restaurant called Pietro's in Vacaville. I met Joe Murdaca, who owns the restaurant, a few years ago, and we hit it off great. Joe is a big drag racing fan and years back even sponsored Alan and Blaine Johnson with their Top Fuel car and Kurt Johnson in his Pro Stock for the Sonoma race. Guess what, they both qualified number one. I was like, "Hey Joe, what about sponsoring our"… well you get the picture. We dropped by the restaurant for some lunch, and Joe was there. Everything in his kitchen is fresh from the local farms there, and when I say that it's the best Italian cuisine I have ever had before, I am not lying. If you are ever driving through there you have to stop. After a great lunch, we dropped by the track to see the boys and then went to the hotel to check in. We had a 7 p.m. dinner reservation back at Pietro's for about 20 of us. The traffic going back to Vacaville was bad, and we had about five cars worth of people. All the way there I was getting texts from all my guys. "This better be worth the drive," "are we there yet?" blah, blah, blah. Once we got there though and went into the private dining room, they understood. Plate after plate of appetizers and entrees came and went, and the only talking I heard was about how good it was. It was nice to see our team there, all together having a good time. We also got a nice little surprise when Mike Parkman from one of associate sponsors K2M announced that he had just got engaged earlier that day to his fiancee Marie. Congrats! Dinner was great and thanks again to Ray for picking up the tab!

Friday morning, my wife Windy finally got to do something she had been looking forward to. One of our friends, Ron Maden from Chateau Ste. Michelle Wine Estates set Windy up with a wine tasting. She went with Holly Hurd, Josie Kalitta, and Connie Worsham to Conn Creek winery. They got to sample and blend their own wine and even hand cork a bottle to each bring home with them. They ended up spending the day touring some other wineries and having a great lunch. She looked pretty happy when she finally got back!

The Sonoma race again went pretty well for us. We made a sold lap on Friday night that kept us in the top 12 going into Saturday. Again, though, we struggled with tire smoke trying to get our car to run faster. On Sunday, we decided to just go A-B against Timmy, and if he made any kind of mistake, we would be there. Unfortunately for us, he didn't make a mistake and instead laid down a great 4.17. We ran a respectable 4.26, but our day was over. We ended up back by the pool at our hotel and before you know it, we had pizza, sushi, frosty beverages, cigars, and the whole nine yards going on. Quite a few other teams were there as well, and the party went on well into the night. Luckily, we didn't have an early flight, and we got back home  yesterday afternoon.

Oh yeah, our swing isn't over yet. The crew is on their way back to the shop in Detroit. A measly 40-plus hour drive. Driving straight through, they should be there early Wednesday morning. I have it a lot easier as I am flying back to Detroit on Wednesday. We have a couple of things to do at the shop, but Jim O just started taking golf lessons a little while ago and wants to go out and play with me and his brother Jon O. That should be a lot of fun! Then the crew has to get our car ready and head out Friday afternoon to Norwalk for the "Night of Fire" match race on Saturday, Aug. 1. I have never been, but it is supposed to be a great time. There are at least eight Funny Cars that are going to be there, including some Force cars, the Pedregons, Daniel Wilkerson, and of course, our DHL Toyota. If you are in the area make sure to come out as we will be making 2 runs under the lights! I also hear the fireworks show is spectacular. As they used to say, "BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!"

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