I have to tell you about a wedding that we went to last weekend. It was for our good friends Paula Baldwin and Gary Flanagan. We first met Paula back in 1997 when I worked for Frank Hawley's Drag Racing School. I was working there over at the Pomona Fairplex and I noticed a race car trailer parked around the corner that had a TF number on the back. Long story short, I ended up meeting Bobby Baldwin and Scott "Scoots" Graham over at the shop they were using. Bobby had raced Top Fuel for quite a while and his day job was doing excavating and earth moving. He actually did a lot of work for the Fairplex so I would see him and Scoots pretty often. Before long our families were introduced and we started hanging around a lot more often. Bobby and his wife, Paula (also the Greek's daughter), had a little girl named Krista. Now that little girl is taller than me! Over the next few years we had a lot of fun together and became pretty close. Bobby was one of those "genuine" kind of guys and just loved to live life, almost as much as he loved Coors Light! Sadly Bobby passed away suddenly from a brain aneurysm back in September of 2001.

We still continued to see Paula and Krista, albeit not nearly as frequently as before. She had a lot on her plate getting her life back in order, and for some reason, things just seem a little more awkward after somebody passes away. Over the next few years we would run into Paula and Krista every now and then, and they both seemed to be doing great. I don't remember exactly how many years ago, but we went over to Paula's and met her new beau Gary Flanagan. Gary had known both Bobby and Paula back in the day and I am sure was a pillar of strength for Paula. Gary is a great guy, and you could tell that he really cared for Paula and Krista. Over the last couple of years we have become a lot closer again and have a great time just hanging out. So it was no surprise when we got an invite to their wedding.

They got married at a restaurant close to where they live. It was a nice Italian place called Antonino's, and the food was awesome! It was set up pretty cool as they had a huge sunken bar and area to hang around at and then a beautiful restaurant to sit down and eat. I knew there would be a few racer types there but I had no idea how many. It was like the Hot Rod Reunion, only a week before the Bakersfield one. Of course "the Greek" was there, and he had a great time chasing the belly dancer around while she was performing. I only hope that when I am 82 or whatever the sundial he uses to calculate his age says he is that I am having just as much fun as he does. I then saw the world famous Hawaiian, Roland Leong. Roland always has some great stories and it is hard to believe how long that he has been racing for and all the "legends" that he has worked for. Roland had a lot of drivers over the years and has accomplished more than most in the sport of drag racing. He still tinkers with the nostalgia cars, but I could tell he would love to come out and work as a consultant for one of the "Big Show" cars. He was sitting with probably one of the best machinists in the sport, J.T. Stewart. J.T. has come up with a lot of innovations in the sport and runs a very successful business called Dynamic Machine. The drag racing part of the business is a very small part of what he does, but I know that we run his clutch management systems on all our cars.

Next we ran into Tim and Kim Richards. I was kind of amazed that they were there all the way from Florida until I heard that Kim was Paula's maid of honor at Paula and Bobby's wedding many, many years ago. I have known Kim for probably 15 years, but it is still hard to imagine her all dressed up as a maid of honor… sorry Kim! As you can see from the pic, Tim and Kim both looked great and well rested. I guess that's what happens after you take all the travel and stress out of your lives. They haven't taken up golf yet though, so you never know what will happen in their future. After that I saw a guy that I first met about 10 years ago. His name is Ronnie Capps (the original) and the first time I had met him was at Frank Hawley's. He was actually the first student I had to run in the 5's with our alcohol dragster. Ronnie was a great driver and as I found out later has been involved with the sport for a long time. From what I understand he has done about everything from building cars to tuning them. We also saw Ronnie's wife, Leigh. Now if you know Leigh, she is always the life of the party… lots of fun to be around and obviously, also a big motorsports enthusiast. Leigh's dad was the late Lil’ John Buttera. John was probably one of the best machinists that has ever been and his contributions to the automotive industry are almost unmatched. John built Funny Cars for the "Snake" and Don Schumacher just to name a few. He was also responsible for building many of the "trick" parts used by many teams back in those days. Later John got into working with billet aluminum and his products revolutionized the street rod industry. He also built an Indy Car that qualified 6th for the Indy 500 believe it or not. Leigh is a big follower of my blog, so I thought I would surprise her and include this pic of her and I.

Needless to say we had a great time at the wedding and wish Gary and Paula a long and loving marriage. Now, back to racing. I am getting ready to go to Gainesville in a few days, and I have a feeling that it is going to be a great weekend for Kalitta Motorsports. We have Doug running the Darrell Gwynn tribute Coors Extra Gold car, which looks awesome, and nothing would be better than seeing that and Connie's Bounty Hunter car in the final.. .and on the Funny Car side, I really don't care who we meet in the final with our DHL car!

Thanks for reading!