Well the New Year is upon us and I can't wait for race season to get started! It's been a while since I last blogged so let’s get back up to speed. Back in mid-December, Alexis' new crew chief, Del Worsham, and the boys and girls went down to West Palm to do a little testing with Alexis' Tequila Patron Funny Car and the new Toyota Camry body. If you know Del, he is not a "status quo" guy and he had lots of new ideas and things to try out.

Long story short, things went really well and Alexis made her quickest and fastest lap down there running a 4.09 at 311 mph. I talked to Del after and he was pretty excited how everything went as well as the performance of the new Toyota body. He told me the 4.09 run was a really safe run and there is a lot left in it. Knowing Del he is not going to be happy until we are able to run low 4.0s when the conditions are right and as a driver nothing makes you happier than having a crew chief tell you that. He is already working on more safety items as well as a host of other goodies to try out when we get down to West Palm in a couple of weeks.
 
The holidays went great at the Arend household as my Mom flew up from Toronto, Canada to be with us. Jenna of course got spoiled and between Santa and Windy and I, she has enough stuff to keep her busy for quite a while. Windy got a few cool things like a nice red KitchenAid mixer to match the new washer and dryer we got a few months ago when we moved in. I even bought her some clothes from her favorite store "Buckle" and it actually appears that she liked them! I ended up doing pretty well myself with some new clothes and a new laser rangefinder for playing golf. Speaking of golf, it had been quite a while since I had played much but the weather here in SoCal has been unbelievable lately being over 80 degrees almost every day for the last couple of weeks. Since my Mom has gone back home and Jenna is back in school, I have been enjoying myself out at the links as often as possible lately knowing that racing season is right upon us now.
 
I did add a little excitement to our family right before New Year’s though with an unexpected check in to the Emergency Room at our local hospital. It all started at about 3:30 a.m. back on Dec 27. I woke up feeling a strange sensation in my lower abdomen, nothing crazy, just weird. Within a few hours it got a lot worse and I had about the worse stomach ache I had ever had combined with the worse back ache and well as it felt like some other part of my body was being squeezed in a vise, if you know what I mean. Soon, I couldn't walk or get in a position for the pain to go away. I actually ended up throwing up about four times just because of the pain.

Windy took me to the doctor around 10 a.m. and he checked me out and told me to get to the ER right away as it looked like I had kidney stones ... nice. Long story short, at about 12:30 after the physician checked me out, he gave me a shot of morphine to dull the pain which was about the worse I had ever felt. About a minute later, I didn't have a care in the world. A couple of hours later after a urine sample and a cat-scan, the doctor came back in to tell me that I had passed it. One IV bag worth of fluids and I was good to go. It was amazing because by the time I got home, I felt like nothing had ever happened. We even chowed down on some pizza and since then I have felt great. I guess I was pretty lucky in not having to get any more procedures done, but I would be very happy never to have to endure that kind of pain again. I will be drinking lots more fluids, that's for sure.
 
Now let's get back to racing. The plan right now is to test Jan. 16-21 in Florida with all the Kalitta cars. I will be giving you some updates on my next blog or you can always follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Next week, Del, Nicky, Grubby and I will all be at Kalitta Motorsports headquarters in Ypsilanti, Mich., to put the final touches on not only my new DHL/Toyota Funny Car but all the rest of the cars as well. Connie, Jim O, Nicky, Jon O, Grubby and Del will be coming up with a game plan for testing as well as trying lots of new things out on the blower dyno, clutch dyno and fuel flow bench. We have new equipment and personnel to get familiar with and to say that we are all excited would be a big understatement!
 
I hope all of you had a great Christmas and New Years and if you are at the races make sure to swing by the DHL pit to say hi.