A guy walks into a bar in a town that he had just moved into. Several of his new buddies were already there when he made his entrance. They knew that he drove some kind of race car and had just returned from a weekend of racing. When his new buddies asked him how he did he told them all that he finished second. With that, they all hooted and hollered and congratulated him on a pretty good weekend of racing. A round of beers were ordered and they all wanted to know details. One of them asked him what kind of racing he was involved in. You could have heard a pin drop when he answered “drag racing.”

In the world of drag racing, we don’t usually talk in terms of second or third place … unless it refers to the point standings. In that case, second or even third place, is no disgrace. In Olympic competition, the high and low scores are always thrown out in an effort to thwart the wayward opinions of some biased judges. That certainly isn’t done in drag racing, but if were to temporarily discount the career season enjoyed by my teammate and his crew, the Fram team was only 39 points away from a Top Fuel championship.

Yup, we finished in third place. We would have rather won the gold Wally, but to be third behind the only two guys to win a Top Fuel championship in the last seven years is in my opinion, pretty stout! I am grateful for the efforts of all of the guys on the Fram team this season. It was a pretty good one.

We started the season by going to the finals at the Winternationals followed by a victory in Vegas. Several semifinal-round appearances highlighted the middle of the season with another final round in Brainerd. Finishing the season with a couple more semifinal round appearances left us a mere two rounds out of second place at the end of the season. Again, not bad at all. Don’t get me wrong, we won’t be satisfied until we have a gold Wally, then of course, our goal would be to get another one to back it up!

Next year will bring many changes at DSR. The Fram team looks forward to the challenges that 2009 will bring. We will definitely be gunning for the gold Wally! So congrats to my teammate Tony for a great season and to Larry Dixon for a strong second place finish. Also, congratulations to my team of guys for their efforts throughout the season. Good job guys.

This year was also highlighted by featuring individual crew members in the blog. I really feel like they don’t get enough exposure and wanted to have an opportunity to tell you all about them. I hope to do that again next year for new team members and possibly report on any interesting updates on the guys already written about this year. The guys really enjoyed their “15 minutes of fame” and I hope that I can bring more attention to the guys who supported the whole racing operation in the seasons to come. Great job guys, thank you!

On the lighter side of the news, my mom and dad celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary—wait a minute—I already told you about that; 50 years together, I still can’t believe it! Oh yeah, my mom actually came out to the Pomona race. It was nice to have her there. It really helped my reaction time because she forced me to eat vegetables and go to bed early. Thanks mom … my poor dad!!

The off-season doesn’t really mean that we are “off.” Several of the racers and I just got back from a trip to the war zone to see the troops. We went all over the place on the USO tour and were able to see some cool things. I will tell you more about that trip in next week's blog entry. Yes, boys and girls, there will be a blog entry next week so stay tuned! I’LL BE BACK!