Denver was a good weekend. It was awfully hot, but we handled it well. It was especially hot for us since the generator quit working in the motor home and we had no air Saturday night. A fan helped a little bit, but it was still tough to sleep in that heat. I need to thank all of our Denver friends, especially Vern McLeland and Mike Harvey, a friend of Vern’s, who worked on the generator. He took it to the repair shop for us on Monday morning. We didn’t have time to mess with it because of the race, so Mike handled it. If we were going to experience problems, this was a good place for it to happen. The only good thing is that it got me out of driving the Western Swing. I didn’t want to drive the entire swing, but Melanie did. Maybe next year. We ended up buying plane tickets for Seattle and Sonoma. As it turned out, the generator was fixed by Monday afternoon. With the cost of gasoline, I don’t mind flying. And, it allowed us to spend a few more days in Denver with Mel’s family, so it all worked out.

We had another good weekend on the track, this time with our special edition sliver-and-blue Skoal Racing Monte Carlo. Everyone really liked the new colors; that was great to see. I might be biased, but we have the best looking Funny Car at the track. We qualified third and went to the semi’s for the third straight raced. I’m excited about how our team is doing. I don’t think it will be too much longer until those semi’s turn into finals and a few wins. We moved into top five in the points. It’s nice to have a top five race car. We’re fifth in the POWERade and Skoal Showdown points. It makes for a happy household to have two top five cars. Larry Dixon moved into fifth place as well, so things are rosy in the Snake Racing camp.

We stayed at Mel’s mom’s house on Sunday night. It was much cooler. Mel got up and took her niece, Paige, to Water World in Denver on Monday. They spent the day playing and I got up and took some of our stuff to trailer so it would make it to Seattle. I took the guys KFC for lunch. I told them if we keep going rounds, I’ll buy lunch. If we go out early, they’re on their own. They guys packed up and headed to Seattle and I went back to Mel’s mom’s place to catch up on e-mail. That night, we caught up with my parents, Vern, and Mel’s mom for dinner. We ate a Colorado Hacienda. We’re all big Mexican food fans.

Yesterday, we goofed around in the morning and went to lunch with Mel’s mom at a new sushi place. Then, we drove around and looked a Mini Coopers without any luck again. We just can’t find the exact Cooper we want. We met some of Mel’s friends who race Comp Eliminator, the Omans, for dinner at Chili’s, and then went to Fat City for guys versus girls bowling. The guys won two out of three.

We slept in today. I needed some quality sleep time after the busy weekend. We worked on some MTI stuff and met her grandma for lunch. Now, we’re at the machine shop where Mel has a lot of her MTI parts made. Tonight, we’re headed out to dinner with a few of Mel’s high school friends. We leave for Seattle at 8:55 a.m. on Thursday morning.