I’m finally back home in Indy, that means back to the blog. I want to say thanks to all the fans on the Western Swing who stopped by our Skoal Racing pit and mentioned how much they enjoy reading the driver blogs on NHRA.com. We really appreciate the support. Keep reading! Can you believe we’ve been doing them for nearly a year now? I have to give a big shout out to “Big Wheel” who reads our blog every day. Thanks for the support and keep checking in.

Unfortunately, we had an early departure from the Western Swing last Sunday for both Mel and I. That let us cut out of the track early and head to the SFO earlier than planned. I think we stumbled on to something on our last qualifying run on Saturday at Sonoma. That should help us the rest of the year. We’ll see, but needless to say, we’re excited about Brainerd. Like I said, we left the track early. Our scheduled flight was already delayed two hours, but we got lucky and flew standby on an earlier flight to Denver. Mel’s mom, Barb, picked us up at the airport around 11 p.m.

Monday morning, we got up and loaded everything in the motor home for our trip back to Indy. We left about 11:30 a.m. I was okay with leaving at 11:30 because I wasn’t moving very fast. Normally, I want to leave early and just get to my destination. I wasn’t too enthused about the drive home, but it was a lot better than having to drive all the way from Sonoma. It was super windy in eastern Colorado and western Kansas. The wind blew our motor home awning open and broke our TV antenna. I don’t know how anyone could live in weather like that on a regular basis. It’s usually windy when we race at Topeka, but this made the Topeka race seem calm and serene. We stopped in Topeka and had dinner around 9 p.m. and Mel drove the last leg to Columbia, Mo. As usual, we spent the night at the Wal Mart parking lot.

I got up at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning and started driving. Thankfully, we didn’t have any wind issues. I was awfully tired and Mel took over driving around St. Louis. I needed a nap. She drove the final three or four hours. We got home in Avon around 2:30, and man was it hot in Indy. I thought Seattle was hot a few weeks back, but it was way worse here. The humidity makes it seem so much hotter. Let’s hope it cools off for the U.S. Nationals at the end of this month.

We unloaded the motor home and got all the mail and packages that showed up during our three weeks on the road. I took the motor home to the shop and we relaxed at home before we met Chad and Michelle at the Tegry Bistro for sushi. We ran into Bill Simpson and talked to him for a bit. Chad also told me that Monaco was bringing a display motor home for the Busch race at IRP this weekend, so I called them to take our motor home to get the wind damage repaired. We watched the ESPYs on Tivo before we went to bed because we didn’t get to see them on ESPN while at Denver.

This morning, I cleaned the motor home and washed the bugs off and met the guy from Monaco with a list of needed repairs. I don’t know what got wetter, me or the motor home. At least all the dead bugs are off the front. Then, it was time for laundry and piles of mail.

I’m playing golf in a Chevy tournament at Brickyard Crossing tomorrow. I’m not looking forward to that with the intense heat. Melanie has to go to the IHRA race in Martin, Mich., to watch Evan Knoll drive his Top Fuel car, and I’m going to the NASCAR truck race and Busch race at IRP. I’ll go to Cup qualifying to hang with some of Jeff Gordon’s guys on Saturday afternoon. Our one weekend at home is already filled up. I’m not going to the Brickyard on Sunday. I’ll stay at home and watch on TV. I don’t want to fight 250,000 people and hot weather. That race is boring anyway.

Have a good weekend blog readers.