It’s been a week, so I guess it’s time to update the blog. We’ll start out last Friday. Chad Head, Dan Keers and I went to the NASCAR truck race on Friday evening. We sat in Hendricks County suite. It was a good race. Rick Crawford won in a good finish. The good thing about the truck race at ORP is that it’s always exciting.

Saturday, Melanie drove to Martin, Mich., to watch Evan Knoll race his Top Fuel dragster. She had a great time hanging out with the Knoll family. Chad picked me up early Saturday morning and the three of use went out to IMS for Cup qualifying. We parked at IRL since Chad works there.

I got my garage pass and went over to see Jeff Gordon’s guys. They took good care of me. They gave me a team radio and I hung out in the garage and on pit road. Jeff and I chatted for a bit. He’s really a great guy. It’s a neat deal to get to go behind the scenes and see how they operate over there in NASCARland. Gordon was late getting to his car for qualifying, so his crew chief said, “No biggie, Tommy’s here. He can drive. He’ll be killer on the straightaways, but we might have to talk him through the turns.” I had a great time with the No. 24 team.

I also talked to Ryan Newman and Lance McGrew, crew chief on the No. 25 car. NHRA drag racing must be getting a lot of positive PR because everyone recognizes you there. You couldn’t go anywhere without anyone wanting to talk about drag racing. All the NASCAR mechanics love our sport, and we love to hear that. You wouldn’t believe how many of them told me that as soon as they get home on Sunday night after a Cup race, they turn on ESPN 2 and watch the NHRA show.

We then went home, changed clothes and had dinner at Boulder Creek before we went back to ORP to watch the Busch race. We talked to a bunch of folks there as well. I saw Randy LaJoie. He came to our Atlanta race in May. Snake, our team manager Skip Allum and Dixon were there as well. We also bumped into some of Force’s people and Hillary Will, too. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels waved the green flag for the start of the race and shortly after Jamie Smith, who runs the Hendricks County suite, introduced me to the governor. He saw the article on Mel and me in the August issue of Indianapolis Monthly and recognized us. The governor says he’s been to more drag races than NASCAR races. He gets my vote just for that! I invited him to the U.S. Nationals in a few weeks. Hopefully, he can make it back out to ORP a over Labor Day weekend. That’s me and the gov in the picture.

I thought about going back to IMS and cruising around the Cup garages before the Allstate 400 on Sunday morning, but I turned on the TV and saw how bad the traffic was and decided to spend the day at home. I wasn’t going to stay for the race and I didn’t want to fight traffic. PR Ted and a few guys from Kalitta Motorsports went to the race and stayed for 80 or so laps and said it was really boring. He said that peoplewatching the NASCAR fans was much more entertaining than the race. Melanie got home around noon and she slept and lay around all afternoon, while I watched the Brickyard and did projects around the house. I went and got a pizza from Papa Murphy’s for dinner.

Larry Dixon and I went to Monaco on Monday to pick up our motor homes. It’s about a three-hour drive from Brownsburg. We rode up together since our motor homes were both getting worked on. I got home around 5:30 p.m. Larry got back a little later after fueling and washing his motor home. We met Larry, Ali, Chad and Michelle at the Tegry Bistro for dinner. And, yes, folks on Nitromater, we did eat sushi. Not only is sushi healthy, it’s good too. I had to get to bed early on Monday night because I had something cool going on Tuesday morning. I’ll tell you about that in tomorrow’s blog.

It’s Wednesday afternoon and I just finished loading up the motor home for the drive to Brainerd. We’re going to take off here shortly. It’s a 10-12 hour drive from Indy. So, we’ll get there sometime tomorrow. Dixon and I have an appearance at Zorba’s On Gull Lake from 7-9 p.m. Thursday evening, so if you want to avoid “the Zoo,” then come by and hung out with us and have a cold Miller Lite.