Our Pomona experience wasn’t the best right from the start.

We left for Pomona on Tuesday. We where flying back to Phoenix to pick up the motorhome and drive to the track in Pomona. It was supposed to snow in Indy Tuesday but wasn’t supposed to start until 2 p.m. It started about 10 instead and I was getting nervous about getting out of town. We did finally leave Indy about an hour late after all the de-icing of the plane. As you can see by the picture I took out the window of the plane it was really coming down when we left.

We got to Dallas to make our connection and barely made it, but only because our flight to Phoenix was delayed. We landed in Phoenix and took a cab to the motorhome. We fired it up and headed to California. I rolled into the track at 3:30 a.m. Indy time. I got back up at 7:30 to get parked and as soon as I was parking I saw the new body had showed up so I spent the rest of the day decaling the new body so we could use it as a spare for the weekend. Mel and I went over to her friends Bobby and Shauna Hanson’s house for dinner and to see their new baby boy. I was pretty beat when we finally got back to the track.

Thursday I finished up decals, driver meetings and all the other stuff just before our first qualifying session. The Thursday of Pomona is probably the busiest day at the race track all season, just trying to get all those last minute things done and get that first run of the year in. As many of you saw we made a good run, but not without a little excitement. Tony Pedregon was on a good run but then drifted over towards our car. One good thing about this new Impala body is that I can see good out the side windows. I saw Tony coming over and turned hard left to avoid him. It got me a little out of sync at the top end and I shut off a tad early. Good run nevertheless.

On Friday at Pomona I had another really busy day. Melanie and I were special correspondents for the Jim Rome show. The production guys followed us around all day with us miked up giving them some behind-the-scene views of drag racing for the show. It is supposed to air sometime this month and will be a big hit for drag racing on a highly-rated sports show.

The rest of our weekend went okay, but not as good as we where hoping. Our car ran well, but not really ever up to its potential. We shook first round and I pedaled it but to no avail. I told the guys to keep their chins up because we lost first round last year and then came back to win two weeks later in Phoenix.

Over the weekend Melanie and I move out of our old motorhome and into our new one. We got a new coach from Bill Jordon and the guys at Monaco of Las Vegas. They are great people to deal with so if you need a coach give them a try. Moving all that stuff was like moving an apartment. I didn’t realize how much stuff you accumulate over the years and there will be a bunch of stuff coming out when we get home. After each day we would spend three or fours a night moving stuff. We finally got it all done and are moved into our new home on the road.

On Monday we drove over to Phoenix to leave the motorhome at the track and fly home for a few days. Little did I know what a trip this was going to be. I knew Indy was about to get hit with a big winter storm, but I didn’t think it would be too bad. Tuesday morning we got up and checked the internet to see if our flight was still on and it was so we headed to the airport. When we got there it was cancelled. They couldn’t really tell us when we would get to Indy. Mike Green and Neal on my team got a flight to Charlotte instead since there are more flights to Indy from there than from Phoenix and the chances of getting home would be better. Mel and I decided to do the same and since my family lives there we thought if we get stranded at least we would have a place to stay. We finally got out of Phoenix and on our way to Charlotte about 1:30 Tuesday. When we got here our flight to Indy was cancelled. We rebooked our flight for Wednesday evening and called my parents to come get us. My sister, husband, and nephew came to the Charlotte airport to pick us up. We bought a few toiletries at Walgreen’s since we only had our dirty clothes in our luggage and headed to my parents for a little family visit. We got to spend Wednesday with my family and do a little catching up with this unexpected visit.

We just got to the airport tonight to catch our 7:45 flight to only find out that we have a plane with no crew to fly it. Now they are telling us that we might get out of here around ten this evening. Let’s hope. To top it all off my cell phone decided to blow up and now I have no communication device except my laptop with internet. Good thing Mel’s phone is working. I guess that is the modern device that I can’t live without. It looks like I will be going to get a new phone when we finally get to Indy. We might make it home in time to get a few days off before we head back to Phoenix. We aren’t the only ones having all kinds of trouble getting home. We ran into Larry Dixon’s team here in the Charlotte airport trying to get home too. The puppies haven’t been too crazy about all these delays and having to stay in their carrier for so many hours. If they can handle this trip they will be just fine from here on out.

Hopefully we make it home later tonight. Then we will have to shovel so we can get in our driveway. Maybe we should have just stayed on the road in Phoenix.