We didn’t get the results in Phoenix like last year, but we did walk away with top speed for the weekend. That doesn’t pay much, but it was nice to get that for the new Impala SS body we are running. It is definitely a better body style for us and I think it will pay off for us later in the season.

We stayed and tested a new chassis on Monday to see if that was our consistency problem. We made three runs on Monday and things went well. Except for the first run. About 60 feet out on our first run the steering wheel came off in my hands. Let me tell you that will get your blood pumping. I tried my hardest to get it back on and was able to just get it on a little to turn the wheels to the left. It turned the front end just enough to keep from hitting the front fender into the wall and we only brushed it with the header. I locked up the brakes and got it stopped about a 1000 feet. After we figured out what had happened to the wheel, we made a couple of more runs with good success.

Melanie and I headed out of Phoenix Monday night in the new motorhome. Boy, have they made some nice ride improvements in the new coaches. It drove like a dream. It was really windy all the way home. It is such a long ways back to Indy from Phoenix. We drove for a few hours Monday night and called it quits in Kingman, Ariz. We spent all day Tuesday driving and got somewhere between Tulsa, Okla., and Joplin, Mo., before we called it a day. Wednesday we did the same. We drove most of the day and finally rolled into home around 6 p.m. Wednesday evening. We unloaded all of our stuff out of the motorhome and then I took it to the shop. It was great to be home after that long drive.

Needless to say we didn’t do a whole lot that night. We ate some leftover pizza that we brought home from lunch during testing on Monday and went to bed. Melanie woke me up at 3-something in the morning to tell me that the sump pump in the basement had a pipe come apart and it was filling our basement with water. We spent a little time getting it shut off and went back to bed and we dealt with the mess in the morning. I got up Thursday and went downstairs to see what had happened. I fixed the pipe, but there where bigger problems. I called our plumber and he came over to see what was amiss. When the pipe came apart it killed our backup pump and we are still in the process of fixing all of it. I spent a lot of the day sucking up the water and trying to dry out the basement.

On Friday we headed to the airport to fly to Springfield, Mass., to the Speedway Illustrated Motorsports Expo for an autograph session. We left the dogs with Chad and Michelle for our first time away from them. We got stuck in Chicago in a little weather delay but ended up getting into Hartford, Conn., about 5:30 Friday. Our autograph session was at 6:30 and we arrived at the expo center about 6:25. A quick change of clothes and we went right to signing. They picked us up at the airport in a pickup truck limo. That was a first for me to ride in a pickup limo. Very neat inside, but still rode like a truck.

At the autograph session I saw a good friend Steve Brody and his wife. They drove four hours to the show just to visit for a little while. It was good to see them and they are headed to Gainesville next week. I don’t blame them to get a little break from all the winter weather. We signed for a couple of hours and even got to do a little racing. There was a booth selling electric coolers that you can ride. Kind of like the electric bar stools. That was a blast. Melanie and I raced around the building against Dick Bergen and Curt, a modified racer. We did pretty well and showed them drag racers can turn left.

We spent the night there and flew back to Indy Saturday morning. We got back into Indy about four and went to pick up the dogs. We took Chad and Michelle out for dinner last night for watching the puppies. Just like the past few times we have come home it started to snow again. Thankfully we only got an inch or two last night.

I’ve been back downstairs again this morning working on getting the basement dry. Hopefully we won’t have to replace the carpeting. I’ve got the windows open which is tough since it is only 27 degrees outside. We are giving the heater a workout today. I’m sitting on the couch watching the NASCAR Busch race from Mexico getting my racing fix for the weekend. Mel is busy doing laundry since we’ve been gone for so long. Only one day at home this week we haven’t got to much accomplished. We are going to take it pretty easy today because I have a lot of catching up to do this week. Hopefully we don’t have any other surprises come up this week. Thankfully the sump pump didn’t blow up while we where gone for a week. It would have been an even bigger mess to fix.