It has been a long time since I did a blog update. With the way the '08 season had gone and having done blog updates for almost four years I was pretty burned out on blogging. The last few races of '08 didn’t go much better than the entire season had gone and the future didn’t look to bright either. I emailed Phil Burgess and told him that I thought I was done blogging because every time I thought about doing a blog update it depressed me to think I might not be racing and I was already bummed out enough about it.

After some thought and taking a few months off, I decided to continue. I may not do them as often as in the past simply because I don’t know if there will be as much to talk about this season. Melanie also agreed to do some blogging so we have decided to continue and maybe do it in a different light than the others who are blogging and racing this season.

As many already know I won’t be driving the Monster Funny Car this season. Monster elected not to return '09. Kenny tried hard, but was unable to come up with a sponsor for the team. So after Pomona the Funny Car team was parked and all of us have moved on. I really hated how the season went for us, but my biggest regret is not having a chance this season to make up for that bad year. I’m very grateful to Kenny Bernstein for the opportunity he gave me last year and I am sad to not have the chance to work with such a good owner like KB. He is definitely first class.

After Pomona it is supposed to be the off-season so you can catch up and rest a little from all your traveling during the season. That is not exactly what Melanie and I have been up to. After we got home from the banquet we were home for exactly seven days before heading off to Denver for Thanksgiving with Melanie’s family. A funny story about that trip: While we were flying to Pomona I was browsing the in-flight magazine and saw there was a four-mile charity run Thanksgiving morning. I told Melanie we could sign up for that and then we could eat without worrying. After we got home, one day she says casually, I signed us up for that run in Denver. I was just kidding, so now I have learned to keep my mouth shut. It was our first time doing a race like this and it was a lot of fun. I was worried about running in the mile high altitude but I made it. It was only in the low 30s Thanksgiving morning but we both made the four miles without any problems. We’ve both been running a lot since and are contemplating training to run some mini marathons this summer. We’ll have to see how the training goes for me.

After a week home from Denver we drove to Charlotte were my parents live. We did a charity autograph session for Stocks for Tots program. My dad is a good friend with Don Miller, who heads that program so we stopped by to help them out. After that we drove onto Orlando for the PRI show. Melanie had a booth at PRI for her tool business that she shared some space with my dad and his wireless business. You should have seen how full our Denali was with the display and stuff for the show. I guarantee you we found out what the hauling capacity is. After PRI we loaded back up and drove my dad back to Charlotte, then back to Indy.

We were home for another week then we drove to Iowa to visit my grandparents before Christmas. My Grandpa has not been doing well and he was in the hospital so we baked him some cookies before we left home. We spent a couple of days with my Grandma and spent some time with my grandpa in the hospital. Then it was back to Indy for a night. We got home late Monday night then reloaded the Denali and took off for Charlotte to spend Christmas with my family. It became a lot longer trip than we anticipated when we got stuck in an ice storm in Kentucky. That was not a good day.

Melanie found out about her team not racing this season just after we had hit the road, then they shut the interstate down so we have to get a hotel and spend the night. We sat in the room that night trying to figure out what we were going to do now that we were both not racing this season. It is days like this that you sit and feel bad for yourself but then reality hits when you hear about things like Hollie Faulkner. Such a great person and to have her go so early. Our hearts went out to her family and you realize that things can always be worse.

Christmas was fun. My nephew Gage is three now so he really got into Christmas this year. His uncle got him a couple great toys to play with, or maybe they both could play with. I got him an Evel Knievel daredevil set just like the one I had when I was a kid. We had a lot of fun playing and enjoying the family. The day after Christmas Melanie and I drove over to Ashville, N.C., to tour the Biltmore Mansion. My parents got us tickets since Melanie has been wanting to go forever and I kept promising her I would take her but hadn’t yet.

We got home from Charlotte and had some of our neighbors over for New Year’s Eve at our house. It was Melanie and my fifth anniversary also that night. Hard to believe it has been five years already. My parents stopped by on New Year’s Day on their way back to Iowa. My uncle passed away and my Grandpa was back in the hospital. I drove over to Iowa for the funeral and to see some of my relation that I hadn’t seen over eight years since moving to Indy. I think since the season ended in November I have driven close to 6,000 miles.

I’ve been busy making phone calls and spending a lot of time on the computer trying to find a ride for this season. Things haven’t always gone the way I wanted them to but I’m not giving up hope. The most frustrating part of it is this would be my 20th season driving a nitro car so I really want to get on the track before the year is over. I feel confident that something will come together sooner or later. This off-season has been kind of deja vu from last year’s, except this time both of us haven’t found a ride yet. The economy has made things difficult this year, but I think drag racing will come out of this better than other motorsports when the economy comes back. A friend, Michael Cerruti, who with and his wife Leslie comes to the West Coast races, gave me the book The Secret last year after I lost my ride with Prudhomme. I’ve been trying to remember everything it talks about so I keep a positive attitude during these tough times.

Melanie and I have bought plane tickets to the Phoenix test session in a couple of weeks if for nothing else to get out of the cold weather for awhile. Our neighbors are going out for the weekend so we’ll spend a little time out at the track seeing what is going on and probably spend a little time by the pool catching some sun. We’ll also be in Pomona keeping our face out there so people don’t forget about us. You never know what might happen so you want to be there just in case. After that we’ll play it by ear what races we attend. I’ve had talks with some people about doing some TV work and a couple of other things to keep me busy. It’s hard to go to the track and see everyone racing while you are watching so I will need to find something to do while I’m there.

I’ll keep you updated if something comes up. I’m working on a lot of different things so stay tuned. See you in Pomona for sure.