Hey there, and welcome to Sonoma. It's Saturday morning, and I'm trying to catch up on things here as quickly as I can, so if I don't have time to write as much as I'd like, at least I have some pretty pictures to share... Yesterday, despite it being a pretty long day in all respects (at the track at 9:00 and back at the the hotel by about 9:00 at night), I never really had time to do any writing. Now, it's about 10:30 so I have a few minutes before I have to get to "decal replacing" after yesterday's "decal installation" process.

We finally hauled this new Shelby Mustang out of the transporter here, after thinking we were going to do that in Denver or Seattle. Once it was out, I got to work (finally) putting all the associate and contingency decals on it, and after two laps yesterday I can see at least five or six that have to be fixed or replaced. It's amazing what 8,000 horsepower can do to vinyl at 300 mph. And when I say 300 mph, I'm not talking in generalities. Last night, when we put a very fine lap on the board to grab the No. 4 spot, we ran 300.00 mph. How's that for being exact! That sounds so much faster than 299.99...

One of the decals was kind of in amazing shape, and I'm not sure what happened to it. We have fairly large Valvoline stickers in front of the rear wheel wells, and the one on the right side of the car looks like it's gone through some sort of psychedelic experience! Whoa... I also tried putting our MSD decals in a new place, but I obviously got them a bit too close to the header pipes, because they came back blistered and drooping. Need to find "Option B" for those guys...

The other process that simply has to happen with a new body is finding and repairing the cracks that come from the stress of a run. With this being Shelby No. 2 in 2009, we learned a lot (and I mean A LOT) of lessons already from the first one, so we're ahead of the game there, but after just two runs we were already replacing a side window and fixing some problems with the windshield and fire wall. I remember the first time we ever saw the ESPN2 Super Slo-Mo shot of Funny Cars going down the track, and it stunned us how much flexing and buckling is going on with what seems like a pretty stiff and firm shell. On that Slo-Mo shot, all this carbon fiber looks like paper, the way it ripples and shakes, even on a good run...

Yesterday, in terms of the weather here, was classic San Francisco Bay Area stuff. We left the hotel in the morning, with a few marine-layer clouds still keeping things cool, but by the time we got out to Infineon that had all burned off and it was hot. All day long we were sweating and feeling the heat, and it stayed that way right through the first session, late in the afternoon. Then, as we got up to the staging lanes for session two, right around 7:30, you could see the thick marine layer rolling over the hills just to the north of the track. Within minutes, the overcast arrived here and the temperature seemed to drop like a rock, aided and abetted by a pretty stout 20-mph wind coming right down the track at us. People were scrambling for jackets and sweatshirts that have all put stashed away since Pomona...

I was up at the line, still in short sleeves, where Del and Connie Worsham were shivering, and I figured, at the time, that I could gut it out and not run all the way out to my car to get my jacket. About 10 minutes later, I cried "Uncle" and went for it, and when Connie saw me right after that I said "You know, it occurred to me that senseless pride and utter laziness weren't going to keep me warm, so I went out there and got my jacket." It was COLD, daddio...

Right up until this minute, it's been pretty brisk this morning, but in just the few minutes since I sat down here (in the Tasca hospitality area) the clouds have begun to burn off and it's heating up. That's what I've been waiting for, in terms of the decal work, because it's really hard to take vinyl off a car when it's cold. Those pliable decals get brittle, like glass, and it can be almost impossible to peel them off in anything less than a thousand frustrating little pieces... I'll let nature do the work for me, and as soon as I've fired this off I'll get to work.

Hey, I'm famous in the world of transporter awnings!!! I saw Karen Tracy, from Larsen Sails, yesterday and we were laughing about an email she sent me a few days back. Many years ago, in the early CSK years, we were constantly dealing with the problem of keeping water from pooling at the bottom edge of the transporter awning, right where the canopy goes over the edge of the support poles. Various companies make a wide range of solutions for that, including built-in downspouts, or grommet holes, but in a heavy rain storm the water can still pool up, and when that happens the enormous weight stretches the fabric and can, in a worst-case scenario, either rip the awning or break the support poles, so we were always on the lookout, with push- brooms in hand, to keep pushing the awning up to empty the water.

One year, when Del and I were finalizing what our new awning should look like, I had a brainstorm... Why not just sew a 3-inch piece of mesh into the awning, right at the edge there, so all the water would flow right through, down the full length of the canopy rather than just at specific spots. You lose three inches of coverage, but when it's raining hard no one stands that close to the edge anyway, and the new system worked flawlessly. Jokingly, we called it the "Wilber Drain" from that point forward. A few years later, when we switched to Larsen Sails to make our canopies, I told Karen about it and she adapted that to their process, too.

The other day, she sent me a copy of a work order for another Funny Car team, and it had all the particulars on the sheet, including colors, size, method for attaching to the transporter, etc., and one of the line items was "Canopy will have a Wilber Drain." It's official! Karen owes me a dollar, though, as a royalty payment...

Just had another moment of fun with a blog reader, as a fine young man by the name of Justin came bounding up to me, brimming with excitement and a huge smile. He reads the blog all the time, asked how Barbara is doing, said he loves Boofus and Buster, and all sorts of other fun things. We grabbed his four-year-old daughter and took a quick pic. I gotta say, when you meet someone who is that excited about the whole thing, it really makes your day. Made mine...

Speaking of Barbara... I sure wish she was here, because this is one of her favorite races, but alas she is back home. Her mom heads back to Florida tomorrow, so they're spending their last day together and plan on going to our local Irish pub in Woodbury, called O'Malley's, for dinner tonight. It's the perfect place for a pair of Doyle lasses to enjoy a bit of Shepherd's Pie.

Dave's wife, Nichol, was able to make it out here, and she got in last night. I just grabbed a pic of her and Annette catching up... A pair of native Minnesota girls out in California... On Monday, Dave and Nichol are going to head up to the town of Sonoma and spend a couple of relaxing days at the Sonoma Mission Inn, which is the fabulous hotel/resort/spa Barbara and I pampered ourselves with a few years back. What a place...

Darn, I have lots of other topics swimming in my head, but I really need to go... I'll just save them all for the next blog... Wish us luck, for the rest of qualifying and the race. I didn't blog during the day on Sunday in Seattle, so you can probably guess that I'll follow the same routine here in Sonoma.

Back soon...

Wilber, out!