Yogi Berra used to say "It ain't over 'til it's over" and Charlie Brown once uttered "Tell your statistics to shut up" but for us the numbers don't lie. The Full Throttle championship is now out of reach. After a strong day on Sunday in Vegas, and our 9th trip as far as the semifinals, we got a whoopin' put on us by Robert Hight (who ran low e.t. of the universe) and our day was over.

As Tim said "We qualified 7th and went to the semifinals, so that's good. You'd consider that a pretty good day if this was May. It just doesn't seem so good in November." We are now officially in 6th place (how do you go to the semifinals and still lose a spot?) and we are 132 points behind the aforementioned Mr. Hight, who pretty much just has to remember how to get from his house to Auto Club Raceway in Pomona to wrap up the crown. For us to win it, we'd have to qualify No. 1, win all 12 possible bonus points, set the national record, and then we'd still need Hight's team to perpetrate such a felonious transgression that NHRA would kick them out of the sport. That's probably not going to happen.

The good news is the fact our semifinal appearance did help us tighten up the race in our quest to have the lowest possible number on our car next year. Fast Jack may have gone around us by going to the final, but the standings as a whole were ratcheted down tighter than a lug nut by the end of the day. We're in 6th place, but we're only 27 points out of 2nd!!! It's a total pile-up now, and there's a lot more than pride on the line. Whoever finishes 2nd in the standings takes home a check for $100,000, while the 6th place finisher earns $22,000. Plus we've had the number 2 on our car all year, and it would be great to not have to swap those decals out for 2010, if you know what I mean.

So, all that adds up to the fact we're not going to be the champions this year, and Robert Hight almost certainly will. Our goals remain the same, and the sense of importance and urgency remain pegged on the red line. We want to finish as high as we can for our pride, our own satisfaction, and the prize money, which comes in very handy for a team that watches every penny like we do.

As is always the case, it's not so much the 27 points that separate us from Ashley Force Hood's team, in 2nd place, it's the gaggle of teams in-between us. It's one thing to earn 27 points more than Ashley does (it's not an easy thing, but it's one thing) but when you also have to deal with Tony Pedregon, Jack Beckman, and Ron Capps, who are 3rd, 4th, and 5th, it becomes very difficult to leapfrog all those teams. All we can do is our best, and that's what we'll be aiming for in Pomona.

We still have more than a week to look forward to the Auto Club Finals, so today I'll stick to the "here and now" as well as the past few days. The basic theme is as follows... You know what? Las Vegas is an exhausting place.

First of all there's the air. It's so dry you're constantly dehydrated, no matter how much water you drink. I had a one-liter bottle of water next to my bed each night, and I'd take care of that before sunrise each morning, but I still felt like I was stranded in the desert. I took extra-long showers each morning, just to enjoy the steam and humidity.

Secondly, there's the cacophony that surrounds you. No one goes to a resort on The Strip in Las Vegas to "chill out" believe me. It's 24 non-stop hours of noises, bells, whistles, screams, and general mayhem. The only way to relax is to lock yourself in your room and put the iPod on, because without that you STILL hear the constant flow of fun-seekers in the hallway, all night long. When everything is that "wired" all around you, all the time, it's very tiring.

Thirdly, nothing is easy in Las Vegas. The traffic is horrible, the crowds are everywhere, and just parking your car and getting to your room is a major undertaking. It's all fun for a day or two, but by the time you leave it almost makes you miss those cruddy little motel rooms we frequent during the rest of the year. Ah, to be able to park in front of your room, or at least be able to walk through a small cozy hotel lobby and be on the elevator in 12 steps...

Finally, there's the airport. Travel is a hassle, no matter where we go, and airports can be stressful places, but you start thinking about McCarran a couple of days before you have to leave Vegas. It can be fairly uneventful (as it was for me yesterday) but it's never easy. At its worst, it can be a nightmare. I gave Jon Gimmy and Kevin Wilkerson a ride to the airport on Sunday night, and Gimmy was right- on when he said "I've seen this place be no problem at all, and I've been here when the lines are out the doors and all the way down the sidewalk. You just never know what the Vegas airport is going to be like, but it's usually never good." Exactly.

By the time I got home last night, I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open at 9:00 p.m., as I watched the end of the World Series game. I was also only sharing the house with Da Boyce, because Barbara and I are doing one of our more classic "ships passing in the night" routines right now. She was getting on her flight yesterday, at MSP, right when I was getting on mine, at LAS. Right now, she's in New York for two days, then she takes off on a whirlwind business trip that would lay anyone to waste. She'll hit Milan, Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Zurich, Geneva, and Edinburgh in a little more than a week, and each day on the trip will be absolutely filled with non-stop meetings and travel. She does get a couple of free days over the weekend, in London (she's going to the theater!) and has also decided to stick around and tour Edinburgh, Scotland for a day rather than fly right home, but I do not envy her on this trip. I don't know if I even have the energy to do something like that... She'll get home when I'm in Pomona, and we're both looking very much forward to Tuesday night, November 17th, when I get home from the race and the Awards Ceremony.

Looking back, once more, on the weekend, there were plenty of fun moments. With it being Halloween, it was simply more outrageous than usual, both at the track and at the hotel. It finally got to the point where you even stopped noticing the crazy things people were wearing, and what was really odd was to be there on Sunday when almost everyone was dressed "normally" again, because that actually looked odd by comparison.

Perhaps the greatest highlight of the weekend came on Saturday, when Joe "Hollywood" Endzeles, who is a member in fine standing on Daniel Wilkerson's crew, showed up wearing a classic "Joe Dirt" mullet wig. It was funny enough on Hollywood, but once Tim spotted the brilliant hairpiece, the true laugh-riot ensued. He looked absolutely hilarious, and he immediately started running around our pit, the Tasca pit, and out in the general pit area, cracking everyone up. You'll have to see the pics in the gallery to really appreciate just how great it was... I still laugh every time I look at the pictures...

I'm also throwing a couple of other pics in the gallery, just for giggles. There's my friend, colleague, and esteemed editor Candida Benson, without whom many of these blogs would never get posted. There's longtime loyal blog reader Terry Mattis, who hails from the great state of Washington (we always see him in Seattle) and each time he comes to a race he brings along a new sign he's made just for that occasion. He then spends the weekend getting it autographed by as many drivers (or in my case, blog writers) as possible. As you'll see, he once again got it covered in Sharpie signatures.

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Meeting the fans at the Ford display

 

Finally, it struck me that we've never had so many different sports tickets on the refrigerator door, as we do right now.

Way back in 2002, when we first got our Twins season tickets, we quickly realized we needed to have the next set of tickets in a highly visible spot, because it's easy to forget when your next game is and you can miss a game you had tickets for (trust me, I know...) So, we made a habit of always sticking the tix for the next game on the fridge, so we'd constantly be reminded when our next game was. Same thing with our Wild tickets, and now we have the Timberwolves season tickets as well. Add in the fact Barbara found some very good Vikings tickets (for their game against Seattle on November 22), and the fridge door is at 75 percent capacity. If the Twins had only been in the World Series, we'd have it all covered at one time...

Well, that's about all the blog writing energy I have today. Time to tally up my expenses for Las Vegas on my spreadsheet, and then I'm actually going to the bank to deposit a short stack of Ben Franklins, all "earned" in the Mandalay Bay casino on various slot machines. One particular "Bonus Wheel" machine was pretty good to me, and I came home a couple of hundred better off than when I arrived in Lost Wages. Cha Ching! Ya can't beat that...

Wilber, out!