Minnesota? Central Minnesota? The same state where we haven't hit 90 degrees all summer (except for a couple of fluke days in early May)? As I've written on our Twitter and Facebook pages, "My fine home state picked a heck of a time to finally have summer..."

Yesterday was pretty much miserable. It was hot. The sun was blistering. The humidity felt like a big wool blanket. And, despite the fact I really wanted to write a blog installment, the very act of typing induced so much perspiration I couldn't keep the keyboard on my MacBook dry. I resigned myself to short tweets, Facebook updates, and an end-of-day report, and saved the shiny surface of the laptop for today.

Right now, it's not quite as hot and if you get outside of our hospitality area there's actually a decent breeze blowing. Sadly, our hospitality area has proven to be a world-class windbreak, and none of that delicious breeze gets in here. Looks nice out there in the rest of the world, though... As for the forecast, well... We've known all week that Saturday and Sunday were listed as pretty much 50/50 days in terms of thunderstorms, and before I logged-off last night at the hotel I could see a strong line of storms stretching down the eastern borders of both North and South Dakota, on Accuweather radar. They way that line of yellow and red was forming, I figured I might wake up in the middle of the night to the sounds of thunder, but instead the line was still pretty much in the same place when I got up this morning. The forecast, like the line of storms, hasn't changed much either. It's still calling for showers, later on...

Yesterday's oppressive weather had a direct effect on the racing, as did a fairly green race track. That's a bad combination, really, and in the first session all we saw was tire smoke. Some teams really stepped up in Q2, and we made a much better pass ourselves, but our tune-up was too soft from the get-go, and once we saw some of the teams ahead of us running 4.20s, Tim knew we didn't have enough in it to be up there with them. As it turned out, our 4.35 has us 10th, going into today's sessions... As I'm writing this, it's 10:00 and Top Fuel is due to go at noon...

In the photo gallery, I've included some pics of a couple of local sites. There's a quick shot of the booming metropolis of downtown Brainerd, and another shot of a beautiful little stream that runs through here. It's shallow, not too wide, and so crystal clear you can see to the bottom almost all the way across. What's the name of that little stream..? Wait a sec, it will come to me... Oh yeah. It's the Mississippi River! For a boy born and raised by the banks of the Muddy Mississippi down in St. Louis, it's almost inconceivable to think this is the same river...

In terms of our hospitality this weekend, it's really quite different and pretty busy. We only have a few LRS guests coming, but since Rich and Annette are from southern Minnesota, and Dave and I are from Woodbury, we've chosen to use this as an invitation-only gathering of family and close friends. It's kinda strange to have so much commotion in here, but all the people are familiar to us... Barbara is on her way now, and should be here soon, so Nichol and Alexa Jacobsen stayed home an extra day, as well, and they're riding up together in Barb's car. I do believe they're brining Bauer the dog with them too! If you're wondering why a family would name their dog Bauer, just think of hockey equipment. I guess they could have called him CCM, but Bauer seemed like a better name...

Well, I really have to wrap this up as quickly as possible, but in terms of the photo gallery you'll also see the following:

1. Daniel Wilkerson is here this weekend, helping out and working on the car.

2. Shorty, our buddy from Cottage Grove, Minn., who owns the All- American Motorsports Bar & Grill (the guy I donated a Wally and starting line shirt to) is here, and he's actually handling some of our catering for the weekend. The pulled pork he brought yesterday was TDF, believe me (for those of you without teenagers in the house, TDF stands for "to die for").

3. Tim did a brief interview, yesterday, with the local TV station

4. My special guests yesterday were Jeff Russell, his boys, as well as a friend of his and his boys. Jeff is the contractor who built our wonderful porch and patio set-up, and we've remained friends well after the work was done. I know a lot of people have horror stories about contractors, and I can tell you a few about some other people we've hired for work at our house, but the fact we share Jeff's season tickets to the Wild (he's the guy with the 2nd row seats!) and stay in touch should tell you he's a heck of a guy. It was the first time to a race for all of them, and they couldn't get enough. "Blown away" would be putting it mildly.

5. And, walking through the pits yesterday causing quite a stir, were a pair of Minnesota Vikings cheerleaders. Turns out, one of the young ladies is from a racing family, and has known Tim since she was a young girl. She was always interested in dance, but never considering being a professional cheerleader until friends talked her into trying out. Much to her surprise, she made the squad! Talk about some good PR for the Vikes... The girls were so gracious, and were selling their calendar for charity, and there weren't too many people in the pro pits who weren't aware that two Vikings cheerleaders were here.

Guess I've got to wrap this up, now. We're getting ready to warm up the car, Barb will be here soon, and once all that happens I'm not going to have any time to do this...

Here's hoping for fast racing, good results, and lots of family fun in beautiful Brainerd...

Wilber, out!