Wow... It works this way every year, but each time it's like a jolt and a surprise to look up and notice that Indy is next on the schedule. We were just in West Palm for preseason testing a couple of months back, weren't we? Wasn't the St. Louis race about two weeks ago? Didn't I just get home from the midsummer Western Swing? How can it be time to go to Indy?

With Indy, comes Labor Day. With Labor Day, comes the official end of summer, and school-age kids around the country are gearing up to head back to classrooms. Frankly, the ones who are excited about that are the types of kids I was always very wary of. LOL... As a much younger version of me, back in the grade school days, I counted off the three precious months of summer by noting the trio of key birthdays that came in succession. On June 19, my birthday, summer had still just begun and I was oblivious to the fact it might ever end. When we got to my sister Mary's birthday, on July 25, I felt the first pangs of fear, and realized that this whole wonderful thing would not, actually, last forever. By the time we got to my sister Cindy's birthday, on August 17, I was counting the days until it was time to trudge back over the Mary Queen of Peace in beautiful Webster Groves, Mo., to find out if Sister Mary Agnes or Sister Gertrude Marie might be my home room teacher. Those were the days, let me tell ya... Khaki pants, white button-down shirt, blue tie. And mass in the morning, next door at the huge green-roofed MQP church, with Monsignor O'Toole. Oh, and the yellow school bus that was in such disrepair you could look through holes in the floor and see the road go by... Not to mention the time our brakes went out and my classmate Mike Milford volunteered to leap off the still-moving bus and place a 4x4 log under the front tires!!!! I could not possibly be making that up. Hard to believe, I know, but true nonetheless.

Thinking about Labor Day and "back-to-school season" got me thinking about school in general, earlier this morning. I'm happy to say I have long since stopped having the recurring dream in which I discover it's the end of the quarter in college, and I have forgotten to drop those three classes I never went to. I had that one for years after I graduated... Anyway, it hit me this morning that I spent a goodly portion of my life in classrooms (nearly all of my life, right up until I was 21) but I only attended three schools in my life. I wonder if that's common, or does the average person attend more than three schools? Especially if they went to college...

I spent kindergarten through 8th grade at Mary Queen of Peace, then four years of high school at St. Louis University High (an all-boys Jesuit prep school, but at least we didn't have to wear uniforms there) and then got my degree in Television/Radio Broadcasting at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. I got my four-year degree in only six short years (that whole pesky baseball scholarship and my ever-so-brief minor league career got in the way for a bit). There you have it; my entire educational career... Somehow, I survived it all.

I had not planned on that digression when I began this blog, so now I'll get to the meat & potatoes portion of our installment. To begin, we shall address yesterday's big news: The 2010 NHRA Full Throttle schedule! What did you think of it? I'm pretty happy with all the changes, although we've all "been there and done that" in terms of running the Memphis race in August, so I'll start mentally psyching myself up for that one by the time we hit Pomona for the Winternationals... Yowza, that's got a chance to be just a tad warmish...

Key schedule item 1: We'll now race in Charlotte twice. Great! If any track owner/promoter can make the tricky leap from one race to two, it's Bruton Smith. And, who wouldn't want to race at the Bellagio of drag strips twice? It's awesome.

Key schedule item 2: Denver moves to the last slot on the Western Swing. Result of this move still TBD, but it's worth a shot. Considering how hot and stormy it is in Denver during the early part of July, I'm not sure if moving the race a couple of weeks will offer any relief, but it's worth the try and it can't be any worse than it has been.

Key schedule item 3: Reading moves to October. Hip hip, hooray! With our luck at Maple Grove, they will probably suffer their all-time worst October in recorded history, next year, but when you look at all the options this has to be the best.

Key schedule item 4: The summer crunch. From Atlanta, on May 14-16, through Denver on July 23-25, my Mary Queen of Peace math skills tell me we'll be running nine races in 11 weeks. We've done it before, and we can handle it. Just get your travelin' shoes ready and get after it. It will be one of those very compressed segments of the season that ends up feeling like a blur, but it will be enormously important. Atlanta will still seem very much like an "early" race on the schedule, but it actually will be the 8th race after next year's shift moves it out of the 6th position. By the time you're done with the summer crunch, it will almost be playoff time.

There are some other tweaks to the schedule as well, including the fact we will be heading to Richmond for the last time this October (I guess you should never say never, considering this is actually the second time we've run for the "last time" in Richmond), and we'll just have to get a handle on all the new stuff as we go.

For now, though, our focus is strictly on 2009. And Indy. And then the Countdown. We're ready, we have a fast-running car, and we're all ready to rock... If we can find a way to get back on the good side of those incredibly tight side-by-side deals in the first round, we'll be right in the thick of this thing.

Speaking of Indy, since we are speaking of Indy, I was messing around on Google Maps and Mapquest this morning, taking a little tour of the town I once lived in for a couple of years, and I'll post some of those pics in the gallery today. There's a crystal-clear shot of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and an interesting shot of Indianapolis Raceway Park. It's one of the few satellite shots I've seen, of one of our tracks, where it's instantly obvious that a race is going on. By the way the transporters are kind of haphazardly arranged in the pits, and the fact there is no one in the grandstands, it's obviously not the US Nationals, but there is a race going on and it even looks like two cars were at the line ready to go when the satellite snapped the image. Kinda cool...

I also cyber-cruised over to downtown Indy, and noticed that Google Maps has an image that is old enough for the spectacular new Lucas Oil Stadium to not be there at all. There's just a big parking lot there, south of the old RCA Dome. I then went over to Mapquest, and their image is slightly newer, with Lucas Oil Stadium appearing in mid-construction.

In terms of mid-construction, the last couple of nights have been pretty huge in terms of Target Field. The grass is arriving!!! As Dave St. Peter (Vice President of the Twins) said on TV last night, up until the grass arrived it was a building. Now, it's a ballpark. The grass is cut at the turf farm in Colorado very early in the morning, then loaded onto refrigerated trucks and driven directly to downtown Minneapolis, where it arrives each night around 10:00 p.m. For the process to work best, they like to install it at night, so the whole process is taking four days. Right now, about half the field is in place. Cool!

And, I mentioned this before but bad weather curtailed my plans and a very interesting trip is now re-scheduled for tomorrow.  One of my blog readers is the guy who handles Fast Jack Beckman's website, and he has access to the new stadium and the ability to bring guests to the new ballpark whenever he wants. I'll have to don the always-attractive hard hat, yellow vest, and safety glasses, but somehow I'll pull off the fashion side of things. Our goal is to meet just after noon, and then head into Target Field for a good look around. I'll even make my way over to our seats, and check out the view. And yes, you better believe the camera will come along with me... I'm REALLY looking forward to this...

On to a completely different subject... My mother-in-law saw an author on Larry King a few weeks ago, discussing his latest book about auto racing, and she went to a great deal of trouble to buy the book on Amazon and have it sent to me. It's entitled "Go Like Hell" and when it arrived I was a little skeptical, since it's about the 24 Hours of Le Mans race back in the mid-60s, and even though I was aware of and interested in that sort of racing as a kid, I wasn't sure any of the subject matter would be relevant to me. I took it with me to Reading, finishing it on the flight home, and let me play Oprah for a second so that I can fully, completely, and whole-heartedly recommend this book to everyone.

It's about racing, and that part of it is fascinating in its own right, but it's more about personalities, wills, and egos with the main stars of the story being Enzo Ferrari, Henry Ford II, Lee Iacocca, and a bevy of drivers who raced in a time when tragedy and death stalked them at every turn. It's frightening to read about how many talented drivers they lost, year in and year out, but mesmerizing to ponder the mentality that made these guys sign up to do it, and attack the job with abandon, despite the obvious and overwhelming risks. The main theme is about Ford and Ferrari fighting for Le Mans dominance, no matter the cost or the effort, but the entire story makes for a brilliant read. It's a classic "page turner" and I loved every one of those pages. It's the sort of book that makes you a little sad when it's over...

That ties in neatly to one of the last photos I'll show in the gallery today, since I finished the book while we were making our approach into MSP. I looked out the window as we came in from the east, passing over Woodbury but a little further north of here than the usual approach. As we came in toward St. Paul, I quickly realized we were on a flight path I'd never before been a part of, and I had a brief moment of wondering if the pilot knew what he was doing. We ended up landing on a cross runway I'd never landed on before (nor did I know it even existed) and the whole approach took us right over downtown St. Paul (I was quick enough to snap a pretty neat shot with the iPhone) and straight into the airport, flying in over neighborhoods I'd never seen before. Weird, but cool...

Finally, one of my other assignments yesterday entailed a drive around Woodbury to see if I could find a No. 4 Vikings jersey (that would be a Brett Favre jersey). Reebok is making them as fast as they can, but they're flying off the shelves non-stop and are still a bit hard to find. I needed to grab one as a favor for my good buddy (and former CSK teammate) Tom Abbett, who is now Team Manager for Mike Ashley's organization. Tommy Nitro knows a Lend America staffer who is a huge Favre fan, and he wanted to surprise her with the jersey, so (Oops!) I hope she's not also a blog reader! I found one at a local sporting goods store and have sent it off to New York...

As for Tom, it bears mentioning that he's a sharp guy who has now successfully made the rare transition from crew guy to management type. He was always one of our hardest working guys on the CSK team, but our conversations over the years made it clear to me that he aspired to use his brain as much as his hands, and he surely had the smarts to do it. It's kinda cool to see how far he's come and how well he's doing on this side of the fence...

Well, I guess that's about it for today. Barbara and I are off to the Dome tonight, to provide the kiss of death for the Twins. They've won five in a row now, most of them thrilling come-from-behind victories, so our attendance at their game versus the Orioles will almost certainly cause the end of the winning streak... Fingers crossed, of course, but I'm pessimistic...

See ya later, gang.

Wilber, out