This year's schedule is finally starting to sort itself out as one of the strangest in a long time. We've just gotten through the grueling Western Swing, and just having some time at home and a weekend off seemed like a dream, but then I got up this morning and my internal "race clock" was telling me, "Okay bub, the party's over. Time to get ready for the next one." Only "the next one" isn't this week at all but next week. I'm trying to think of a good analogy to explain how that all feels.

Maybe it's like a football team going through three weeks of "two-a-days" on the practice field and then being sent home for a couple of weeks before the next game. Or a Broadway cast slogging through 21 straight days of shows, with matinees on Saturday and Sunday, only to have a two-week hiatus thrown in when a couple of days off to recharge would've been enough. Maybe it's like a race team going from Denver to Seattle and then to Sonoma, all in a row, only to finish up that grind to find two off-weekends facing them. Oh, wait a minute…

So here are my memories of the Western Swing, completed over the course of 19 consecutive days… 7,362 miles in the air. Approximately 17 hours in airplanes and 14 hours in airports. 12 nights in three different hotel rooms. One good meal (the Macaroni Grill in Denver after the race on Sunday night). Three distinct parts of the continent, featuring mountains, forests, and vineyards. Weather that ranged from hot, to hotter, to hottest, with a little dose of "bundle up" when the marine layer came in on Friday night in Sonoma. Track staffs that ranged from the nicest people (the Bandimeres) to the most professional (Bruton Smith's group at Infineon) to the most invisible (I only say that because over the course of three days at Pacific Raceways I never saw anyone who worked for the track). It is, as we say, a marathon.

So now we have another week off, before Brainerd and Reading come at us back-to-back, although Brainerd always seems like such a piece of cake to me because I drive there. Then a week off before Indy, followed by another weekend off after the U.S. Nationals, before (drum roll please…) FOUR IN A ROW! Charlotte, Dallas, Memphis, and Richmond, all in succession. Richmond and Charlotte are pretty similar, geographically, but this isn't a Southeastern Swing with Memphis and Dallas in the mix, although if you consider Memphis to be in the south I guess we could call it a Southern Swing. I think we just call it "Payback" for having two weeks off right now.

Speaking of all that air travel (and yes, I did go to my account summary at nwa.com to get the actual miles flown) I just realized that I never relayed my tale of being pardoned by the governor at one minute to midnight, coming back from San Francisco. Rich and Annette Schendel were on my flight, as was Nelson Jones from ESPN, and Mike Cunningham was catching a flight to Atlanta at a nearby gate, so we were all able to chat for a while before the airplane finally showed up and we began to board.

All along, I was still listed in an aisle seat back in coach, and it appeared as if everyone in First Class was going to check in and take their assigned spots, so I wasn't too optimistic. The gate agent was going bonkers enough, with our inbound aircraft being about two hours late, so I didn't bother her with questions I figured she couldn't answer, and plus I could tell on my laptop that I remained No. 1 for an upgrade if anyone didn't show up. I just bided my time, and when they finally made the call to board I waved bye-bye to Nelly, who got to go on first with the rest of those lucky people in the front cabin, before I was allowed to head down the jetway when they called Silver, Gold, and Platinum Elite members. I went ahead and got on early, so that I could make sure I had overhead space back in row 26 or wherever I was. Rich and Annette weren't that anxious to board, but a few minutes later I saw Annette coming down the aisle with a funny grin on her face, and when she got to me she said "Right after you went down the jetway they called your name. If they move you up, send me back your cookie."

I grabbed my boarding pass and busted past a few other Elite members who were boarding early, dashing my way back up the jetway to the gate. Fortunately, they hadn't given up on me and the agent handed me a new boarding pass for seat 1-C, up in the front cabin baby! Just before midnight, the governor called and set me free… That was all good, but by then the entire flight was boarding at once, so I had to work my way back onto the plane, and back to my original coach seat over the wing, grab my briefcase and camera and then imitate the world's biggest salmon swimming upstream, trying work against the flow of an entire plane's worth of people trying to go the other way. It wasn't easy, but I managed to run the gauntlet without stepping on any toes or bashing any seated passengers in the back of the head with my Full Throttle brief case. I winked at Nelly as I passed his seat and settled in.

Once lunch was served (Chef Salad) and I was done, I took my big chocolate cookie and headed back to Rich and Annette's seats, finding them both sound asleep (we were all tired!), so I laid the cookie carefully on Annette's tray table and sneaked away. When we landed at MSP, she said "Hey, the Cookie Fairy came when I was sleeping!" That's me, the Cookie Fairy.

So, back to the here and now. With two weeks off, I knew we weren't going to have any regular PR stuff to do for a while, so I wrote a feature story the other day while the two back-to-back wins were still fresh in my mind. I spent enough time with Tim throughout those two races, both in private and with the media, to really get a better understanding of how he works and what makes him tick, and I thought that sort of information would be interesting to write about, as well as (hopefully) being equally as interesting to read about.

It's one thing to work with the guy through this whole first part of the year, but when you don't win the race, things kind of quickly shift into "tear down mode" and there's not much talking going on. When you win, you've not only spent four rounds talking about the tune-up and the next approach, but then you get the bonus of a couple of hours worth of interviews that follow, during each of which Tim did a truly wonderful job of clearly and comfortably explaining how he approached things and how he feels about the team and the car, in general. It was like an advanced crash course in "Understanding The Inner Workings of Tim Wilkerson," and I learned as much during those two late Sunday afternoons as I've been able to mentally accumulate all year. See, all we had to do was win a couple of races and I got to know the guy a lot better. We should've thought of that earlier!

Once the story was posted here at NHRA.com, I started getting e-mails from blog readers, friends, and family, and one of the first notes was from longtime blog reader Chris Saulnier, up in the great state of Maine. Chris is also a huge Rush fan, so when we correspond we can write about drag racing or great music (or both), and I'll be seeing him soon in Reading. Anyway, he noted that the final quote in the story ends with the line "All we can do is give it our best shot," and that immediately made him think of the song "Hey Man, Nice Shot" by the band Filter. It was not a big hit, although you still hear it on the radio every now and then, but the funniest part of the fact that line conjured up a memory for him, of that somewhat obscure song, was the equally coincidental moment when his e-mail jogged my memory back to 1995. I was the GM of the Kansas City Attack indoor soccer team, and I had our audio guy add the chorus from that song to our in-game playlist.

Whenever an opposing player would shoot way wide of the goal or accidentally kick a ball up into the seats, we'd hit that snippet on the computer and the speakers in Kemper Arena would blare out that bit of the Filter song, with the line "That's why I say hey man, nice shot. Nice shot, man." Just a little jab, you know, like "Yeah dude, we know you were actually aiming for that beer vendor in row 26. Nice shot!"

On a different subject but still related to people I correspond with on a regular basis, I can usually count on a note every week or so from famed former driver Gordie Bonin (aka "240 Gordie" to most people). I mentioned in an earlier blog that I had seen Gordie in Seattle on a couple of occasions but we never had time to actually do more than just yell at each other and wave, so it made me feel even worse when I found out he'd gotten hurt unloading a big truck a few days after the race and was laid-up. I guess he was unloading some stuff from a very big 4x4 truck bed, lost his footing, and landed on top of a fence (if I got the story right). Now he's dealing with a couple of cracked ribs and recovering from a punctured lung. Gordie probably wouldn't want me to even mention this, but I think all of us need to mentally send out those "Get Well Soon, 240 Gordie" thoughts. I know he's getting better, because the e-mails still come regularly, but it can't be any fun dealing with busted ribs and a punctured lung. Hang in there, 240!!!

Next, today, I am happy to recognize the hundred or so blog readers who have sent notes about Boofus and Buster, asking how they're doing with their kitty colds. The news is very good, and they're almost completely back to perfect health, thanks to some gentle pampering and some strong medicine. The pampering they like. The medicine, not so much. But, being really good boys, they have been wonderful patients and they've accepted the prescriptions like troopers.

The Big Fella, who not only sneezes but gets his chronic weepy eye (we call it his "crybaby eye") might be the best feline patient in history. We have moist towelettes that are made specifically for cats with crybaby eyes (they're actually called Kitty Eye Wipes), and we use those regularly to keep the tears from drying on his face and getting all gross and crusty. He's such a good boy about it, and he lets me pick him up, hold him like a little baby on his back, and rub the Kitty Eye Wipes over his face whenever I need to do it. I have photographic evidence of this in today's photo gallery.

I also have photographic evidence that we tried to recreate the picture we took during their first winter, where I'm holding them both under the arms out in the driveway during a snowstorm. I use that shot as my profile pic on Facebook, I like it so much, but this time they were feeling so frisky I could barely keep them in my arms and the photo ended up looking a little more "active" than the first one, when they were pretty much just amazed to see the snowflakes and be out in the middle of it… LOL. They both love to climb, and when you pick them up, they're just as likely to want to use your shoulders as a launching point as opposed to anything else, so when they get in those moods we say they're "monkeyin' on us" because they act like little monkeys the way they climb and jump. Needless to say, they were in prime monkey mode when we tried to take the new photo and it was all I could do just to hold onto them.

Bottom line, though, all is well here on the home front, despite the fact it's a Monday after an off-weekend and I don't have a race to get ready for yet. Time to dig into the stats and do some stuff I haven't had time for all year, I guess.

Before I go, I will mention that we went to the Twins game, against the Angels, on Saturday night. Ugh… Put it this way: Over the course of three games, the Angels pounded out 52 hits and 35 runs against a parade of guys in Twins uniforms who were impersonating major league pitchers. It was a terrible impersonation because they left out the part where actual big league pitchers try NOT to throw 88 mph fastballs right down the middle and belt-high. Sheesh, it was really ugly.

The one highlight had nothing to do with what was going on down on the field. It was simply that I noticed a banner at the top of our section that I had not seen before. Like most teams, the Twins honor great former players and employees with their own Hall of Fame, and all throughout the Dome they have banners for each esteemed member. I had never noticed the George Brophy banner before but managed to take an iPhone pic of it on Saturday night.

Who is George Brophy and why is he enshrined in a Twins Hall of Fame that includes people like Harmon Killebrew, Kirby Puckett, Rod Carew, Paul Molitor, and other greats? Well, I'm not sure what his title was, but from 1961 to 1970, he was my dad's boss! Since my father was the Twins' top scout during that decade, I assume Brophy was the Scouting Director, or something along those lines, but the flood of memories that came shooting at me when I saw his banner was extraordinary. All through the 60s, as I was growing up, one of the most common things you could hear in our house was my mom answering the phone (the classic old wall-mounted phone with the long coiled
cord) in the kitchen, then yelling "Del... It's Brophy on the phone..." When I saw that banner, I was 8 years old again, seated at the dining room table (probably building a Revell model) and my mom was again young and vibrant, looking just like Barbara Billingsley as she held one hand over the mouthpiece of the phone while she shouted for my father. Funny how little things like that can take you back in time so fast. I probably only met George Brophy a dozen times during that decade, but we heard his name shouted out so many times it seemed like he was part of the family.

Okay, time to end this monologue and get to work on other projects.

Wilber, out!