Thank you Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, and Carl Palmer for the inspiration behind today's headline. When I got in my rental car at John Wayne Airport, that was one of the first songs to come on the radio and it struck me that few could be more accurate, when it comes to starting yet another season right in the same spot we finished off the last one.
In the four-plus years I've been writing this blog, I sure can't recall writing many at night, but I just got to the hotel here in Ontario and I know tomorrow is going to be nuts, so as long as I'm sitting here I might as well be productive. Not sure how long this will be, but I had the motivation to get it written and sent off. Of course, I also don't know if any of the NHRA.com magicians, who take my missives and make them appear (abra cadabra!) on the website, are even paying attention to email at this hour, so it may well be Thursday before this "sees the light of day" if you can pardon the pun.
It's also apparent that many of you noticed the new "shuffle" that will be happening on the main blog page, so that the newest installments will move to the top of the heap after they've been posted. Hopefully that's not too confusing, and I figure the Team Wilk blog banner will still sit atop the column a lot of the time. We're just keeping you on your toes! And, if this system motivates some other people to write a bit more often, then that's good too.
Okay, the other truly important note I need to make mention of is that I have kept up my end of the promise and did swing through the In-N- Out that's right at our exit, off the 10-freeway. Double-Double (with onions), Diet Coke, and I got my fries off the "secret menu" by ordering them well-done. I did my best to savor every bite when I got to my room, but it's awfully hard not to just wolf it down... It tastes too good to eat slowly!
To backtrack a bit, I went to bed early last night, in anticipation of the first day of school, and set my mental alarm clock to wake me up at 6:45. I missed by 15 minutes, because I woke up at 6:30, but those are delicious minutes to reclaim when you know you can grab a cat, pull up the blanket, and enjoy another bit of blissful sleep. Da Boyce, however, thought I was certifiably insane when I got up and started turning on lights, before that bright thing in the sky had even made its appearance over the horizon. When I turned on the bathroom lights, they were looking at me from the bed, just barely holding their heads up (with a total cat-version of "bed head" going, hair sticking out in all directions), and blinking at me. Sorry guys...
It was 4 degrees (at least it was above zero) when I left the house, and after checking in, getting to the gate, moving to another gate when they changed aircraft on us, sitting in seat 2-D for close to four hours, and then deplaning in another place, it was approximately 64 degrees warmer. From single digits and an ever deepening snowpack, to So Cal in all its glory. Not a bad deal, really...
About an hour later, I was at the race track living that "Groundhog's Day" scene again, wherein it seems like I just saw everyone, in this exact same location, a few days ago. It's always a bit disorienting, because it's hard to get a mental grip on it all...
We're not hosting any hospitality here this weekend, so we're pitted right next to the Tasca team with only a few feet between our awning and the side of their rig. I figured I might move over there and grab a seat in their hospitality area, for me and my computer, but they just found out they're not doing any hospitality either, so we're both downsized for this event. Annette and I dug through our support trailer and pulled out four folding chairs and one hi-rise round table, and we set that up at the forward end of our narrow little pit. At least I can work standing up and we'll have a small spot to take a load off, if we need to...
I finally left the track around 5:00, battled the freeway traffic out to the hotel, and enjoyed my Double-Double. Now, it's time to get this finished, wind down a bit, and then hit the sack...
Before I do that, though, here are a few notes about what you'll see in the photo gallery. We start with a snowpack shot, after the last scraping of the driveway and a quick pass through by Dave and his snow blower. As you can see, it's close to two feet deep right now, and it's packed solid. A lot of it is more precisely ice, rather than snow. After the storms we just had both Minneapolis and St. Paul instituted the special on-street parking rules that have to be followed when we eventually get this much snow. As it piles up on the curbs, people can't park anywhere near where they're supposed to, so from now until the spring melt, you can only park on one side of the street. And it's going to take a long time to melt all of this...
I also got a great gift in the mail, from blog reader buddy Kim up in Vancouver, where a little get-together called the Winter Olympics is about underway. He sent down two pairs of official Winter Olympics mittens for us, and I can report that they were terrific during my multiple trips outside to scrape off more of the white stuff, this week. I'd always heard that mittens were far warmer than gloves, but I haven't owned a pair since I was small enough to have them clipped onto the ends of my coat sleeves, so I wouldn't lose them on my way to kindergarten. They're amazing! With gloves, my finger tips get cold out there, but with the mittens my hands and digits were actually hot! Even when it was seriously cold. Plus, with the Olympic rings and a Canadian maple leaf, I'm the coolest guy in the neighborhood...
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The walls of white I left behind...
The Olympic torch passed right by Kim's house the other night, as well, and he was kind enough to send me a shot of it being carried by. Pretty neat deal...
I also figured you might enjoy a few shots of some of the new stuff in the pits, so I walked up to Brandon Bernstein's pit area and got a shot of their all-new blue motif. Right across from them was Melanie Troxel's car, and their big In-N-Out transporter. Finally, I took a shot of the very cool (and very enormous) sign they attached to the backside of the main grandstand. It's hard to get a grasp on just how big it is, but just check out the doors to the suites, on either side of the Auto Club Raceway sign... This thing is large!
Well, that's it boys and berries. Time to turn my brain off and get a good night's sleep. When I get to the track tomorrow, it will all be for real...
Wilber, out!