Now I’m writing to you from beautiful, sunny Phoenix, Ariz We are just beginning our five days of testing here at Firebird International Raceway. We did four days of testing in Las Vegas. It’s safe to say that we had a successful couple of days in Vegas. We ran a 4.492 two times in a row into a really, really strong head wind. The next day we were on an even quicker run but shredded our blower belt at 1,000 foot into the run.

Las Vegas Motor Speedway is definitely one of my favorite facilities on the tour and it is the place that we go to the most often. As always, the track operators gave us a great race track to run on. Mother Nature could have given us a little warmer weather. The strong winds were extremely cold. My crew chief, Jim Oberhofer, said he had never seen the track temperatures that cool before and humidity so low.

Las Vegas is the hometown of our team owner, Ken Black. He came out to the track a couple of times to see us run and he took our team out to dinner one of the nights. We ate a great dinner at Landry’s seafood place which is near where we stay.

When we were finished in Vegas, I flew to Albuquerque, N.M. I figured I need to go to a spa retreat after all that. Just kidding. I think I would go crazy from too much relaxation at one of those things. I actually went to New Mexico on behalf of Clevite/Victor Reinz/Perfect Circle. Bill McKnight, their Director of Brand Development, asked me to attend. Our team gets all of our engine bearings from them and they are the only brand that will hold up in a top fuel dragster. They give us a good product. Clevite also sells a lot of their engine and performance parts to Engine and Performance Warehouse (EPW) who then sell to machine shops nationwide. EPW has warehouses in Colorado, California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma. EPW is Clevite’s second largest customer and they were having a business meeting in Albuquerque. I made a presentation to them about me, my team, and NHRA drag racing in general.

It was an honor that they invited me to speak for them. I put together a PowerPoint presentation with lots of cool photos. I hadn’t used power point since my days as a financial analyst but it was good to refresh my memory. I used to make presentations involving budgets and forecasts with lots of graphs. Thankfully this one had no graphs and very little numbers. The EPW people asked lots of questions and I think everyone liked the presentation. You all know how much I love racing so of course I like talking about it and I really like sharing my enthusiasm about it.

I enjoyed seeing a little bit of New Mexico as well, even though I was there for less than 24 hours. That was one state I had never been to before and I would like to go back someday and spend a little more time there. It has a very distinct look and feel. It seems like most places we go, look the same. There are the same big box stores everywhere you look. New Mexico, however, has a lot more unique architecture. Maybe someday I’ll make it back.

Right now, I’m very happy to be in at Firebird Raceway in Phoenix. I have no more presentations or speeches for awhile so I just get to focus on driving. Right now, it doesn’t matter to me if we go out and run 4.40s, 4.50s, or smoke the tires; it’s all good experience for me. There are a lot of other Pro teams here and the weather conditions are supposed to be nice all weekend for us. Wish us luck!