Exactly one month from today will be the beginning of the 2008 race season. We will be qualifying in Pomona at the Winternationals. Here at Kalitta Motorsports in Ypsilanti, Mich., everyone is working hard to prepare for the new season. The guys probably won’t have many days off from now until after testing. Our KB team is testing in Phoenix Jan. 25-30 so our truck and trailer will leave out of here on the 22nd. The teams of Dave Grubnic and Scott Kalitta will be leaving sooner since they will test in Las Vegas before they go to Phoenix. They will leave on the 14th. We have dragster chassis being front and backhalved at Attac Race Cars in Charlotte, Mich. We have dragster bodies being painted at SD Enterprises.
This week, Tammy Oberhofer, who is the office manager at Kalitta Motorsports has been busy getting all four of our teams registered for the year. She does this in addition to all her other job duties which include accounts payable, insurance, and lots of other stuff. Tammy hand-types each team member's registration form plus all the family members. This is for the hard cards that get us into all 24 races. She is pretty organized about all that paperwork. Tammy sent Grubnic and I to the doctor today for our physicals. Doc says we are healthy enough to drive Top Fuel dragsters. Grubnic and I both registered with new numbers for 08. Doug Kalitta is going back to his old number that used to be on his sprint car. Grubnic’s number is double Doug’s. Mine is Grubnic’s plus four and is the same number that a current and former racing champion has. We would rather just be number 1, 2, and 3.
Our KB team had a meeting today. I would tell you what we talked about, but then I would have to kill you. We have a very covert, carefully planned strategy for 2008. We talked about some serious, top-secret stuff. Ok that’s not entirely true, but what is true is our intention to win lots of rounds, win races, and secure a major sponsor in 2008. The team that is going to accomplish this is Jim Oberhofer, Troy Fasching, Dewey Burroughs, Colby Campbell, Jerry Cook, Tom Davis, Chris Glass, Mike LaJoice, and Mac Savage. I will go into more details about each one of my teammates in upcoming blogs.
So I’m really glad that Jay Leno is back with new shows. He’s doing a pretty good job of writing his own jokes. This writer’s strike that’s going on in Hollywood right now is a real shame. At least the reality shows aren’t affected because I’m glad that a new season of
The Apprentice has started. I’ve watched that show since the first season. For this season’s celebrity version, I hope that Nadia Comaneci wins. Since I used to be a gymnast too, she was my idol.
I ended up watching a lot of TV over the weekend. I always have it on in the background but I seldom sit down and watch if for any extended amount of time, but this weekend I enjoyed sitting on my butt for an extended amount of time. I ended up watching the entire presidential debate that lasted four hours on Saturday nigh. I haven’t paid much attention to the presidential race, but the Michigan primary is coming up so I guess I have to decide soon. The debates were very interesting. I learned a lot about the candidates, but not enough to decide who to vote for. Unfortunately, after the debates, I couldn’t help but feel like our country is in a bad state of affairs right now. I think some of the candidates painted a very bleak picture that was almost depressing. However, I am thankful that we live in a country where people can get away from everything and go have fun at the drag races and people like me can make a living driving a race car. The countdown is on until Pomona! Enjoy your week and I will talk to you on Thursday.