Chilling at Bill & Lynda's

Welcome back to my latest blog entry, right now it is Wednesday Oct 14th and it is 10pm, I just got done watching Criminal Minds that I DVR'd earlier tonight. I am parked at Bill & Lynda's place next to their shop, where they normally park their RV, so I have electricity & water, & a dump, I can't thank Bill & Lynda enough for letting me hang out with them. I will probably be here for about a week, I have a few things on my RV to work on while I'm here, hopefully the weather will clear up so I can get them done. I have to pull out all my chassis batteries to check the water levels in them and re-install them, that job really sucks, if you could see where they are located on the RV and how cramped the compartment is, you would hate it too. This job takes about 2-3 hours to do along with creating some colorfull words, these batteries aren't lite, my back always kills me when I'm done. I also have to replace the waterpump on my RV, it is slowly dying, right now it works intermittenly after I hit it with a screw driver. I'm just waiting for the replacement pump to arrive from Shurflo, thank god for warranties.

Now it is time to catch you up with how my last week went. I last blog ended on Thursday night, Friday morning I woke up excited to see WoO sprint cars on the Moody Mile at Syracuse, however Mother Nature decided to throw a monkey wrench into the mix. It rained or drizzled all morning and into the afternoon. I drove Woody over to the track where they parked Steve, Jason, Lucas, and Ed, they were all there ready to put on a good show for the fans. I know the fans wanted to see it, there were at least a thousand more people there than were there Thursday, I'm sure it was to see WoO sprint cars. Mother Nature never gave up and finally won the battle, we never even unloaded the cars. I swear, after last years 33 rain outs and all the rain this year at our big or special events, I'm pretty sure Ted Johnson has somehow pissed off Mother Nature, since he has been up there and this is her way at getting even with him. I took Woody back and loaded him up on his trailer and waited to see what the weather was gonna do for the rest of the night. There was another Goodyear tire test scheduled for Weedsport Speedway for Friday night after their big URC race, since the weather never improved at Syracuse, I figured the test would be cancelled, but around 6pm Jim called me and said that the 360's were hot lapping, so I decided to pull up camp at the NY State Fairgrounds and head over to Weedsport. When I got there, it was raining lightly and it didn't stop, so they ended up cancelling the URC race and the tire test. So, I set up camp and spent the night and listened to it rain all night long.

Saturday, I woke up around 9am and headed into the town of Weedsport to do laundry, there is a really nice laundermat that has a big parking lot. While I was waiting for my clothes to dry, I walked around town and looked in a few of the shops. When I finished my laundry, I walked over to Arnold's Family resturant for a great lunch before I had to be at work at Rolling Wheels Speedway. I highly recommend the meatloaf, man that was delicious, my waitress was super nice and I took her up on her recommendation for the meatloaf. I arrived at the track around Noon and found one of the few dry (or harder ground) area's to park the motorhome and unloaded Woody. Man, was the pit area a mess, standing water, super soft area's and I just knew it was going to be a mess. After I got the T-Shirt trailers situated in the grandstand area, I helped Tom, Justin, Jim, & Tony set up the big blow ups in the infield. I just knew it was going to be a long night, I just had a feeling. Well, I was right, the track was really soft and they did the right thing by tilling it up and letting it dry out. Then in my opinion, the track crew wasn't using their heads and they put down two loads of water on the track at 4:45pm with the sun setting and with it overcast with a temp in low 50's, did they really think they could run the track in by 5:45 for engine warm up and hot laps, not a chance, the track was soup with the sun setting. Well, the extra time did allow for the big block modifieds to just keep filing in to the pits. The pits were a zoo, 44 sprint cars, over 40 big blocks and 30 sportsman modifieds for a make up feature, over 100 cars didn't fit in the pits, they had to pit about 10 mods in the infield. This was my fourth time at Rolling Wheels, and I have never seen that many cars, campers, and fans in the stands, it was standing room only. They decided to run the WoO Sprint Car feature last, the green flag flew around 11:30pm with the temp around 38 degrees, man it was cold. It ended up being a good race and Tim Shaffer & Donny Schatz put on a great race for the lead. Donny would have won it if Lasoski wouldn't of blown his motor, but on the insuing restart, Donny choose the middle to high line and Shaffer drove it in on the bottom and got a better drive off turn two as Donny drifted high and almost off the track, that was the winning pass, Donny recovered for 2nd and Meyers passed two cars after the restart to get to 5th to keep the point chase close. Joey had a tuff night, but started the feature 24th and drove his ass off to get to 9th, but unless Donny & Jason have horrible luck at Lonestar Speedway in Kilgore, TX, I'm pretty sure he is out of the title chase.

My night didn't end after the race, after I moved the T-shirt trailers to their owners, I headed back to the pits to see if anyone needed any help, during the modified race, the generator on our WoO Command Center decided to take a shit, it was going to make for a long night. I have to thank Erik who allowed us to plug into his Hoosier trailer for electricity so the payout could be done and to load everything up, but with one big problem, Erik's generator only puts out 110vac and the lift gate on the Command Center requires 220vac, so we couldn't load up all the four wheelers and golf carts. Tom Deery called the track electrician to come and help, while we were waiting, Barry Jackson didn't make it out, his Casey General Stores hauler was stuck in the mud. He wasn't completely buried, so I tried to pull him out with Woody, I did get him moving, but it was so soft, Woody just couldn't quite pull him out (I'm sure it was my lack of driving skills, because my Dad was always able to pull rigs out). However, we didn't quit, Justin commendered one of the track cyclops water trucks and we tried to pull him out, but that didn't work either. There was another team still there and they drove their rig over and hooked to the cyclops and with the two of them pulling, they were able to get Barry out of the mud, just as Tom Deery drove over with the front end loader. During that time, the electrician showed up and brought over the big generator that powers all the track lights and wired up a plug and he plugged the Command Center in and we were able to operate the lift gate and load everything up. I finally got back to my RV around 2:30am.

Sunday I woke up around 9am to blue skies and crisp cool morning, my plan was to just load Woody up and take off, but after I saw how much mud & grass was on Woody, I couldn't put him on the trailer like that, so I washed him up and got on the road around Noon. I took HWY 5 to Syracuse and drove right by the fairgrounds, it was still packed with campers. From Syracuse I took I-81 south back to Harrisburg, PA to meet up with Bill & Lynda. I arrived there around 7pm and I spent the night at the Big Kmart in Carlisle, PA.

Monday was planned to be a long day of driving, so I was up by 6am to be on the road by 7am as planned, except for Bill decided to set his alarm for 6pm instead of 6am (sneaky bastered, him & Lynda got 45 more minutes of sleep than I did), after I called them and woke them up, we were on the road around 7:30am. We headed for Clarksville, TN, we knew we weren't going to make it in one day (since niether of us like to drive after dark) we planned to stop around Knoxville, TN for the night. We left Carlisle, PA on I-81 south and passed through West Virgina, Virgina, and finally Tennessee, we made good time and we made it to the WalMart in Crossville, TN on I-40 to spend the night. After having a nice dinner at Ruby Tuesday's, I watched the Monday Night Football game, man what a 4th quarter, 5 touchdowns with each one swapping the the lead, Miami ended up winning the game.

Since we were pretty close to Clarksville, we decided to sleep in a little and take off around 10am Tuesday morning, that way we wouldn't have another mix-up with the alarm clock. We did get on the road by 10am and we arrived at their place around 2pm. Bill & Lynda have a really nice place, Bill showed me a picture of what his property looked like when they bought it 19yrs ago, man he has done a ton of work to his property over the years. While I'm here, I'm going to help Bill with his honey do list and whatever else him or Lynda would like help with. They are really good friends and I will do anything for them. Hopefully the weather will improve, since we have been here I haven't seen any blue sky and it has been raining most of the time. I need to wash my RV, Woody, and his trailer before I leave, it would be nice to do it when I can see the sun with a little warmth. That way I will be looking good when I arrive at Sam & Lisa Hafertepe's Lonestar Speedway for the WoO Fest race on Oct 24th. I hope to see everyone there. Hopefully Meyers can gain some points on Donny in TX and make the World Finals in Charlotte something the fans can talk about for years to come.

Again, I want to thank all the fans for supporting me and Work 'N Woody and the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series. So, until my next blog, stay safe and keep all four wheels on the ground.
Work 'N Woody,
"Just Push'n Off"