Sitting in the rain in Celina, OH

Welcome back to my latest blog entry to my faithful readers and welcome to any new readers. Right now I am camped at the WalMart in Celina, OH, writing this on Thursday evening at 7:30pm est. I'm watching Wheel of Fortune, waiting for my favorite reality show to start, Survivor. I have been here since 12:30pm, Bill and I were supposed to go golfing this afternoon with my friend Todd who lives in Wapakoneta, OH. When we got here, it started lightly raining and drizzling and it hasn't stopped. Needless to say, I'm a fair weather golfer, since I'm not that avid a golfer or that good of a golfer, it doesn't make sense to me to go golfing in the rain. Well, enough about what happened today, lets catch everyone up on what I've been up to since last Thursday.

Last Friday, I was still camped at Deer Creek Speedway near Spring Valley, MN, it was kind of a boring day, I pretty much spent most of the day catching up on paperwork and paying bills and just doing nothing and relaxing in my MH watching TV. In the evening, I went over to Patty Haudenschild and we got together with the track and figured out where to park her T-Shirt trailer, after getting her trailer in place, I just went back to my MH and relaxed the night away. I can tell you one thing that could be improved at this track is the cell phone service, my AT&T cell phone had no service the whole time I was there, every once in a while I would get 2 bars of service and I would call home, only to get about 1 minute of a conversation before the service would go to zero. Also, my verizon wireless internet card was only getting NationalAccess with less than 3 bars of service, my internet was so slow, it was like I was back in 1996 and using extremely slow dial-up service. It was extremely painful to get any communication there.

Saturday I rolled out of bed around 10:00am and waited for the college football game between my favorite team the Cal Bears vs Minnesota Gophers. I watch the 1st half and Cal dominated, so I figured the 2nd half would be the same, so I went outside to see what was going on. I fired Woody up and he just didn't seem like he was running right, he was acting like he was only running on 7 cylinders. I checked everything from the distributer down to the spark plugs (except pulling the plugs). I went back inside my RV to see how much Cal had dominated Minn, which I was kinda surprised it was kinda a close game before Cal dominated the 4th QTR. Go PAC-10, so far the PAC-10 is way better than the Big-10, see ya in the Rose Bowl. Finally when all the teams were in the pits, I took Woody over to TK's team and Ray Brooks let me use his tempature gun and I tried to figure out which cylinder wasn't firing. After playing with the gun for a little bit, I wasn't sure if I was using it correctly, I asked Ray to try it also. Well, when you let the professionals do it, Ray was able to determine that cylinder 2 wasn't firing. After letting Woody cool off for about a 1/2 hour, I pulled the #2 plug, wow was it fouled and I mean fouled, after putting in a new plug, amazingly Woody started to run on all eight cylinders, so I was good to go for the night of racing. Nobody was sure how this track would hold up, but I new it would be fast for qualifying. I was right, I think 12 cars broke the old track record. I new the track owners were going to work on the track all night long (because they told me they were during the two days I was there), I was just hoping that they wouldn't work the track after the modified feature. I kinda new the heats & dash would be relatively boring, fast but boring, the dash was a little exciting, but for the wrong reasons, Hefertepe flipped in turn 2 on the start and McCarl stopped abrubtly in Turn 4 when it was called over the drivers radio, well Steve didn't hear the radio call and with no safety lights in turn 4, Steve ran over McCarl's right rear and flipped. The rest of the dash was fast & boring. They didn't work the track after the dash or the modified feature, so I was hoping for a good track. At the start of the race, I could tell the track was going to widen out. After all the crashes ended, the final 19 laps went non-stop and what a race it was, Schatz was fast and cruising through traffic, when with about 7 laps to go, Joey found the top of the cushin and caught Donny quickly, after doggin Schatz for 5 laps, Joey drove around him on the high side of 1 & 2 and raced to the checkers first, Donny was 2nd and Meyers was 3rd. Not much of a change in the points, but with 9 races left, one mistake by either of the 3 and they could be eliminated in the points chase. With the record crowd at the track, after the races there were a ton of fans roaming the pit area, I met a bunch of fans that asked about my Mom & Dad, but I also think I made a couple of new fans. I know one thing for sure, every fan that I talked with and that walked by me, had a big smile on their faces.

Sunday, I slept in till about 10am and got up and washed Woody, after cleaning Woody up, it was time to change advertisers on the LH side panel of Woody's wing. I would like to thank BOSMA Poultry, Inc for their support of Woody and me during this season (thank you Loran) and I would like to welcome LONESTAR Speedway in Kilgore, TX for coming onboard and supporting Woody through their WoO Fest race on Oct. 24th. I need to thank Sam & Lisa Hefertepe for their support. If any of my readers of this blog live near Kilgore, TX or in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, please come out that October night and see some great WoO sprint car racing action at a great facility. After I got the Lonestar Speedway sign on Woody's wing (it looks great and add's some good color to Woody), I loaded Woody up and took off for Joliet, IL. I decided to go south on HWY 63 to Waterloo and then I-380 to Iowa City, then I got on I-80 to Davenport, IA, I took the I-280 bypass around Davenport and then stayed on I-80 to Joliet, IL. I camped at the WalMart off of I-55 for the night. I figured Joliet would be safer to spend the night rather than Gary, IN.

Monday I woke up around 8:00am and got on the road by 8:45am, my destination was Elkhart, IN to stop at Xantrax to get my Invertor repaired (so I didn't have to run my generator all the time for AC power). After stopping in Gary, IN at the Flying J to get 30gal of diesel fuel so I could make it to the Flying J in Beaverdam, OH, I decided to not take the toll road so I took I-94 to HWY 20 and cut across South Bend, IN to Elkhart. I made it there by 1pm and met Otis who I had talked to on the phone and he looked at my invertor. He didn't do anything except plug the remote cord back in and turn the invertor on, low and behold it started working, and it is still working today. Otis told me that sometimes when you unplug and plug the remote cord in it can reset the relays in the invertor. So, since he didn't charge me a repair fee (normally 1hr of labor rate) it was a good deal that I went there. Thanks Otis. Since I was near South Bend, IN, I called my good friends Bill & Joan and they invited me over for dinner, so I parked the RV at the WalMart and Bill picked me up, I did beg them to use their laundry room to clean my clothes (I had run out of tidy whities that morning, I was in desperate need of clean clothes). I had a great time and a some great meatloaf at Bill & Joan's, and I never asked her to, but Joan did my laundry for me. Thanks Joan, you and Bill are the best.

Tuesday, Bill picked me up around 10am and we met Joan for coffee and they took me to their Kawanis meeting, I had never been to a Kawainis meeting (it was a lot like my old Chief's Club meetings when I was in the Navy), Bill introduced me as his guest and I had a good time meeting new people. After the meeting, Bill & Joan took me to Applebee's for lunch and then dropped me off at my RV. Before I took off for Lima, OH, I needed to do some grocery shopping at the WalMArt and then I took off on HWY 33 for Beaverdam, OH. I took HWY 33 to Fort Wayne, IN, if you go that way you need to take HWY 15 south out of Goeshen, IN, to HWY 6, since there is a bridge closed for construction that Indiana doesn't think to tell you about or show you a detour around it, anyway, I had to use a farmers driveway and field to make a U-turn in, so I could back track to the next road to get back to HWY 6. After that hour delay, I made it to Ft Wayne and got on HWY 30 which took me all the way to the Flying J in Beaverdam, OH. I met up with Bill & Linda and decided to stay the night there. Kinda loud, but I figured it was safe.

Wednesday, I was up by 9am and on the road by 10am. It was a short drive to Lima, OH to the Allen County Fairgrounds, it is a nice place to camp, you get 30 amp electricity, water & sewer for just $20 a night. After getting parked and settled in, I borrowed Bill's car and went to NAPA to get seven more spark plugs so I could change Woody's other spark plugs. After changing the plugs and filling up the motorhome with fresh water, I just chilled in the RV and played around on the internet and napped a little. Bill & Linda and I went out to dinner to a great little Italian place off of HWY 65 in north Lima (we found this place 3 yrs ago during a rain out at the Doty Classic) and we enjoy going there each year when we can. After a great dinner, I couldn't eat it all, so now I have dinner for Friday night, we went to the Sam's Club for a few items and headed back to our RV's. After quiet night of watching TV, my head hit the pillow around midnight.

Thursday, this morning around 10am I took Bill & Linda to breakfast at the Bob Evans and then we both headed for the WalMart here in Celina, OH. See, another exciting week on the WoO trail, I did accomplish getting my invertor working again, even if nothing was done to fix it, but it works good now. Hopefully the rain will stop tonight and we get the race in Friday night at Eldora and the rain will hold off to get Saturday nights race in at Lernerville. If we have a rain delay Friday night, that 326 mile drive to Lernerville will be that much longer.

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"