Already in Jackson

Welcome back to my newest blog entry. I am camped at the Jackson, MN Fairgrounds ready for Saturday to get hear so we can get back to racing. It is Wednesday April 28th at 10:00pm and I am watching the 11pm news from NYC, waiting for it to be 9pm in Los Angeles so I can watch the American Idol results show on Fox. Don't be jeleous because I have the east & west coast feeds from Direct TV. I'm hoping that Crystal doesn't get voted off this week, she didn't have her best performance last night. Now that you know where I'm at, lets get to what I've been up to since last Thursday night.

Last Friday when I woke up (around 9am) the skies were blue and the temp was warm and it looked like a beautiful day was in store. During the night, Gene & Starla arrived with the WoO Souvenior trailer, so I wasn't alone camped at Tri-State Speedway. Since the weather forecast wasn't looking very favorably for Saturday, I decided to park Woody in front of the speedway on the grass right next to HWY 41 to get some good exposure for "Engler Machine & Tool", since I had their sign on Woody's wing panel for the race. Tim Engler owns the company and he has supported Woody for the past three years at the Knoxville Nationals, so since his company is located about 15 miles from Tri-State Speedway, that was my way of thanking Tim & Tammy for their support. In the afternoon, Gene & Starla invited me to go into town with them so they could ship some merchandise UPS, right across from UPS drop-off was "Hoosier Hotrods & Classics", a great little hotrod shop. We had a great time getting the nickle tour of their shop (man they do some really great work), if you live in the Evansville area and are looking to have your hotrod or classic car fixed up, go see Ryan Smith, he is a super nice guy. The shop is located on SR 68 in Haubstadt, IN. Gene really had a great time, he has a passion for classic's & hotrods, he was definitely in his element. Later we went back to the track around 4pm and another motorhome had arrived, it was Rick who lives in the Evansville area. In my last blog I talked about Butch and his friends who fed me at Paducah & I-55, well Rick was one of Butch's friends, so I apologized to him for forgetting his name last week. I went out to dinner with Gene & Starla to Sandy's Pizza, located about 5 miles North of the track, just follow the directions on the billboard that is on HWY 41 South of the track. We shared a pizza, man was it good, the sauce tasted really good (definitly homemade) and they added sweet red peppers, I've never had them on a pizza before, now they might be my favorite topping. I had a good time BS'ing with them over some pizza & beer.

Saturday, the weather outlook wasn't looking very favorably, it started raining late Friday night and Saturday morning it was very overcast with threatening gray skies. With the forecast not looking good, as soon as it started raining around 12:30pm, it didn't take long for the race to get cancelled, it has been rescheduled for October 16th. It was the right call, because it rained with strong wind gusts all day. I was invited for dinner to Jimmy & Glenda's house, they live in Evansville, you might know Jimmy better if I call him by his nickname "Jimmy Jeep". Jimmy drives a yellow jeep push truck and Glenda is his faithful passenger and girlfriend, Jimmy is one of the best push trucks in the country and he helps us out at about 5-10 races a year. They came and picked me up, on our way to their house, I'm pretty sure a Tornado was close by, the rain was horendus and the wind was crazy (I found out later that the sirens were going off in Evansville), well we made it to their place intact. I had a great time visiting with them, it is always nice to learn how other people fell in love with racing and are crazy enough to use their own vehicle to help get a sprint car race started, if it weren't for push trucks, you would never get to see a sprint car race. I got to meet Glenda's son Skip, and he showed me his Dad's (Glenda's late husband) racing collectible collection. Man, it was cool, there must of been over 200 diecast of 1980-1990 era WoO Sprint cars, NASCAR cars and other old vehicles, ols scrap books of 1960-1970's Champ Car races at Terra Haute and DeQuion (don't crucify me for my spelling). There was a lot of other really cool stuff in that garage. Thank you Jimmy & Glenda for inviting me into your home and allowing me to get to know you two better.

Sunday, again the weather was going to be crappy all day, so I made the decision to stay at the track until Monday or when the weather cleared up. I had spent a lot of time during the previous week at Bill & Lynda's cleaning my RV & Woody's trailer, so I didn't feel like driving in the rain and trashing them just because. I don't have to be in Jackson, MN until Saturday, so why rush. Gene & Starla also decided to stay at the track, so I went over to their toterhome to watch the NASCAR race from Talladega. It was a good race, pretty exciting throughout, however I'm not a big fan of the three times for a Green/White/Checker, I don't mind one, but three is way too many. If I were in charge of NASCAR, I would change the rule to; the last 25 laps of every race would be green flag laps only, yellow flag laps would not be counted during the final 25 laps. I believe there would be more races that finish under green that would run for more than two laps, yes there would still be a possability for Green/White/Checkers. I'll get off my NASCAR soapbox for now. Time for an American Idol update, Crystal made it through the first cut "yes", it will either be Big Mike, Casey, or Sibhon going home tonight. Now back to last Sunday, I really didn't do too much, the weather was shit all day, after the NASCAR race, I went back to my RV and surfed the internet & watched TV.

Monday morning I woke up to blue skies with white clouds and dry roads, so I decided to make a break for it and try to make it to Harrah's Casino just east of St Louis on I-70. It was a nice drive, a little windy but not too bad, I took I-64 West to downtown St Louis and right at the base of the arch, I got on to I-70 West to St Charles, MO where the Harrah's is. I got parked and settled in at the RV/Truck parking lot when about 15 minutes later, low and behold Gene & Starla pull in and park right near me. I guess we all had "All you can eat seafood buffet" on our minds. We got lucky however, because this was the last Monday night for their seafood buffet, they are changing it to Friday nights I think. We went in at 5pm, well 4:45 actually, Starla really wanted her seafood and was afraid they might run out of crab legs. So, for $25, it was time to get our feed bags started and eat all kinds of rich crustations dipped in melted butter. I'm telling ya, don't get in the way of Starla and her crab legs, I saw Gene try to grab one off her plate and she tried to stab him with her shell cracker (its a good thing they have dull ends). I'm pretty sure I saw her eye's roll back in her head when she was cracking the crab legs, it was kinda scarey (I'm just kidding Starla, I actually didn't see your eye's roll back). After destroying me some crab and stuffing my face with very rich deserts, I waddled back to my RV with Gene & Starla.

Tuesday morning I woke up to a wet parking lot because it drizzled all night long after midnight, but the sun came out around 9am, so I waited until the parking lot was dry, assuming the roads would be dry also. I took off around noon and headed for Mt Pleasant, IA. I was now off on my WalMart tour through Iowa. I had a really nice drive, I took HWY 61 through Hannibal, MO into Iowa getting on HWY 218 to Mt Pleasant, IA. I arrived at the WalMart around 5pm and there were only one other RV and two semi's in the parking lot. I cleaned all the bugs off the front of my RV and then jumped in the shower. When I got out of the shower, it was time to cook some dinner and surf the web, well some dumbass trucker decided to park his truck 10ft from me with a load of live large pigs, the smell was horendus and listening to them scream and squeal was driving me nuts. When I seen him get back into his truck, it was a young kid around 20yrs old and he was only stopping to get something to eat. He said he didn't even realize I was in my RV with the windows open, he apologized and took off after he scarfed his food down. I spent the night watching TV, Michael is safe on Biggest Loser for another week, he lost 15lbs this week, he only has 17 more pounds to lose and he will reach 200lbs lost in 16 weeks, amazing. All night all I heard was semi's pulling into the parking lot and parking along the HWY, I could a sworn I was parked at a truck stop.

Today I woke up around 6am and looked outside and there was at least 15-20 semi's parked, if these truckers keep using WalMarts like truck stops, WalMart is going to close their parking lots to overnight parking. I wish truckers would use the truck stops like they are designed for and leave the WalMarts to us RV'ers. I would say the average RV'er spends about $100 week at WalMart and the average trucker spends less than $10 week. If I park at a truck stop overnight, I don't complain about all the noise trucks make when they idle all night, but when they park near me not at a truck stop and there is plenty of room in the parking lot, I will first nicely ask them to move. Now that I got that off my chest, I went back to sleep and woke up around 9:30am. Overnight I received an email from Tony V. letting me know that the "Postman" Steve Post from MRN Radio & MotorRacingNetwork.com mentioned me, Work'N Woody, my Websight and this blog in his weekly podcast he does about the WoO. If you haven't listened to these webcast's yet, go to "www.motorracingnetwork.com/mc_video.aspx?artnum=55167" and check it out, Steve does a great job. I have met Steve at a couple of our races this year and I have talked to him on the air a couple of times when I called into the Sirius NASCAR radio show "Trading Paint" when he hosted it with Chocolate Myers. He is a fan of all racing and he really likes short track racing on the dirt. Thank Tony for letting me know and thanks Steve for giving me the shout out on your podcast. If I have any new fans reading this blog from hearing about it on the podcast, please let me know by contacting my through the contact link at the top of my website, thanks. Well, back to today's adventure. My plan was to just drive about 200 miles to the WalMart in Mason City, IA, and I did arrive there around 4:30pm, I had a really nice drive by taking HWY 218 to Iowa City and then getting on I-380 to Waterloo, IA where I got back on HWY 218 to Charles City, IA where I got on HWY 18 west to Mason City. After getting there, I got on my computer and checked out the weather forecast for Jackson, MN, I seen it is supposed to rain Thursday & Friday, so I decided to fight the wind and drive on to Jackson in clear weather, again just to keep my vehicles clean, saving me lots of work later. The cross wind on I-90 was annoying (around 15-35mph), but when I was on I-35 the tail wind was awesome. I arrived in Jackson around 6:30pm, didn't know where the fairgrounds were and the directions weren't in my Garmin, so I drove downtown until I found a sign pointing to the fairgrounds. I found it with no problems and got parked for the next couple of days until Saturday, raceday. Time for the last American Idol update, Sibhon just got the boot, Big Mike survives another week.

Well, if you in the Jackson, MN area and want to come chat about racing or just to check out Woody, come on out, or you can stop me when I driving Woody in town getting something to eat or just checking out downtown Jackson. See you at the races Saturday night, I hope we get a great crowd, the car count should be around 24-30 cars. I don't know why we are racing directly against Knoxville's opener within 200 miles, I would have thought a Friday night race in Jackson would have been better for the Fans and Teams, but I don't make or have any input in the making of our schedule and I am just thankful we have a race scheduled for this weekend and I am here ready to go and make it the best show I can for the fans here in Jackson, MN.

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"