Hanging out at the Fairgrounds in Syracuse

Here I am camped at the NY State Fairgrounds in Syracuse, NY at Super Dirt Week. I have been here since Tuesday evening, I can't complain, Chris Dolack set me up with a campsite with Water & Electricity, thanks Chris. When I got settled in Tuesday night, I went to bed with about 20 campers around me, when I got up and going on Wednesday mornig around 11am, I opened my shades and stepped outdoors and holy crap, there was like 300 campers parked around me, crazy. Well, I will catch you up from where I left off last Thursday on my last blog. Right this second it is Thursday Oct. 8th around 8:51pm and I am watching Survivor Samoa, they are doing their tribal counsel and it looks like Yasmine is going home.

Last Friday started off a good overcast day and it looked like we were going to get the race in, but about 2 hours before the drivers meeting, the tempature raised about 10 degrees and I kinda new that wasn't good, because the warmer temps was going to attract the wet stuff. Well, sure enough during the drivers meeting the skies turned almost black and you could feel the moisture coming, wouldn't you know it, as soon as we called for the first group of hot laps to the track, it started to rain, not hard, just hard enough and long enough to saturate the track. Ray and his track prep crew did their best to get the track ready to hot lap again, after about 3 hours, the track was ready again and we were going to call the cars back to get heat in their motors, but then it started to drizzle pretty heavy for about 20 minutes and we lost the track again. By this time it was around 10pm and the race was postponed and was rescheduled to run Sunday night. That night after everyone got back to our motorhomes, we had a birthday party for Bill & Eloy in Bill & Lynda's motorhome. Luci baked a cake and Bill & Lynda made Bill's famous Buffalo Chilli and Lynda made Chilli Cheese Nacho's. Bill & Lynda also supplied the booze for drinks. Everyone was their I think, Bill & Lynda, Jim & Luci, Eloy, Carlton, Justin, Tony, Tom, Johnny and myself. We sang happy birthday to them but there wasn't any candles on the cake, Luci said they couldn't find enough candles for how old they are. Bill turned 70 and Eloy said he turned 92 (not sure about that, but Eloy say's he never lies). It was a good time had by all. After the party, I went over to the campsite across from us where Brad, Baduch, and Jim camp and had a couple of beers and played quakes with them. Justin & I did partner up and won one game of quakes, but got killed in the second game. After that it was time to hit the rack and get some sleep.

Saturday I awoke to blue skies, what a beautiful day. We haven't had a day like that at Williams Grove in two years. I had a pretty relaxing day before I had to go to work around 2pm. I have never seen that many cars (60) or fans ever at Williams Grove, I would of estimated the crowd to be over 12,000, man it was packed. Ray did an outstanding job preparring the track and we got started on time, 60 cars takes forever to qualify even when they only got one lap. With this race being shown Live on SPEED, it just seemed like every race took forever to finish. I think all the drivers were amped up and forgot how to race cleanly. After the National Open 40 lap race ended, the scheduled broadcast ran over by 1hour, so we got 4 hours of Live coverage for a WoO Sprint Car Race. All the accidents were good for Woody and my advertisers, I ended up getting a bunch of air time for them, I hope you saw them. Thankfully no one got hurt, all the drivers walked away, well Pittman ran away from his, after watching the broadcast Sunday, I never knew Daryn had such a good arm, he threw his arm restaints pretty far. The PA Posse came out on top again, Hodnett ran a good race and Donny could never get close enough to him, it might have been a different story if there wasn't so many reds & yellows, they never really got to deep into lapped traffic. The crowd sure was excited when Hodnett won. As for the second feature, the make up Summer Nationals, Cody Darrah just flat kicked everyones asses. The final checkered flag was waived around 1:30am, what a full night of racing. After I got the T-Shirt trailers moved out, Woody and I were pretty much wiped out. I even had to put 5 gals in Woody, because when I was towing Joey's trailer I ran out of fuel. I finally put my head on the pillow around 5am.

Sunday, I rolled out of bed around 11am and planned on relaxing while watching some football. I had to go to work at 5pm for the Goodyear Tire test. I can tell you about it because the WoO released there press release about it. There were 5 teams participating in the test, Steve Kinser, Jason Meyers, Jason Sides, Joey Saldana, and Daryn Pittman. The test lasted 4 hours from 7pm to 11pm, watching the cars on the track, I didn't notice too much of a difference in speeds or racing lines, but after talking with the drivers, they said there was a pretty big difference in the feel of the cars. Hopefully they will produce good racing next year.

Monday I awoke to another beautiful day, a little chilly, but really nice. I washed Woody and drove down to the closest gas station to fill up, since gas is way cheaper in PA than it is in NY. I loaded Woody up and cleaned the front of my RV (so I could see out the window) and headed for the Flying J in Carlisle to dump the tanks and fill up with water, diesel fuel and propane. After spending over an hour at the Flying J, I ended up being an hour late for my appointment at the Cummins Service Center in Harrisburg, PA. Which in turn, caused me to have to spend the night at Cummins (not a bad deal since they have electrical hook ups for RV's). I walked to Chilli's for dinner and made it back in time to watch my favorite NFL team the Vikings beat the crap out of Green Bay. I wonder how the Vikings are going to break my heart again this year????

Tuesday Cummins looked at my engine, I just wanted them to look at the turbo and manifold that I had replaced in Grand Forks, to make sure everything was good since I noticed a little wetness around the oil feed line at the turbo. Everything looked good and I was on my way around 12:30pm. I headed for Syracuse, I stayed on the main interstates, I-81 north to Syracuse. I arrived at the New York State Fairgrounds and got situated at my campsite by 6pm.

Yesterday, it was a really crappy windy & rainy day, I pretty much stayed in my motorhome all day. I called Justin around 4pm and talked him into picking me up and going out for dinner and some drinks. Neither of us have ever been in Syracuse before, so we just went downtown and drove around until we found a place to eat & drink. We found a place called Dinasour's BBQ, man it was some of the best BBQ I have ever had, I highly recommed it if your ever in Syracuse.

Today, I woke up to the sound of big block modifieds and a bunch of dust, if you thought sprint cars created dust, you haven't seen dust like there is here on the mile. I drove Woody around and I got a lot of fans yelling that it was good to see Woody at the Mile again. There really seems to be a buzz around here for the 4 lap exhibition for the WoO Sprint Cars. Hopefully the weather will hold off and we get it off tomorrow, I am kinda excited to see Steve, Jason, Lucas, and Ed Lynch Jr turn some fast laps on the mile. Today I watched qualifying for the big blocks and the pole was won my Tim Fuller with a time of 30.3 (I think I'm close), I want to see what times we turn on the Moody Mile.

This Saturday we race at Rolling Wheels Speedway, if you read this before Saturday and come out to the race, please come by and say hi. After Rolling Wheels, I have a two week break until the WoO Fest race at Lonestar Speedway in Kilgore, TX. It looks like I will be spending most of that break at Bill & Lynda's house in TN, before I head down to TX.

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"