The Texas Two Step

Hi everyone, I am finally getting around to writing my second entry to my blog. Right now I am in the parking lot at the Foretravel Factory in Nacogdoches, TX, for those of you who don't know, my motorhome is a Foretravel, so since I was close, I thought maybe I should visit the mothership and see if they can help me with a minor issues with my RV.

We are now finally starting the racing season, no more weekends off until October, hopefully that will be fixed and we won't have any weekends off until our final race on Nov. 7th at "The Dirt Track at Lowes Motor Speedway. I left my Mom & Dad's place in Deming, NM last Tuesday (I'm pretty sure they were glad to see me go), seriously I got a lot done in Deming during the 9 day's I was there. I did a lot of maintenance on my RV and got it ready to go for the rest of the season, I changed the oil and put in 22 quarts of Red Line Synthetic Oil that will get me through the year, now I just have to change the filter every 5,000 miles. Red Line Oil is the best there is and my RV proves it, 282000 miles with only 1 complete oil change a year.

Enough about my RV, I left Deming last Tuesday and drove to Odessa, TX, Wed. morning (9am) I drove to Midland, TX and stopped at the Petroleum Museum, because there is another part inside that is called the Chaparral Gallery (http://www.petroleummuseum.org/Gallery/CarsonDisplay.html) copy and paste this website to see what I'm talking about. The gallery documents the history of Jim Hall & Hap Sharp's dream of building state of the art race cars. My favorite Jim Hall creation was the Chaparral 2J (The Sucker Car) what an amazing engineering creation. I never got to see any of his cars race on a track (to young) but listening to my parents stories about watching at Laguna Seca are awesome to hear. I spent 2 hours just reading about and looking at all the Chaparral cars.

After I left the museum, I headed for Fort Worth to spend some time with an old Navy buddy, we had a good time catching up with each others lives and telling some good ol' sea stories. I would like to thank Chris and his lovely wife Francine for putting up with me for the night. Thursday I left Fort Worth and headed for Kilgore, TX and Lone Star Speedway. I have never driven through Dallas, and after doing it, I never want to again. The roads were some of the worst I've driven on and the Dallas drivers some of the crappiest there are in the U.S. After surviving Dallas, I arrived at the track and saw all the hard work Sam Hafertepe Sr and his whole family have put into that facility. Later that evening it was good to see Jim & Lucy again, welcome back you two, the road crew is complete again. Friday night was race night, the track is a high banked 1/2mile with long straightaways and tighter corners than Eldora. The track was fast and exciting, the crowd was huge (my estimate is over 7,000), turn 3 was really exciting due to a creater size hole right in the enterence to the corner, I ran through it with Woody on my way to Wayne Johnson after he flipped and I thought I was going to need a red flag for me, but Woody made it through it with no problems but I can tell you the pucker facter was there. Joey Saldana dominated the race but the racing behind hime was fantastic. Haud was starting to cut into Joey's lead until he hit the hole in turn 3 and with the car just coming down from being in the air, hit hit smack into the wall and spun around right into the path of Wayne Johnson who nailed Haud and proceeded to tear up his car and flip over. Sorry Wayne, who had a great race going and probably a top 3 finish. All the fans who came down into the pits afterwards all had a great time and were very excited that the WoO was back in Texas close to the Dallas area.

Saturday morning came early, I had to be in Houston by 12:00pm so 7:00am came really early, especially after I got to bed at 2:30am. The drive to Baytown, TX was better than I thought it would be, if you ever need to make that drive go 259 south to Nacogdoches, then get on 59 south to Cleveland, TX, take 105 east to 321 south and follow 321 to 146, 146 goes right into Baytown and then follow the signs to Houston Raceway Park. I arrived at the track at 11:00am unloaded Woody and had lunch with Jim & Lucy (Lucy, the chicken fajita's were awesome), then I washed Woody and relaxed until work time at 1:00pm. Since Houston changed the track to a 1/4 mile, the racing is as good as it gets, what a racey track. Again Joey dominated the race until the last 8 laps when Donny Schatz found the rubber on the low groove and almost got Joey, at the checkered Joey won by a 1/2 a ar length. What an exciting race, cars on the top groove, cars in the middle and racing the low groove. I love short tracks, traffic always makes sprint car racing better. The crowd in Houston was the biggest crowd I have seen there in the 4 times I have been there (I estimated around 5,000). The fans that came down to the pits were great and thought the race was one of the best they had ever seen in Houston. After the fan support in Texas this past weekend, WoO Sprints should be racing in Texas more than one weekend a year. Hopefully that will change after seeing the crowd support for these races. I would personally like to thank all the fans in Texas & Louisiana that came out to support us.

Sunday I drove over to a good friend of mine, we met at Rescue Swimmer School in 1985, he was in the Coast Guard, but during that time the Navy trained the Coast Guard. We have remained close friends since, he was even my best man at my wedding. Jamie, that you for letting me hangout with you for a couple days (however, you could have helped me wash the motorhome, trailer, & Woody).

Now you are caught up with what I've been up to, now it is off to Paducah, KY Friday night and Pevely, MO (I-55) Saturday night, two more short tracks that put on some of our best races of the year. If you can make it to both these tracks this weekend, I promise you won't be disappointed. Paducah has some of the steepest banking of any track that we race at, the outlaws just fly around that track. I think that hotlaps & qualifying are the best when the track is at its best, the racing in great because the track is very condusive to major slide jobs, I hope the fans come out, because the weather has been aweful the past two years, but this looks like the weather will be great. The promoter Bob Seargent is a great guy and deserves a big crowd. Saturday night we race at I-55, Ray Marler & Ken Schrader's track, what a fine facility and great people, we always get a great crowd there, and the racing is non-stop exciting, slide jobs galore and there is always a surprise winner or a great run by one of our lower funded teams.

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"