Busy week in Wisconsin

Welcome back everyone, it has been one busy week and not all because of racing 3 times while driving over 1,100 miles. Right now I'm parked at a laundermat in Lima, OH and it is 10:30am and my daughters are doing the laundry, thank god for children that are old enough to help out. Man do I have a lot to tell you about how my week went, here goes.

Wednesday night (July 8th) we raced at 34 Raceway in Burlington, IA, what a nice facility and the staff there is super friendly. The racing there is pretty good and the track was in really good shape, the A-Main was a good race with Joey running the top and Schatz on the bottom, Donny built a good lead but the top finally started getting faster with about 10 laps to go when a timely yellow came out and that allowed Joey to drive around Donny on the top of 1&2 and get the win with his car owner (Kasey) at the track, it was a good night for the Bud Team. My passenger on Woody all night was Joyce Hetrick, I met her last year and she rode with me up to the heat races, Joyce is a survivor of breast cancer and is full of life and always has a smile on her face, what a super nice lady. She came up to me again this year and asked if she could ride with me again, she was really excited when I told she could ride with me during the racing action this year. Last year Joyce went through a rough period when her son was killed riding a motorcycle (dirt bike), he used to race 305's with his brother at 34 Raceway, now they have a Memorial race each year for him and his brother won the first memorial race held. After everything that has happened to Joyce over the past few years, she still has the biggest smile and upbeat attitude of anyone I have ever met.

Thursday was a long drive up to Milwaukee to pick my wife (Donna) up from the airport at 11:00pm. So, I decided to take the senic route from Burlington, I took Hwy 61 to Davenport, IA and then cut across Hwy 67 to I-80, well I-80 east was closed so I had to tuen around and take I-74 to I-88. I took the cutoff to I-88 and found myself right in the middle of the John Deer Classic PGA tournament traffic, it wasn't to bad, but I did manage to hit every red light. From I-88 we drove to Rock Falls, IL, there I got off on Hwy 40 to miss the toll road that I-88 turns into, then I got onto Hwy 2 and took it all the way into Beloit, WI. If you ever want to take a nice leisurely drive, take that Hwy 2, it follows the river and has lots of nice scenery. The only bad part is it isn't the smoothest of roads, they could use some stimulous money to resurface that Hwy. In Rockford, IL I started to have a small elecrical issue when I used the blinkers or hit the brakes, all my guages would drop off-line but the engine would still run. Like a dumbass, at a red light I started to troubleshoot and turned the key off, well then everything stayed dead when I tried to start the engine, I thought "oh crap", after a brief 30 seconds of panic and curse words, I kept trying the key and finally it clicked and cranked the engine. I never turned the engine off again until I was in Milwaukee. From Beloit, WI we took I-43 to Lake Geneva and then cut across Hwy 50 to Kenosha and then we took I-94 up to Milwaukee. While driving on Hwy 50 Donna calls to tell me weather is bad in Atlanta and she won't make her flight to Milwaukee. So, we park at a WalMArt about 20 miles from the airport and go shopping and watch a movie, then we get a call from Donna saying she worked her magic and made the flight and would be in around 11:30pm. We pick Donna up and drive to Delefileld, WI to a WalMart to spend the night, when we get there, the water pump won't turn on, so after about an hour of cursing and troubleshooting, I finally find the broken wire and fix it so we now have running water again. Time to go to bed for some much needed rest.

Friday we get up around 8:00am to get an early start to the Wisconsin Dells, we when we start driving down the hill from the WalMart, I can hear the front tires scraping on the coach, then the leveling system alarm starts blaring, I creep down the hill to the ACE Hardware (about 100yds) and park in there lot (taking up 1/2 the lot). I have had this problem before, so I knew what it was, but I also knew I didn't have the part to fix it. I couldn't find anything at ACE to help me fix it, so I did what my dad used to do best, jerryrig it, so using a hose clamp and lots of duck tape, we were off to the Dells. We got to the Dells around 1:00pm and took the Original Duck ride through the Dells, me and the kids had done it before, but Donna had never been in the Dells before, she really liked the Duck ride, but thought we were going to see lots of Ducks, until I explained why it was called a Duck ride. After the Duck ride, we went downtown and walked around and bought a few souveniors. Now it was off to Beaver Dam, WI and to Chater Raceway. We were lucky to get the RV started because the electrical problem came back right after it started again. So, we drove to Beaver Dam with no guages. I had a plan to troubleshoot, but as we were driving into the parking lot, everything started working again. So, I really didn't have a clue, after I parked, I looked around for loose wires and bad grounds, but couldn't find anyhting. Off to bed for another well deserved rest.