Hangin' with Joey

On my way to Bulls Gap

Welcome back to my latest blog entry. Right now I’m camped at one of my good friends brothers shop near Bessemer, AL, Joey is one of my good Navy buds. Right now it is Tuesday March 16th around 10:30pm and I’m watching NCIS on the boob tube.

When I last left you, it was Wednesday and I was camped at the WalMart in Midland, TX and I was on my way to Kilgore, TX for the first race of the Texas Two-Step Weekend. When I woke up Thursday morning, I had a neibor parked next to me, it was Toni Lutar’s rig (toter-home & trailer). I took off around 8:30am and headed East on I-20, just another 460 miles of boring boring Texas freeway’s, around 10:30am Lutar’s rig blew by me doing around 80mph, racers will be racers no matter what there driving. My GPS said I should arrive at Lone Star Speedway around 4:47pm. Thank god I got to the Dallas/Fort Worth area well before rush hour traffic; I’ve heard that traffic is nightmarish. A nice 15-20mph tail wind was a nice added bonus; any help on my MPG is good. I arrived at the track around 5pm (my GPS tried to take me to a different location about 7 miles away, thanks Garmin) thank god I knew where I was going. When I got there, Eloy was already there and we waited for Bill & Lynda to arrive to go out for a nice dinner. Jim & Luci would have been there but when I called Jim earlier in the day, I found out that they ran into a little problem trying to leave OK City, the serpentine belt on their RV broke (luckily very close to the Cummins service center) and they were in the process of getting it replaced, there plan was to arrive Friday morning. One of my best friends Jamie who lives in Houston was up in the Kilgore area checking out property and when I called him to see if he wanted to get together on Saturday or Sunday, he told me where he was and that he needed a place to stay the night. I invited Jamie to eat dinner with us, he met us at the Chili’s in Kilgore and he fit right in with our group. After dinner we headed back to our RV’s for a night cap. Man, it was great seeing a great friend who I don’t get to see but once a year.

Friday morning I was up around 10am and looked out my window to find Jim & Luci parked next to me, I’m glad they made it with no other problems. I was looking forward to seeing Alisha (my oldest daughter), she was on her spring break and her and Justin had been hanging out with Justin’s family in TX and they were coming to the races. They arrived around noon and it was time to go to work, after helping to get everything ready, I was able to spend about an hour with Alisha and catch up on how she’s doing in her freshman year of college. The weather was nice and sunny (kinda windy all day but it quit when the sun went down) and I was looking forward to a good race night. 30 sprint cars signed in, 29 410’s and one really old 360, all but a couple of the 410’s were very good cars, so we had a good field of cars ready to race. The track is a fast high banked ½ mile, but with all the rain they’ve had the surface was very spongy and the track never really got to a point were we could have two grooves for good racing. The racing was as good as it could be with how rough and one groovish it was. Haud got the jump at the start and looked unbeatable until he got to the lapped cars and allowed Dollansky to catch up when a yellow came out. On the restart, Jac blew it into turn one and nailed the huge hole and bounced like a pogo stick up to the fence and lost 7 spots, it was amazing he saved it. After that it was all Dollansky and survival was the name of the game. Jac made it back to 5th, but when on the last restart (which was single file) he forgot you couldn’t pass before the cone and he passed TK which cost Jac two positions after the race. I don’t know why, but the crowd was no where near as big as last years races at Lone Star, the fans that stopped by Woody after the races said a lot of their friends didn’t come to the race because last year in Oct only 18 sprint cars showed up, well with those 18 cars we put on a great race, fans need to remember, when we only have 18 cars show up, they normally are 18 of the best 410 sprint car drivers in the WORLD and we put on a great show with those 18 cars. This year we have 18 (arguably the top 15 410 sprint car teams in the world), so I would encourage all the fans out there to never again pass up the chance to see a WoO Sprint Car race. Now that I’m done ranting; after the races, which ended after midnight, I was still impressed with the number of fans that came to the pits to visit with the drivers. By the time the modified race ended, most of the sprint car teams had packed up and left, which was understandable with our next race only 16 hours later and 230 miles away, but I wish they would stick around for 30 minutes after the last race for the fans. I hung out and talked with the fans and sold some T-shirts & decals. I really enjoy talking with the fans. I finally put my head on the pillow (after showering) around 3am.

Saturday morning I was up at 8am and on the road to Houston Raceway Park in Baytown, TX by 8:30am. I had a good drive, down HWY 259 (past my RV’s birth place the Foretravel Factory in Nacogdoches, TX) to HWY 59 to the town of Cleveland, instead of following HWY 59 to the Beltway 8, you take TX 321 South to Dayton and then TX 146 right into Baytown. I arrived at the track around 12:30pm and relaxed for a couple hours. The track in Baytown is a real racey ¼ mile, and every time I’ve been there, it has taken rubber around lap 25-30 (of a 40 lap race), well this time the water truck drive dumped a ton of water right as the sun set, so we had a mess on our hands. After about an hour of a couple of trucks packing and not making much of a dent, I have to give it up to the mini sprints, they stepped up and volunteered to wheel pack. They did a great job and got the track ready to hot lap on. We needed to run 6 hot lap sessions, but the track came in nicely, as evident by I believe 7-10 cars under the track record, Lucas Wolfe (man he is fast this year) set fast time under 12 seconds. During the heats, dash, and B-main and the mini sprint races, the track came in beautifully, two grooves and slick in the middle, perfect conditions. Man there was a wicked flip by a mini sprint when they were hot lapping to line up for there feature, I found out later his steering wheel came of as he pitched it into turn 3 (yikes, I bet he triple checks that the rest of his career). We only had 29 cars make it to Houston, but there wasn’t one fan who could of walked away unhappy with the race, after a lap 3 yellow, the next 37 laps went non-stop and Kaeding & Sides put on one of the best races for the win that I have seen in a long time, they were never separated by more than 5 car lengths and they swapped the lead at least 25 times (maybe only 3 official lead changes at the stripe), but with the track perfect for slide jobs, they put on one hell of a show. So good in fact, I never even watched 3rd thru 10th, and I was told they put on a great race also. Sides won the race by less than ½ a car length, well deserved win. Both Jason & TK had great big smiles on their faces in victory lane, man they had fun tonight. The fans that came into the pits really enjoyed the races and told me what a great time they had. That my friends, is classified as a job well done by SLS & the WoO.
I slept in till 10:30am Sunday and then watched the F1 season opener that I DVR’d, I have always liked F1, because I grew up a sports car fan going to the races at Sears Point & Laguna Seca, I wonder if you could mount a F1 engine in a sprint car, lets see what 19,000 rpms could do??? The two Gig Game Tree Stands teams stayed Sunday to test, after I washed Woody Craig let me know that the track was supplying a push truck and my services were not needed, so I went out to dinner with Eloy, Bill & Lynda, Jim & Luci, and Beenie (he drives the Schatz souvenir trailer) at the seafood place next to I-10. After dinner, we all had to leave the pit area and park out in the parking lot so they could lock up the gates. I stayed the night at the track and planned to leave in the morning. I had to watch my Sunday night shows, Amazing Race and Cold Case.

Monday I was on the road around 10am on I-10 East, I was on my way to surprise my wife Donna, who is going to a school for her job in Biloxi, MS. She had no idea I was coming, my plan was to surprise her and be parked in her hotel parking lot when she got home from school, well I didn’t plan my driving time very well and didn’t arrive until 6pm, so I had to call her before she ate dinner to let her know I was coming and wanted to take her out to dinner. I was and she was happy to see each other and we had a nice dinner and spent the night together. It was nice to sleep next to her and hold her in my arms.

Today I drove up here to the Birmingham, AL area to Joey’s place. The drive was a really nice drive, from Biloxi I took I-10 east to Mobile, Al, where I got on I-65 north to HWY 43 north, HWY 43 was a nice 4 lane hwy with not much traffic. From HWY 43, I took AL HWY 5 up here, if you’re ever looking for a nice quite drive from Mobile, AL to Birmingham or Tuscaloosa, I highly recommend this route.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to get to eat a good ol fashioned southern meal for lunch at Joey’s parents place, Peggy & Joe’s. Since the last time I ate one of Peggy’s meals, I have had dreams about the next one, Peggy is an awesome cook. After lunch at Peggy’s, it will be back to the motorhome to wash it and Woody’s trailer, they really need it. Dinner at Joey’s along with doing my laundry at his place, and getting him packed up for the weekend, then we will be ready to head for Bulls Gap, TN for this weekends races promoted by Kasey Kahne. If you have never been to Bulls Gap and you live within 500 miles, you need to get in your car and make the drive, Volunteer Speedway is a high banked 3/8, when I say high banked, I mean it, if my memory serves me right, the banking is around 36 degrees. The last time we raced there, I parked Woody at the top of Turns 3 & 4 with my Mom on the down hill side and she screamed at me so loud everyone in the pit area heard her, man she was pissed. It is an uncomfortable feeling being on the down hill side of Woody at that angle, Woody feels like he is going to flop over on his side, but he won’t, because all of his weight is close to axle height, but since you sit so high above the CG, it is very scary. Well, lets hope I don’t have to park up on the banking, if I do, I’m going to make sure Joey is on the down hill side.

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"