Ready for the Williams Grove National Open

To my faithful readers of my blogs and to hopefully some new readers, welcome to my latest blog. Right now it is Wednesday Sep. 30th around 10pm est and I am camped outside turn 2 near the pit entrance at Williams Grove Speedway and I am watching CSI NY (some dude is about to get mutulated in a bad part of NY, you gotta love TV, teaching today's kids how to kill people and get away with it). When I was a kid, I got to learn how to drive a car reaaly fast and jump creeks and other objects and never scratch the General Lee, or how to hit the juke box just right to get it to play the song you wanted to hear (thanks Fonzie), it never worked for me, I just always hurt my hand. Oh well, enough of comparing TV era's, let's continue on with life on the WoO trail with Woody.

I last left you on Thursday night camped at the WalMart in Celina, OH, I woke up Friday morning to very gray skies and not a very promissing outlook to get the race in that night at Eldora. I arrived at the track around 10am and there was already a good number of campers in the parking lots, I would say more than last years 4-Crown Nationals weekend. I parked out in the parking lot near the road, I new I was going to leave after the races and I was hoping to get as far away from the dust as possible. With the way the weather was, dust wasn't to be a problem. It rained around 3pm for about an hour, but the pit gate opened up at 4pm and the race was on as scheduled. I must commend Chad and his track prep group for having the track in as good of a condition for all the rain he got during the week. We started engine warm-ups on-time but only got about half of them started before the rain came again. After about an 1 1/2 hour delay, Chad got the track ready again and we started all over. With the threat of rain, the program got pushed along, the track was fast all night and the cushin never really got more that 30ft off of the inside wall. The feature was a pretty good one with Jason Sides coming from 8th starting to win, Jason was on a rail and deserved the win. Tim Shaffer led most of the race and finished 2nd with Saldana 3rd and Meyers 4th, Schatz came from 20th to 6th, on that track that was impressive (if Donny doesn't start qualifying better, Jason or Joey just might beat him for the championship). After hanging out after the races talking with the fans, I loaded up Woody and drove to the WalMart in Huber Heights, OH. I don't normally drive at night, but since our next race was Saturday at Lernerville and it is 330 miles from Eldora and I had to be there by 1pm, I decided to drive around 80 miles at night. I took HWY 127 south to HWY 49, at night these HWY's are very dark and I just don't like driving at night. Here is why, while I was on HWY 49, I was going about 60mph and ahead about 1 mile a car coming around a corner looked to be driving in my lane, I had the cruise control on and started flashing my bright lights with no response, now the car was about 1/2mile ahead and definitly in my lane, so I started truning my lights on and off, hoping to get him to get back to his own lane. It must have worked because he finally turned back into his lane about 300yds in front of me (thank god, because if we would have hit head-on, it would have been ugly) you just gotta love drunks coming home from the bar. I arrived at the WalMart safely and put my head on the pillow around 2am.

Saturday I was up by 8am and on I-70 east by 8:45am, it started raining about 9:30am and it never quit by the time I got to the top of the mountains east of Wheeling, WV and stopped at the Cabela's and met Eloy, Bill & Linda for lunch at the Steak & Lube. We received the text canceling Lernerville by noon, so after lunch we all went our seperate ways, Bill & Linda headed for Philly to visit their grand kids, Eloy drove to Washington, PA and hung out there and I decided to continue on to Williams Grove. So, I ended up driving roughly 480 miles on 6hrs sleep. By the way, it rained all the way to Williams Grove and didn't stop until early in the morning Sunday.

Sunday, my plan was to sleep until I felt like getting up, which was around 11am, the weather was still crappy and rainy on & off, it finally quit raining around 1pm. The rest of my planned day was to vegitate in my motorhome watching my Vikings and the NASCAR race, I didn't even get out of my PJ's all day. Right after I watched Favre throw that amazing winning pass in the last seconds to beat the 49ers, Steve Stimely better known as Jake's Carts, knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to go to Lincoln Speedway for the Manufactures Night race. What the hell, I hadn't been to Lincoln Speedway since I came home on Leave from Guam to travel with my parents for 30 days during their first year on the WoO trail in 1988. I remembered back then they pitted in the infield, not no more, they have a great pit area now. There is no reason why the WoO shouldn't be racing their a couple times a year, the track looks great, the pit area is nice, and the grandstands hold enough fans. It was nice to attend a race as a fan and not have to work (even though operating Woody during a race really doesn't feel like work most of the time), I was able to walk through the pits and just relax and chat with everyone. The race was good, the track was way to slick and they never got to lapped traffic because of cautions, but I know the WoO would put on a great race there.

Monday, Tuesday, and today I spent in the back parking lot by myself and just kinda vegged in my motorhome, the weather was windy and cold all three days, so I decided to clean the inside of my RV and catch up on paperwork and just relax. I must of completed about 30 Sudoku puzzles in my Sudoku for Dummies book and read 4 Sprint Car & Midget magazines, that was a good article on Jason Sides in the latest issue. I really enjoy reading Doug Auld's (I mean Chris Auld's) articles and Doty's thoughts, sometimes Jeff Swindell's articles are right on, but the one he wrote last month about rough driving and the track & sanctioning bodies afraid to say something to the young drivers, isn't that like the pot calling the kettle black. I'm pretty sure he has fed his share of right rears to other drivers in his career and he probably still is today making his car as wide as possible on the white flag lap. Go get'm Jeff.

Today, Bill & Linda, Eloy, and Jim & Lucy arrived along with other campers for the weekend. I had a really nice dinner with Bill, Linda, & Eloy, we went out to a good steakhouse, Calhoun's off of I-83 at exit 36, now I'm back in my RV trying to stay warm, crap it is supposed to get down to 41 degrees tonight, shit it is still September, it's not supposed to get cold in September, is it? Well, thanks for reading my blogs, my website has just gone over the 6,000 hits mark.

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"