In the middle of the Western Swing in Sonoma…
Hi, everyone
It has been a tough last couple of days, as we lost a good friend last weekend in Seattle. Mark Niver was someone who, if I needed a smile at the race track, all I had to do was get on my scooter and go find his pit area to see him and his group. He was truly, truly a guy who made me constantly shake my head at the talent that he had and his lust for the fun that life brought us and we will miss him.
We are in the middle of the “Western Swing” part of our schedule, and I am home for a few hours to unpack and repack and head up to Sonoma for this weekend’s race. Gonna drive up to San Luis Obispo and jump in the motor home and drive up to the track and get parked and settled in. It is usually a pretty busy race off the track as well, and this year is no exception. We have a NAPA dinner on Thursday night at a wonderful winery in Napa Valley with some very special guests of NAPA AUTO PARTS, which reminds me: our good friend Jim Norman who owns Norman Vineyards down where we camped a couple of weeks ago in Paso Robles has shirts that he had made that read “NAPA is for auto parts, Paso Robles is for wine.” It is kind of funny because before I even knew him, I would see those shirts on people in various parts of the country and never knew who made them.
Anyway, back to this weekend. We have the dinner and then we are gonna rocket over to another winery (I see another trend forming) with Paul Mecca driving us over to the Eric Medlen Nitro Night Charity Dinner http://www.infineonraceway.com/media/news/574908.html that will be near the track. It has always been in San Francisco, but was moved this year and I surely don’t want to miss it this year. We will then kick off qualifying on Friday and Saturday (with a special DSR autograph session in the winner’s circle at 11 a.m. on Saturday) and then we get to go the the FRAM dinner on Saturday night with all of the DSR drivers and then get ready for race day on Sunday. And, after last weekend, I feel pretty good about our chances.
I just found out that we will be getting to go to the next couple of UFC events coming up right after our Denver race. We always have an open invitation from the great people who work for Dana White, and Donna, the Vice President of Event Operations, always takes such great care of us. So, we are looking forward to hitting the August 1st event in San Diego and then going up to Oakland for UFC 117 on August 7th, which is gonna be a great night, for sure.
The plan right now is to leave the next day with everyone piled into the motor home and make the trek to Brainerd while seeing the country. Really looking forward to that trip as I might have to sneak a stop at one of the “Great Wolf Lodges” so the kids (ahem…I mean me…lol) can see if I can finish our quest that we started last time, although Caden got pretty far and might be tough to beat.
Have to run. Driving up to Mom and Dad’s house in SLO tonight and have to finish packing.
Have a great weekend!
RC