GREAT WEEKEND IN HOUSTON

Hey Everyone,

It's Monday morning and Ed Parker & I are driving home from Houston. In Louisiana right now and heading East. It's been a great trip but we're excited to get home and spend some time with our families.

Had a great weekend in Houston. We had our last qualifying pass on Saturday morning and ended up 3rd qualifier going into first round of eliminations later in the day.

Arnold Gacita & Edward Ibarra from Wynn's came to the races on Saturday. Arnold brought his son Andrew with him and it was great to have them there to experience the racing. They really enjoyed themselves and we were glad they could join us.

The whole team worked hard to ready the racecar for the first round of eliminations, where we won the round. We gave the car a service after the run to prepare for second round on Sunday morning. Woke up to sunny skies and much less wind on Sunday-just a beautiful day for racing. Rich made us all a great breakfast and we got ready to go racing. Ran a 5.71 @ 255mph in the second round of eliminations that got us through the round and into the semifinals. Everybody was extremely pumped up and ready to work quickly to get the car ready for the next round. Short turn around between rounds and before we knew it, it was time to stage again. Won the semifinal round as well and everybody continued to be excited and very satisfied that all the hard work throughout the weekend was paying off. Going to the finals with the Permatex/Wynn’s/Texas Roadhouse Chevrolet Impala SS Top Alcohol Funny Car!

Our opponent in the finals was Steve Harker, who had the racecar to beat all weekend. Unfortunately, we came up on the losing end with a 5.61 to Harkers 5.63 due to a red light. It was disheartening to lose but we were greatful to be there.

The team worked really hard all weekend to get us to our first final of the year. Not our last though, as we're getting closer all the time. Tommy's getting more comfortable and we seem to be getting a better handle on the car with every run.

I can't thank our sponsors enough for giving us this opportunity. Again, it was great to have some folks from Wynn's join us. We also had visitors from San Jacinto College, where we spoke last week before getting to the track. Also saw some folks from Texas Roadhouse at the track. It was great to have friends and fans with us.

Will get home later this week and begin to ready the car for Div 1 race in Petersburg, VA at the beginning of May. In the meantime, we'll be making some appearances in the month of April. Keep checking the site for updated schedule of events and we'll keep you updated on the blog as well.

Have a great day!

Jay

FIRST QUALIFYING PASS

Hey Race Fans!

We're in the process of servicing the car for our second qualifying pass later today. The rain has held off and we got our firt quailifying pass in after a bit of a thrash to be ready to run. After 18 cars made an attempt at qualifying, we're currently #1 qualifier. Tommy made a great tuning call this morning.

All is going well and we're excited about the rest of the weekend. We're missing crew member Joe Mitchell who's home in MA working.

The weather report for Saturday & Sunday is still great so we should get all the racing in.

That's it from the track for now. Will try and keep you updated as the weekend progresses.

Jay

RAINING IN HOUSTON

Hey Everybody,

I'm out buying plywood to give us a solid surface for the pit area. Raining today and predicted for tomorrow and Houston can get muddy. Eddie and I stayed up late last night taking the car apart for between race maintenance. Ed put rods in this morning and Tommy's working on heads. Charlie's doing his thing with the clutch. Awning is up and Rich is getting the kitchen set up. We're looking forward to Arnold Gacita with Wynn's coming to the race with some guests.

Hope its not a rain out tomorrow. Will be in touch to fill you all in.

Have a great day!

Jay

WE'RE AT THE TRACK!

Hello Again,

We've found our home at Houston Raceway Park. Eddie and I have been setting up the pit area all afternoon & we're about to set up the awning. Should be fun, boy is it windy! Looking forward to the rest of the teams arrival and for the racing to get underway. Rain is predicted sometime between now and Friday, I wish it would hurry up and get here and then go away. Really, I hope it misses up completely.

That's all for tonight, will touch base again tomorrow.

Have a great night!

Jay

ANOTHER DAY AT SAN JACINTO

Good Day Friends!

Spoke at the San Jacinto College North campus today, we had a great day! They had a high school group in to hear me speak this afternoon as well. Then Glen, the body shop instructor drove us over to the racetrack so we could continue to chase the elusive UPS package we've been pursuing since Florida. Upon arriving at the track we found that UPS had locked up our package and gone home for the day at around 2:30. Fortunately, we were able to talk with someone on the phone and get them to come back to release the package so that we could take delivery. We went back to San Jacinto, got into the truck and now we're on our way to Texas Roadhouse in Pasadena, TX where we're displaying the racecar this evening.

Tomorrow we'll head to the track where we'll start to set up for the O'Reilly Spring Nationals, beginning Friday.

Thanks for reading our blog, will be in touch again tomorrow.

Have a great day!

Jay

IT'S MONDAY & WE'RE IN TEXAS

Hey everybody,

Had a great meal at Steve Baker's Friday evening. Thanks to Steve's wife Karen and daughter Missy. It was great to meet Missy's new husband Gary and their kids Blake & Delany.

UPS completely screwed up and the package we were waiting for wasn't getting delivered Saturday as expected. So we were off to Texas.

We landed in Texas late Saturday night, slept in on Sunday. Ed & I did laundry, had breakfast, washed the truck, & fueled up. Sunday evening we headed out to San Jacinto College Central in Pasadena, TX. I spoke at 10am today to an automotive group. Spoke again at noon time in their community center. Going to speak to another auto group this evening at 6pm. The local MATCO Tools rep Joe Andrews met us for our morning presentation. It was great to meet him. Thanks for coming out Joe.

David Norman runs an amazing program here. They're getting ready to break group on a huge new facility. We look forward to coming back again.

After tonights presentation, we'll load up the racecar and move over to the San Jacinto College North campus, where I'll speak tomorrow morning. Have a display at the Pasadena, TX Texas Roadhouse scheduled for tomorrow evening from 6-8pm.

Will arrive at the track on Wednesday and start to get ready to go racing again. Team arrives on Thursday.

Will touch base tomorrow. Thanks for checking in.

Jay

SPEAKING ENGAGEMENT TODAY

Hey Friends,

Eddie and I displayed the racecar at the Lake City, FL Texas Roadhouse restaurant on Wednesday evening. As always, great food & hospitality.

Today we spent the day at Walton Career Development Center in DeFuniak Springs, FL where our good friend and official Follow A Dream videographer Steve Baker of SB Video Productions got us hooked up to speak to about 400 students & staff members. Thanks Gary & Chopper for your amazing southern hospitality-we had a great time!

On our way to Steve Baker's for a home cooked meal tonight. Steve's wife Karen and daughter Missy have been cooking all day-can't wait. YUM!

Will hang at Steve's tomorrow morning waiting for a UPS package being delivered-valve keepers, and then we head West to Texas in preparation for next weekends O'Reilly Spring Nats.

Will touch base over the weekend as time permits.

Have a great weekend!

Jay

Sorry I Disappeared!!

Hi Everybody!

Sorry I've been out of touch but haven't had access to a computer, so I'll recap since our blog last Friday.

Saturday we had our 3rd qualifier & first round of eliminations. We ended up qualifing 8th and we prepared for first round of eliminiations. Marty did a great job getting a hole shot on Frank Schuster, and we won with a 5.72 over Frank's 5.71. We serviced the car saturday night and made some changes to prepare for our second round on Sunday morning. Woke up to a beautiful day and we were ready to go racing! After the warm up we realized we had broken two intake springs and in order to make the run we had to change all eight. Nick & Tommy went to work but, unfortunately we had run out of time to get them all replaced. This is the first time we had been plagued with breaking intake springs all weekend. We are making changes to run a different spring in Houston to rectify this problem.

We tested on Monday and found the changes Tommy had made for Sunday were definately going in the right direction. Our first pass was a 330 ft. shut off pass and we were very happy with the time slip. We went back and tried to hop the motor and clutch way up to see if the track could handle a very aggressive change. The track had heated up and we were too aggresive and shook the tires. The third pass, we backed it down a little bit and the track had gotten even hotter and we were still too aggressive-the car shook the tires again. Although this may not sound great, Tommy was very happy with what we learned.

It was great to be back in Gainesville, we had a bunch of visitors in the pits and it was good to see old and new friends.

Eddie and I loaded up the car and the pit area on Tuesday and headed to Lake City, Fl where we will display the car at the Texas Roadhouse restaurant there this evening from 5-7pm.

Right now its about 1pm and we're hanging out at a truck stop waiting for later this afternoon to roll around so that we can pull into the Texas Roadhouse.

Am planning a speaking event up near the Florida panhandle for Friday on our way out of the state-will fill you in tomorrow on the details.

Have a wonderful day!

Jay

Hey Everybody-

Sitting in the back of the tow vehicle on our way to the staging lanes, getting ready to make second pass of the day. Currently sitting in 6th after one round of qualifying earlier this morning. Had some problems with the computer during first run but got that straight with the help of Les Deavenport-Thanks Les! Car looked great after the first pass and the crew is doing a terrifc job, as always. Everybody is loving this warm weather.

Have seen alot of friends from the New England today. Had a visit from Barry Carrus and his group of students from the Dunnellon High School in Dunnellon, FL this afternoon. Had some time to introduce the kids to the crew and show them the funny car. They suprised us all with Dunnellon High School T-shirts...WOW...we had fun!

Getting some great feedback from folks at the track who've checked out the blog-thanks for the input guys!

Will try and fill you all in later on results of our second pass. Have a great evening!

Jay

READY TO GO RACING!

Hey Everybody,

We're in Gainesville, got the car out of the trailer, getting a new pair of Hoosiers on the car, putting some new intake rocker arms on the car, filling it up with fresh Valvoline and a new FRAM filter so we'll be ready for our first qualifying pass at 10:30 tomorrow morning. Most of the crew arrived this afternoon, Marty & Nick fly in later this evening.

Another beautiful sunny day- unfortunately, Terri's been hard at work on cold Cape Cod! I do really appreciate all that Terri does, we wouldn't be here without her.

We'll touch base again tomorrow and let you know how our runs went. Please forward feedback on the blog, anything we're missing, not telling you that you'd like to know-let us know and we'll try and get it out there for all you readers. We appreciate you stopping by and checking the blog.

Jay's positive thought for the day: It's great to be in America!

Post again tomorrow,

Jay

HOT, HOT, HOT IN SUNNY FLORIDA

Hello From Gainesville-

Arrived today at about 1 this afternoon. Got our pit spot, unload the racecar and took it over to body tech, all was good. Got back to the pit, set the awning up, unloaded the trailer, and getting ready to go racing on Friday. Boy, it's great to back at the track. And did I mention, HOT, HOT, HOT.....

Teams arrive tomorrow early afternoon. We'll be pretty busy once they get here. Eddie and I are visiting with some friends now having a cold one after a long trip.

Will blog again tomorrow.

Jay

Hey Everybody!

It's been a busy 24 hours since leaving the shop. Early this morning, around 1am, we were driving through a dirt parking lot at a truck stop and bottomed out the trailer on the crown of a paved road going through the dirt parking lot. After messing with it for an hour, it was time to get something to eat and go to bed. We decided to revisit the problem in the morning. We got up bright & early and in about an hour had the truck and trailer freed up-everything was much easier with a clear head and some daylight. We hit the highway once again.

Our next stop was in South Carolina, where we fueled up and put water in the truck and trailer. We had not been happy with the trailer brakes since we left the shop so we took a look at them and didn't find any major issues. Added some fluid, bled the system, repacked the trailer (having unloaded a bunch of stuff to get access to the brake system), fueled up again and we're trucking South headed for the Florida/Georgia line tonight. Looking forward to a good nights sleep.

It's a beautiful sunny day, t-shirt weather! Should be at the track by early tomorrow afternoon if all goes well.

That's all from the highways and byways of America, will touch base again tomorrow.

Jay

ON THE ROAD AGAIN......

Hey Everybody!

We left the shop at 11am today. Driving through rain, snow, clear skies, and now overcast. Going to hook up with Marty in the next little while to load his firesuit & all his driving gear so that he doesn't have to fly with it. After that we'll keep moving south and should be outside Washington, DC before we quit for the night. All is going well.....just the way we like it. Will touch base again tomorrow.

Have a great day!

Jay

SPRING HAS SPRUNG!!

Hey Everybody!

It's almost 48 hours before Eddie and I will jump in the rig and head to Florida, and the most amazing thing about that is the rig is loaded and ready to go! We're talking 48 hours before we're supposed to leave-not 48 minutes before, not 48 hours late, but....48 hours EARLY. It's a miracle!! Hope this is a trend of things to come. I still can't believe it myself.

The excitement of getting back to the racetrack is slowly setting in and we're all excited to get the season under way.

It's been a crazy off-season but here we go. Tommy's been going over things throughout the winter, Charlie's been spending time with the clutch (we don't always ask what he's up to with that clutch cause that could be too scary)!

The shop is organized (kinda), the trailers ready to go with lots of extra room, don't know what I've forgotten but will surely figure that out after we're on the road.

Oh my God-we're leaving tomorrow, I was thinking it was Saturday. For you faithful readers, I thank you for always visiting the blog. I will try and blog daily as we hit the road for the first big trip of the year. If you're at the races, come by the pits and say hi.

Oh ya, I got my new eyes-still can't see through them but everyone says they look great.

Always remember to keep an eye on it & have a great day!

Jay