Well lets see now. Where to begin. Lets try 2006. After a rather devastating engine failure in 2005, brought on by not paying attention to what is going on with the engine I put it all back together again. For some reason I just can't understand (**** the money ****) my heart just wasn't into it anymore. Long about July of 2006 I took the car to Spokane Raceway Park and made a shake down run on the new engine. Found some metal in the filter and said the hell with it and took it home. Only made a half track run and spun the tires most of that.

After taking it home and letting it set for a while I tracked the problem down to new valve springs rubbing slightly on the mag valve covers. Unfortunately what little of the fun light that had sparked to life had died. I remember one time asking Dan MaGlone why he was quitting and he told me "When I first started racing the funny car I would sit in the car and look to the finish line and try to guess how quick I was gonna go. When I decided to stop racing I was looking at the other end of the track trying to figure out how much the run was gonna cost me." I remember that well and it was somewhat fitting to how I felt.

Long about this time work reared its ugly head in the flavor of 6 and 7 days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day for over 2 1/2 years. Didn't leave much time to race or even think about it. The strange thing is I didn't really miss it at the time or so I thought. During this time I bought a really nice 40 foot gooseneck trailer. So far it hasn't left the property but it will soon enough. It was a sad day when Scott Kalitta died during a race. Belated as it is my sincerest sympathys go out to his family. What is almost as sad is the way NHRA handled the backlash. Many different options were open to them and the worst in my opinion was to shorten the track to 1000 feet. A simple solution would have been to take fuel pump volume away from the car. It would have slowed them down but to a safer and more manageable level. But then that is only my opinion and that of quite a few people I know.

Ok now back to reality or fantasy depending on how you look at it. I started to get an itch, if you know what I mean. One that I just couldn't scratch. I needed to get back to racing. It was funny how it just snuck up on me. I would talk to people and bench race like in the past and it just seemed right. I tried Sanity on for 3 years and it just didn't fit. I'm back and I wanna race!

So far we (me and the crew) went through the car from front to back. New valves in the heads along with springs, keeper and retainers. The bottom end is all new . Everything is recerted and the clutch is pretty much all new since a wallet thinning trip to Crower but it looked pretty. We rolled it and started it . Wow that felt good. It surprised me how loud it was.

So far I'm booked into Woodburn for 3 races this year. I'm still in the process of trying to finish the toterhome I'm building so I have something to tow the trailer with. Well thats about it for now. I could continue to ramble but heck I'm the only one reading it anyways so I can ramble in my head and save the typing.