In a Nut Shell . . .

Loudon

I was excited to go to Loudon for several reasons. I felt the No. 17 team could get back on track this race and I was heading back to my old stomping grounds where I grew up.

We left Charlotte and headed to New Hampshire on Thursday afternoon. We did not have to be at the track until Friday morning, so after we got to the hotel and settled I drove up to Rumney, N.H. to visit with my grandmother. Although I had seen her last October, I had not been back in New Hampshire since the race last year. We had a real nice visit.

On Friday it was to the track for tech and practice. It took a while to get the 17 dialed in, but once we got the right adjustments under it we were running good and ready for qualifying.

Friday night I was able to take some time and have dinner with some friends . . . the Douville’s. This is where I got my mechanical start and we always try to see each other when I am up. (There is a link to Douville Racing on my home page – be sure to check it out). We had a good time chit-chatting and catching up.

Saturday was busy with both qualifying and the race on the schedule.

Back home Chase had his first soccer game. He made a goal and had an assist. I guess they don’t keep score because when I asked Paula who won she said she really didn’t know. At this age it is hard to keep them going in the right direction, so I guess keeping score really doesn’t matter. I was very proud of Chase, he was so excited! I just hate I had to miss the game. (Look for pictures in the photo gallery).

Back at the track we qualified well and the attitude of the team was upbeat heading into the race. The truck ran good and we were in the top 5 for most of the day until the transmission started having problems. We went behind the wall to make repairs but ended up changing the entire transmission. When we returned to the track we were only 29 laps down . . . not to bad for the work we did.

Well most of you know how the race ended. It’s hard to end it that way when we had a good truck to begin with.

We had to work on Sunday to get things turned around in time for the truck to get to Vegas. We are running Nikki (Truck 9) in Vegas, so look for good things.

Oh . . . and by the way, Jo Dudek was a Heisman Trophy candidate from Plymouth State College (Plymouth is my home town), a division 3III school.