Author: bwilber

First things first. Aloha from Kauai. Kapaa town, to be precise, on the east side of the island.

It’s Friday, I know, but there were a few contributing factors to my one-day delay with this blog. The most pressing were the the many details surrounding “just being here” and enjoying the R&R and the place itself. You have to stop and smell the sea breeze. It’s a very special place, but only if you treat it as such and embrace the island.

It’s also August 27th, and that’s a significant date in Wilber family history. More on that later. This particular piece of history has lasted for 70 years now. It can wait a few more paragraphs.

Today is my fourth day on the island, although it doesn’t seem like that. I flew all day on Tuesday and only the good graces of multiple time zones allowed me to have some time to see my sister Mary and her hubby Lonnie for a bit after they picked me up at the airport. I spent that night in a beautiful room at the Sheraton, basically across the street from the condo, overlooking the ocean and the pool. Ahhh… I could feel the relaxation easing its way into my psyche and my body. And I got that wonderful room thanks to my incredible wife, who has accumulated stacks of loyalty points with various hotel brands, thanks to her busy pre-Covid travel schedule. Back in “those days” she was a true road warrior, racking up hotel perks by the bushel. One of those perks got me that beautiful room, which came complete with the sound of the Pacific crashing ashore below my balcony. There’s nothing quite like the sound of waves breaking on the beach.

Mary and Lonnie were flying out on Wednesday, heading to St. Louis to see daughter Kimberly and her husband Chris, before they will then head down to Florida to see more kids and grandkids, but their flight didn’t leave until late Wednesday night, so we had a full day together.

One of the many benefits of being Mary Smith’s little brother (and Lonnie’s brother-in-law) is having a pair of tour guides who seem to know everyone while they also have personal experience regarding just about any place you might stop.

Kapaa has changed a little since the onset of Covid. Some restaurants and bars didn’t make it, but others have sprung up to fill much of the void. It’s just a little different, that’s all. But it’s still amazing, and the subtle shift has given Mary and Lonnie the chance to find new places to rave about. Jimmy’s Grill is one of those places.

It’s the last business in town as you head north toward Princeville or Hanalei. It’s unassuming and comfortable, terms that pretty much describe most establishments on Kauai, and it’s right next to the beach. Yes, roosters and chickens will walk by at any time to check out what you’re doing. It was a great place to stop for a libation and conversation. Mary and I can tell some stories, trust me.

We cruised around, relaxed some more at the condo, and eventually they finished packing for their long trip. Then it was time to head over to The Oasis to see Aldrine Guerrero create magic with his ukulele. He usually plays on Wednesday nights at 5:00, and you had better be there by 4:00 if you want to actually see him. We got there at 4:00. Except Aldrine had to cancel the show at the last minute. Despite being out in the middle of the ocean, Covid is very much a thing in Hawaii just as it is on the mainland, and everyone plays it cautiously when even a sniffle or a cough comes calling. Fortunately, everyone on Kauai is masked up indoors, so there’s that, but Aldrine didn’t want to risk it.

When we left The Oasis, Mary and Lonnie hatched a plan to get the car loaded and then take dinner to their friend Bob, who is more typically called Dr. Bob because he is indeed a doctor. He’s also a wonderful guy. After much discussion, it was decided we’d stop by another new food source in Kapaa, to pick up some Thai food and take that to Bob’s amazing house “up the hill” and basically in the jungle.

When we got there, Dr. Bob had the table set. We opened the to-go boxes and each grabbed a plate, instantly forming an impromptu buffet line of delicious Thai magic. I’m not a Thai aficionado, and have rarely ever gone down that culinary road, but I’m a fan now! My gosh, it was great and I got to bring home the leftovers. Lunch yesterday was equally spectacular.

After much fun and multiple plates full of Thai goodness, we bid Dr. Bob adieu and I took Mary and Lonnie to the airport. They had a long night and morning ahead of them. Lihue to Phoenix, then Phoenix to St. Louis. All told, with the layover built in, it was about the same duration as my trip west. Darn close to 12 hours.

So, yesterday was my first real day here, with no plans and no requirements. Just island time.

I took a nice long walk along the shore (Kauai is great for amateur walkers who like the beach and the ocean but prefer paved trails) and racked up a couple of miles. I’ll build it up from that. Frankly, I still haven’t bounced all the way back from my hospital/illness adventure and one of the ways that’s evident is in my lack of energy. I need the walks! By the time I leave here, I’ll be cranking out the miles.

Once I got back, it was time to do something I have never before done in all my trips over here to cat-sit and condo-sit for Mary and Lonnie. I went to the pool.

I know that sounds absurd, and I can’t quite explain it, but despite the fact the condo is literally just steps from a sparkling swimming pool, I just never did that. Often it was simply a matter of the place being too crowded, but that’s probably a weak excuse. I don’t know. Maybe I was just being antisocial. Yesterday, I broke that long streak. And you know what? I grabbed some free Vitamin D from the sun, and every time I got a little warmish I’d take a brief dip in the cool water. Maybe it helped that I was the only one there. I’ll be out there again today, and much like the walking theory I’ll build myself up to lengthier stays poolside. No sunburn from overdoing it for me, but it will be nice to get a little color and feel the poolside vibe.

Here at the condo, my roomies Maxie and Biscuit are great. Maxie is a VERY outgoing cat. He’s never far away and always interested in having is head and ears rubbed. Biscuit is more reserved, and it takes him a while to warm up to strangers. Even me. I mean, I was here just a couple of years ago, right? You’d think he would remember me. But, it’s all good. They’re great kitties and fun to be around.

My sleep patterns are evening out, and that’s a good thing. I’m already going to bed at a somewhat normal time, and waking up at 6:00 isn’t an altogether awful problem. More time for walks, dips in the pool, and good meals. I walked up to Lava Lava Beach Club last night, and had their burger for dinner. It was great, and the red onion set it off in a very stout way. Let’s just say it’s a good thing everyone on Kauai is masked up. Those masks served a dual purpose for me last night. Health and politeness. I’m sure my onion breath was pretty killer.

So, what about August 27th? What’s with that? If you follow me on Facebook and have been there today, you probably know the answer.

On this date, 70 long years ago, Del Wilber stepped to the plate for the Philadelphia Phillies as they played the Cincinnati Reds. He hit a home run on the first swing he took. 1-0 Phillies. A few innings later, he came up again to face the same pitcher, Ken Raffensberger. He again took one swing. He again hit a solo home run. 2-0 Phillies on the two swings the back-up catcher had taken to that point.

Two innings later, Big Del strode to the plate again and dug in. Would Raffensberger throw him another strike or would he pitch around him to keep the score 2-0? He threw Dad another strike. The big guy took his third swing of the day. He hit his third home run.

Three at-bats. Three swings. Three solo home runs. Three runs batted in and three runs scored. Final score, Del Wilber 3 and the Reds zero.

Yes, I have the bat. It hangs in my office. He decorated it after the game with the line-score, and his stats.

Why did Raffensberger throw him another strike after he’d already clubbed two homers off him?

“He didn’t think I could do it again,” Dad would always say when asked about it. “Nobody did.”

No one had done that before him. No one has done it since. Three at-bats, three swings, three solo home runs to account for all the scoring in the game. It was perfect.

Baseball did a lot for my dad. The game kept him employed from the end of World War II until he retired in his 70s. He played, coached, managed, and scouted. He played parts of nine years in the big leagues. He was mostly a back-up catcher, but back then there were only eight teams in each league, so maybe 32 or 33 catchers in all of the big leagues. Think of that today. There are probably around 70 catchers on active Major League rosters on any given day. Even the back-up guys make good money.

The most my dad ever made was around $9,600 a year. He made much less as a coach or scout. He loved the game and all of the other man who were there with him. Teammates named Ted and Stan and men on the other teams named Jackie, Yogi, and Joltin’ Joe. That’s why he played. He poured his life into the game.

He played in 299 Major League games. His career batting average was .242, and he drove in 115 runs. Pretty damn good.

Throughout his time, hit 19 home runs in the bigs. Three of them came on one day. This day. 70 years ago.

The five biggest and most important “home runs” he ever hit, however, were named Del Jr., Rick, Cindy, Mary, and Bob. It was a true gift for all of us to have him as our father.

And those three home runs. Can’t forget about them. 70 years ago today.

As for today’s headline, that was another favorite line my dad wold impart to me as so-called baseball advice. “Hey, swing hard in case you actually hit it.” Thanks Skip. I tried.

Time for a walk. Gosh, where should I go today? It doesn’t matter. The ocean will be there, and the breeze will be delicious. Life on Kauai is good. All good.

As always, if you checked this day-late installment out and kinda sorta maybe liked it, this guy out in the middle of the Pacific would be thrilled if you clicked on the “LIKE” button at the bottom.

See you next week. Aloha!

 

 

 

It’s Thursday, August 19. What’s on the horizon?

Well, we have tickets to the St. Paul Saints baseball game on Saturday night, with our friends the Blakes. The Saints have been around for many years as an independent professional minor league team, playing at the Double-A level in a fully independent league, but they are now the Triple-A minor league affiliate of the Minnesota Twins, so that has changed things.

In prior years, the Saints were made up of guys who were still holding tight to the dream of “making it” in baseball, or who had been close and still wanted to take that last step, and even some guys who had made it to “the show” but didn’t stick and were looking to impress one more big league team. The franchise was known for putting fun before the game, although the players always took it seriously. The games were full of wacky promotions and funny schtick, and the club was very popular, especially after they moved into their amazing new ballpark in downtown St. Paul, CHS Field. It’s a minor league marvel and the Saints regularly fill it to its 8,500-fan capacity.

When the Twins broached the subject of the Saints becoming their Triple-A team beginning this season, there were plenty of reasons to do it and a few things to worry about. The Saints would have the very best of the Twins’ organization on the field and in terms of staff and support, with a few established big leaguers often in uniform if they were rehabbing from injury. They’d also be a 20-minute drive from Target Field, meaning guys could get called up to the big leagues and be there almost instantly. Triple-A teams are often in far-off places, and it usually would entail multiple flights with connections just to get a player to the bigs, or in reverse. The Saints are now the Triple-A team that is in the closest proximity to their big club. Call a player up at 4:00, and he can be in the starting line up for the Twins at 7:00.

But…  There were a few big nagging questions. Would the games have to be more buttoned down and “just baseball” if they became an affiliate instead of an independent team? Would the Twins give them that leeway? After some discussions, it was decided the move would be best for all. The Twins would let the Saints put on the same sort of fun and wacky events they’d always been known for, and the Saints would feature a whole new level of talent. It has worked well for everyone involved, and I’m really jazzed to see it all in action on Saturday, when they take on the Iowa Cubs.

Note about the Iowa Cubs. I don’t have the official stats in front of me, but they must be one of the franchises with the longest-running Triple-A affiliation in baseball. If not, they have to be close. They have been the Triple-A team for the Cubs since 1981 and have been in existence since 1969. They are also one of the few minor league teams that have not adopted their own nickname, instead using the name of their big league affiliate.

In 1971 and ’72, I spent the summers with my dad and his Denver Bears Triple-A team. I was a batboy and in seventh heaven (wherever and whatever that is – I assume it’s right between sixth heaven and eighth heaven.)

The Iowa team (I think they were the Iowa Oaks then? Maybe the Triple-A team for Oakland) was playing in the same stadium in Des Moines and part of the same American Association with the aforementioned Denver Bears. I went on the road trips with the team, so I have been the batboy in Des Moines, for the opposition. That was a long time ago. I was 15 in ’71.

We aim to have a great time at the Saints game. Photos will follow at some date.

By the way, in case you didn’t know these facts about our St. Paul Saints. 1) The primary owner of the team is Mike Veeck. Mike is the son of one of the greatest and most legendary Major League owners of all time, Bill Veeck. Zany and creative promotions run in Mike’s DNA, thanks to his late father. 2) One of his co-owners is Bill Murray, who has been known to hawk game programs outside the gate before games, whenever he’s in town.

And speaking of “some date” when photos will follow, there is a huge horizon on the horizon for me (get it?)

On Tuesday, I have a 9:00 am flight to Seattle out of MSP. It will be my first flight for about a year and a half, so I’m expecting lots of new experiences and procedures. Probably some stress, as well. I’ll get there early.

I’ll make a connection in Seattle, and then fly nonstop to Lihue, the biggest town on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, and the location of the island’s international airport.

My sister Mary and her husband Lonnie will pick me up, and the next day I will drop them off at the same airport so they can fly to the mainland to spend nearly a month seeing many of their kids and grandkids. I will spend the same amount of time seeing the cats Maxie and Biscuit, while also going for long walks on the beachside trails, sitting by the pool, dipping my toes in the Pacific, and eating as well as I can.

I won’t return until September 20, so it will be nearly a month for me on the island. That will be a new record for this guy, but right now I’m guessing the laptop will probably be my closest companion when I am there.

Why? Because my publisher and I are starting the process of editing, formatting, and finalizing just how my book “How Far?” is going to look and read. It can be a process that can range from painstaking and slow, to rip-roaring and quick. Every day is a new day, and we still have things like the cover, the interior look, and the layout to work on even after we have all the words in the right order. There’s much to do, and I’ll be four hours earlier than my publisher so we’ll have to adapt to the time zones. Four hours isn’t much, in the big scheme of things, and being earlier is typically better than being later, so it should work out just fine.

One errand I’ll have to run is a trip up to the beachside village of Poipu, where there’s a nice upscale shopping area. In that shopping area, I hope there is still a fabulous jewelry boutique, because that’s where Barbara and her sister Kitty picked out my custom-made titanium wedding band (to replace my original gold one that had to be cut off) with crushed black pearl inlays. They found the store and were mesmerized by the selection, so they brought me back up there to see what spoke to me. I locked eyes on this black pearl beauty at once, and it was mine. Guess what? No, I didn’t lose it but that is much more possible now. I’ve lost about 10 pounds since my illness and hospital stay, and some of that is in my fingers, apparently. The titanium ring now slides off far too easily, and yesterday I actually found it in my towel after taking a shower. I never felt it slip off.

So, I’ll head to Poipu and hope the same woman is still running her jewelry shop. I’ll see if we can get this ring resized, but Barbara’s brilliant advice is for me to just pick out another new ring. Maybe slightly different than this one, in terms of the look of it. If it is fitted for my new weight and finger size, it can be my current ring and the titanium and black pearl ring can be my fallback if I gain weight again. I’m hoping to stay on this new diet regimen and avoid that rebound, but we’ll see. This will all be a moot point if COVID put the woman out of business. I’m worried about that, because she had a really cool shop and was incredibly nice. Also trustworthy, but that shouldn’t surprise me when it comes to Kauai residents. Back then, we paid her up front for the ring we picked out, and headed back to Minnesota. About a month later, the new ring showed up in the mail. There was never a doubt.

So, there will be a lot to do for nearly a month over there. Also nearly nothing to do. Both are great options. There will be walks, talks, and relaxation. There will be work on the book, and plenty of other stuff to write about. There will be Maxie and Biscuit, and as their surrogate human I’ll be loving on them, feeding them, rubbing them when they let me, and keeping their litter clean.

And there is the Pacific Ocean. It surrounds Kawaii like the most beautiful lei in the world. It’s a huge horizon. It circles the island and is always there.

Yes. I’m extremely fortunate to live in a family with a near-twin sibling who lives there and needs my help to get back over here from time to time. That time has been three years now, thanks to COVID. She needs to see her kids and their kids. I’m on-deck and ready to pinch hit.

I’ll do my best to blog from Kauai. See you then. And if you liked this blog installment and hope to read more from me while I’m on the Garden Isle, just click on the “Like” button at the bottom. If I get enough “likes” Maxie might actually sleep with me one night. We can only hope.

Aloha!

Bob Wilber, heading across the water soon.

 

It’s continued to be a crazy span of time here, in terms of doctor visits and “invasive” tests, but I felt the need to get something written today. I’ve discussed the hospital stuff enough, but did want to tie up one of the details that was still to happen the last time I was here.

I mentioned that I’d been discharged from the hospital and things were going well, and I also mentioned I had a few “other tests” to take care of in the near future. We did the first of those on Monday this week.

I won’t get too graphic (although many of you have experienced this just like I have) but it all went well. Since the doctors are focused on my digestive system, you might guess that a certain procedure would be ordered. It rhymes with “colonoscopy” (wait, did I type that out loud?) and I’ve had it done before. It’s really not that bad, and anyone over 50 should start the regular rotation. If they catch anything that early, it will likely save your life. Don’t let one day of discomfort talk you out of it.

This time, as opposed to my previous experiences, they basically put me completely under instead of just “heavily sedated” and I much preferred that. All I remember is the nurse anesthetist pushing the plunger on the syringe that held the fun stuff, and then hearing her say “Have a nice nap!” A second later, I heard someone saying my name and thought, “Oh, they must be ready to start the procedure now.” That was not true. They were done and I was back in my recovery room. Badda Boom, Badda Bing. All done. And I passed with flying colors, so that’s good. I’ll see those fine folks again in another five years.

In general, I feel really good. Still tired a lot, and still “officially resting” as much as I can, but no complaints and no pains whatsoever. Science and medicine are wonderful things, as are professional medical people who take such care. I thank them all.

For the blog, this is definitely one of those “I have no idea what to write about” versions, but as I started to write the headline I had the idea. It’s mindless and probably a bit repetitive, if we go back over 16 or so years of blog writing, but it’s all important stuff to me and it’s my blog, so… Here I go.

The topic is “What are some of the best and worst moments of your career in and around sports?” I can handle this. Here they are in no particular order, although it would be understood that the first ones to pop into my head are probably the most important.

We’ll start with…

Best Moments in Drag Racing

1. Winning the Skoal Showdown and the Mac Tools US Nationals all on the same weekend in Indy (2005 was the year) for a place in NHRA history and a payday of nearly a quarter-million dollars. The best part was just doing it. I’ve never felt emotion like that before or since. It was unbelievable. The bonus checks Del Worsham included in our pay two weeks later just echoed the thoughts of “team” and class.

2. Finishing second in points in the Funny Car class in 2004. We were never really in the fight for the championship, but had also never finished as high as second during the CSK era with Del. It had been a tight battle between us and Gary Scelzi to see who would finish No. 2, and it wasn’t decided until the semifinals in Pomona, when Gary lost and we won our race as the next pair. This was all about pride. We were a tight-knit group and the feeling of “team” and camaraderie was enormous.

3. Selfishly speaking, winning the “PR Rep of the Year” award back in Winston’s final year as tour sponsor was something I still can’t fathom. When the Winston rep started to introduce the winner, I was just looking around the room at the restaurant, admiring all my PR colleagues, thinking “Boy, they really like what this person has done. Who is it?” Then I heard my name. For perhaps the only time in my life I was speechless. All I could say was “Thank you.”

4. Wrapping up my PR career in Pomona at the end of 2015, in order to write my book “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts.” I’d had the incredible experience of working for Tim Wilkerson and representing Levi, Ray, & Shoup for seven full seasons, and there was no better way to call it a career than after that great experience. And then NHRA stopped qualifying for no reason. OK, there was a reason. Alan Reinhart began to let the crowd know about my career, my retirement, and my book, over the Pomona P.A. system. I think some dust got in my eyes. That was a VERY special moment.

Worst Moments in Drag Racing

1. Watching Del careen off the end of the track in Pomona, through the sand trap, into the net, and over the net, while the CSK Funny Car did a sickening somersault high in the air before somehow landing on its four wheels. I can still see it. I can still feel it. I can still remember that agonizingly slow ride in a golf cart trying to get to the top end to see if he was OK. And I can still see him sitting in the ambulance when I got there, looking at me with foggy eyes, saying “Hey Bob. My butt really hurts.” After that horrible crash, all he really had was a broken tailbone.

2. A huge body-shattering engine explosion for Tim, as he neared the finish line in Atlanta. Parts, pieces, and fire flying everywhere. I called Barbara on the verge of tears, even though I knew Tim was OK by then. It still got me to the core, and all I could say was “I don’t know if I can keep doing this. I don’t want to see this anymore.” That moment was the first seed of thought about retiring. I really didn’t want to see that stuff anymore.

3. Watching Daniel Wilkerson pull away from Ron Capps in Memphis, clearly on his way to his first round-win as a pro. And then the rear wheels came off and he T-Boned the left retaining wall at full speed, head on. There was, in my mind, no way he was OK. I doubted he was conscious. I feared for much worse than that. He was OK, miraculously, but just like Del’s deal I never want to see anyone go through that again, teammate and friend or not.

Best Moments in Baseball

1. Off the field, the best moment has to be signing my first professional contract, in the sun-splashed living room of the house I grew up in, on Woodleaf Court in Kirkwood, Mo. I was shaking a little. I was staring at it and not absorbing it. Maybe it was fake? Couldn’t be. I mean, there was also a nice note from the head of the Detroit Tigers minor league system, welcoming me to the organization. I needed to be in Bristol two days later. I still have my copy of the contract. As I wrote in my book, “It was a contract to a dream.” If we still had an “enlarge” function these days with the blog, you could blow this up and see my name at the top, and at the very bottom my salary. It was $500 a month. It felt like a million bucks.

2. On the field, it’s a three way tie and all three were home runs. One was a “no-doubter” I could drop my bat and watch, the other two were, I thought, deep fly balls. Magically, both went out in the deepest part of the parks I hit them in, and both probably went as far or farther than the “no doubt” bomb, which was hit at the University of Maryland when my Fairfax semipro team beat the Korean Olympic team. It was, indeed, a bomb. I knew, and the crowd knew, it was gone the moment I hit it. The other two were just as memorable, although I was surprised to see the result as I rounded first-base. The first was in the championship game of the NCAA Regional, against Northern Kentucky, and it earned us a spot in the NCAA Div. II World Series for the second straight year. It cleared the 387-foot sign with air to spare and my mom was in attendance at SIUE. The other was a monster I somehow hit over the 405 mark in dead center, when the Sauget Wizards beat the USA National Team at their stadium in Millington, Tenn. Both of those homers still seem impossible, but I still have the balls and the box scores. I guess it really happened.

3. Wearing an Oakland A’s uniform and pitching in the bullpen in Kansas City before the A’s played the Royals. That, as we like to say, was surreal. Somehow I was in the bullpen throwing to catcher Mike Heath as pitching coach Lee Stange looked on. I was wearing Mike Norris’s uni, with Rick Langford’s spikes and glove. And it all went like magic. Oddly, I wasn’t even nervous. Afterward, I could hardly talk fast enough.

Best Moments in Indoor Soccer

1. Getting hired as the first front-office employee for the expansion St. Louis Storm, only a few months before the MISL season was set to begin. Working endless hours selling sponsorships and tickets. Leading my team of young go-getters to make it all happen. And then walking out into the historic old St. Louis Arena to see 14,000 fans in the stands for that first game. Not just a game. Our first game ever, and we led the league in attendance. That was a huge accomplishment. We worked our butts off to do that. I’m not often overly proud of myself, but I was that night and I was even more proud of my young staff. We overcame so much to make that happen.

2. Similarly, the home opener for the Kansas City Attack, when I was the new general manager for that team. We drew about 8,600 for that game, at Kemper Arena, but that was a far cry from the 1,500 tickets sold per game they’d averaged the year before. Our owner was all smiles. So was I. I was just as proud of that as I was of our first game in St. Louis. In KC, we had a much larger mountain to climb after the franchise had experienced a really bad season the year before I arrived.

Worst Moments in Indoor Soccer

1. There’s really only one. My short stint as the GM of the Indianapolis Twisters. From the moment I walked in the door at mid-season, hired to “save the day” for the franchise, until the owner surprised everyone (myself included) by folding the franchise just weeks later, at a press conference that was supposed to be about the Indianapolis Ice hockey team buying our team and joining forces with us. The whole thing was a mess, and with it being mid-season I really couldn’t fix it. It was pretty awful. When your paychecks bounce, that’s pretty awful.

Best Moments in Sports Marketing

1. I did some amazing things and went to some incredible places in my 3+ years at my brother Del’s agency. But, it was a small deal that I came up with on a whim that takes this cake. Black & Decker was one of our clients and we were beating the usual bushes to get them a few sponsorships that would help promote and sell the latest version of the Dustbuster they had just introduced. I thought I’d be laughed out of the meeting when I said, “Why don’t we get some Major League and minor league teams to use the new Dustbuster to clean off home plate during the seventh inning stretch?”  As I prepared to be laughed at, everyone loved it. In the end, the teams loved it too and we landed a full sidebar article, complete with photo of the Oakland A’s batboy cleaning home plate with said Dustbuster, in Sports Illustrated. That’s what you call a win.

2. Travel in general. I went to Italy twice for our client the International Baseball Association, and went to Havana, Cuba as well, to attend the annual international meeting of the IBA. Italy was amazing. Havana was other-worldly. I still have a few photos of me in the city, looking a little bewildered that I’m actually there.

3. Standing at the 50-yard line at the Louisiana Super Dome after the announcement that we had successfully negotiated the Sugar Bowl title sponsorship with USF&G Insurance. It was ground breaking, and although I had only a peripheral role in hammering out the deal, it put DelWilber+Associates on a totally different map, and there I was with my brother looking around from the 50 as the media went crazy. That’s when he looked down at my feet and said, “OK, now you need to buy a new pair of shoes.” I hadn’t noticed I’d worn holes in my black wing-tips.

Worst Moments in Sports Marketing

1. Like the indoor soccer worst moment, there is only one here and it too involves the MISL and the indoor game. Our client at DelWilber+Associates was M&M Mars and their 3 Musketeers brand. We did an exhaustive study on what sport would be the best and most efficient fit for them to rejuvenate the brand, hitting the right demographic for the right price. After weeks of votes and research, the MISL and indoor soccer came out on top. I hustled to put the whole thing together, dreaming up league-wide promotions and working with the MISL staff in New York. Then, we took the two M&M Mars executives out to L.A. for the MISL All-Star game at The Forum. Everything was going great, and I was thrilled to be working on the program. And then, at the All-Star Game, the New York Express franchise folded. Two weeks later, we got the bad news from M&M Mars. They had changed their minds. The whole thing blew up. Thanks a lot, New York Express…

So that’s how you write a blog when you have nothing to start with. And yes, most of this is in “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” but I assume some of you haven’t read it (yet!) or if you did it was a while ago and you might enjoy reading these highlights and lowlights again.

As for me, I’m still scheduled to head to Kauai on the 24th of the month, and I’ll be there almost a month. Because I’m a great brother. I’ll have my laptop and will be sure to include many photos of the Pacific Ocean, the village of Kapaa, and other places on the Garden Isle.

Until then, if you liked any of this (even the Indianapolis Twisters part) please click that “Like” button at the bottom. I smile when I see those likes…

See you next week with more nonsense.

Bob Wilber, at your service and considering this blog to be the Best Moment in Blog Writing. For me, at least.

The last time I wrote a blog here, earlier in the month, much of it was about finishing the new book and how lousy I felt as I neared and crossed the finish line. Stomach problems, back problems, exhaustion, you name it. I thought I was over all that once I put the entire book together and shared it with my publisher.

Little did I know…

I did feel quite a bit better for the next week or two, but I clearly wasn’t myself and there always seemed to be something bothering me. Whether it was pesky and small or a “crash in bed and don’t get up” sort of thing, I was just not all there and often in a lot of pain. Something was definitely not right, and Barbara saw that.

We had a couple of talks, during which she said, “You’re always the life of the party. You’re always so outgoing and funny. You haven’t been that way in a long time.”

I tried to pass it off, just telling her I was tired, but mostly that was just a personal defense mechanism. “Keep it to yourself. It will all get better. Don’t worry about it” was my mantra. I’m usually that way. I’m not the guy who sneezes once and rushes off to the Urgent Care center. I rarely go to the doctor. I just keep pushing and things usually work out OK.

Then, I started running a low-grade fever. I remember waking up one morning and knowing things weren’t quite right. My head was foggy, my lips were tingling, and I ached all over. We have a battery operated thermometer, which I had to dig out of the recesses of a bathroom drawer because it doesn’t get used that often, and it read 99.9 degrees. I figured it was just an aberration and would go away. Nothing to see here. Move along please.

That thermometer got a work out for the next five days, and sometimes it would back off. Normal for me is pretty low, like 97.7 or 98 at the most. I’d get down to 98.8 or so for an hour, then back up to 99 or even 100. It was all what you’d call “low grade fever” but it wasn’t normal for me. I kept hoping it would all just get better by itself.

When, on the fifth day, it hit 101, even I couldn’t ignore it any longer. Barbara got me in to see a doctor at our local health center Urgent Care.

Dr. Aziz was great. He listened, he nodded, and he asked question after question. The first action he took was to test me for COVID. It came back negative the next day. He said, “The good news is you’re negative. The bad news is that means you have some sort of infection somewhere, so we have to find it.”

They set up a CT scan for the next day. The cool thing was it was at a medical facility down in the suburb of Eagan, on the same property as the Vikings’ massive training and practice facility. I asked Barbara, “Do you think after the scan I should walk over there and see if they need me to try out for punter?”

The scan wasn’t bad. The procedure itself only takes a few minutes and all you do is lie there, but the hard part is the prep. You need to drink three Solo cups full of water mixed with a “contrasting agent” which allows them to see more on the scan. That’s a lot of water in 30 minutes. I’ll never look at red Solo cups quite the same way…

Two days later, I was resting on the couch, still sporting a 99.9 or something like that, when I got a phone call from my doctor’s office. It was another doctor within the same practice. She had a message to deliver. It was a blunt one.

She said, “We can’t rule much out from the scan, and we can’t pinpoint it either, but it’s clear you have an infection and it’s really important we get to the bottom of that as fast as we can. We can’t let that get into your blood stream.”

She didn’t say it, but I already knew it. An infection in your blood stream is a very bad thing. Often, it’s a “get your affairs in order” type of thing. Very dangerous.

Then she said, “So, I need you to go to the ER at United Hospital in downtown St. Paul. We don’t want you to go to Woodwinds for this.”

Woodwinds is our local Woodbury hospital. I had my knee operation there a few years ago, and it’s a really nice place just a couple of miles from home. One might classify it as a “country club hospital.”

The doc said, “They don’t have the expertise or the staff for this, so get to United.”

I said, “Like, as early as tomorrow?”

She said, “No. Right now. Pack a small bag and go. I’m sure they’ll admit you so be prepared for that.”

That will make a chill run down your spine. It still does, just writing about it now. I was hanging around figuring all this would go away and be fine, and all of a sudden I had to drop everything, tell Barb the whole story, and have her drop what she was doing to take me to the hospital. It was a blur. And it was a scary blur, for sure.

The hardest part was waiting at the ER. It’s a huge hospital, and the ER has a triage function they need to use to see the critical patients first. Lots of ambulances arriving. Lots of announcements to the staff telling them what was coming. We checked in and then sat and waited. United is networked with our local Urgent Care facility, so they already had all my files and reports. After about an hour, they called my name.

We went to an exam room down the hall, and I answered a lot of questions. My blood pressure was OK, just a little high from all the stress, but my temp was 100.5 by then. Still “low grade” but also a real temp being caused by some real thing.

They admitted me, but before they took me up to my room they did something really fun. They inserted a rubber tube in my nose and snaked it down the back of my throat all the way into my stomach. I can say with complete certainty that such a thing would be on the list of procedures anyone would like to avoid, if possible. Not fun at all.

So, we got to my room and settled in. And thus began the endless parade of doctors, nurses, assistants, specialists, and people whose sole purpose was to stick yet another needle in me and draw more blood. That seemed to happen nonstop. I was thinking I might run out of blood. The insides of my elbows and forearms are still pockmarked with all the bruises and injection spots.

They hooked up the nose tube to a suction device, and began the slow process of draining all the fluid out of my stomach. If there was an ulcer in there, they wanted an unobstructed look at it. They also started hanging multiple IV drips of various antibiotics. Since they didn’t know where or what the infection was, they figured they’d shoot wide and cover all the options. I had two major needles in my right arm where the IV lines could be attached and swapped out every few hours.

I also had an endless course of saline solution, just to keep me hydrated because from that point forward I would not eat anything and couldn’t take so much as a sip of water. They wouldn’t even approve ice chips, and that was probably a good thing. Those only would’ve made me crave water even more.

The good news included the fact my BP was fine, I had no pain in my abdomen, even when they pushed and prodded on me, my white cell count was dropping, and my fever was easing each time they took it. We just had to find the cause of the fever.

This went on for five days. I spent four nights there, but rarely slept. As most people know, we as humans crave sleep at night but hospitals run 24/7 so nurses and doctors are coming in almost hourly around the clock. It’s hard to get much rest, but I had an uncanny knack for somehow waking up and knowing one of them was about to walk in the door. I guess I was on alert and I could hear them hit the hand-sanitizer and the pass code pad to come in. I think they only surprised me once or twice, and I know I was only sound asleep once.

They were all terrific. It’s a big urban hospital, but the care felt like it was damn near private. I got to know them all, I trusted them, and they got to know me. I’m proud to say I was a very good patient. I did what they asked me to do with a smile. I offered up whatever arm they wanted to poke next. I only gave them honest answers.

By the third day, my unabated thirst for water was finally easing thanks to the endless bags of saline. Being hydrated, I finally needed to start using the bathroom though, and that was an adventure. They couldn’t pull all the needles out, so they just pulled the electrical plugs on all the pumps and meters and let me drag that whole metal rack of bags, tubes, and wires into the tiny bathroom with me. I got pretty good at it in a hurry, but that saline drip was really effective and I felt bad every time I had to ask a nurse to “unplug me” so I could pee yet again. They never grumbled, and they always helped. They were an amazing crew.

The doctors were, as well. I had three specialists, two of which were surgeons who were part of the team in case I needed to have them cut me open and look around in there. There was a gastrointestinal guy, who was really great, and then there was the “hospitalist” who was the quarterback of the whole team. Since all the other doctors had specialities, it was his job to collate the information and form a plan of attack. Of all the doctors, he was the one who had the whole thing covered and he was the most optimistic and upbeat. He decided we needed a new CT scan to compare it with the older one.

We were able to do that just a few floors down and no red solo cups were involved. Instead, they reversed the flow of my nose tube and inserted the water solution directly into my stomach that way. I felt like I had a football under my skin. That’s a LOT of water, especially for a guy who hadn’t had a sip in days.

After analyzing that, they came up with a few answers. Yes, there had been an ulcer but it never perforated my stomach lining. It appeared there had been a small hole in my duodenum, which is the very top of the small intestine, but by the second scan it seemed healed or gone. The rest was some general inflammation around my abdomen. It was all getting better.

By Saturday night (I had arrived on Wednesday) they cleared me to have some soft food. My “dinner” was a cup of cranberry juice, a little pudding, some Jello, and a cup of what passed for sorbet. It tasted amazing, honestly. And my nurse Angela “stole” a Popsicle out of the staff fridge! That was heavenly.

The next day, I graduated to more solid food and had a sandwich. Then, the good news. The surgeons had decided they weren’t needed, the rest of the doctors thought I’d been through enough, and they were going to release me within a few hours. I’d take home some oral pills of the same strong antibiotic I’d been on, and I’d have strict instructions as to what to eat and drink, but I could go home. I wished I could have thanked every one of them in person, but I only got to see whoever was on their shift when my discharge went through and I could put on sweat pants and a tee shirt. No more always-twisted hospital gown. No more bed I was slightly too long for. No more shots and new IV bags in the middle of the night.

It was great to get home. My initial instructions were to rest. I hadn’t had much in four nights. I’m a natural at that, so it was no problem. I’m still doing it.

We have new tests coming in the next few weeks, but they are all out-patient and one of them is at an office right here in Woodbury.

I don’t know how I could have gotten through it with my sanity if not for Barbara. She had plenty of important work to do and I was quick to tell her to go home for as long as she needed to take care of her job, but much of the time she was right there next to me, keeping track of my vital signs and either nodding approval or shaking her head when things went sideways. They didn’t go sideways often, so I got a lot more nods.

After I’d been home a day, I had a video call with my Woodbury doctor, the first guy I saw when the fever went to 101, and that went well too. I’m now on a low-sodium diet, and for a few more days he wants me on low fiber, to take the strain off my digestive system, which is now up and running again.

And yes, having that tube pulled slowly back out through my nose was the highlight of the whole thing. Having a tube running down the back of your throat pretty much feels like the worst case of strep you ever had. It hurts. But it feels so good when it’s over.

So there you have it. I don’t really know if it was a “close call” or not, but the urgency I heard when I was told to get to the ER right away was enough to get my attention.

I have a new perspective now. Life can change at any time, with just a phone call, or even without one. I need to get over my aversion to doctors and my tendency to keep maladies to myself. Life is too important.

And the outpouring of support I got on social media and email was not just astounding but incredibly up-lifting. It never stopped. It still hasn’t stopped. Family, neighbors, friends, former teammates, former business colleagues, and the huge racing community (a family unto itself) whether that means racers and crew people, PR colleagues, or those of you who have read my blogs for years, were all off the charts. Del Worsham called me as soon as he heard I was in the hospital. It was just before they had to make a qualifying run in Sonoma, but he wanted to check on me.

It all kept me going during those long dark nights when I tried to sleep but knew the door was going to open again in just a few minutes.

So I’m following the protocols and doing my part. Our friends Terry and Lynn even came over last night with dinner in hand. They’d planned to just drop it off, but we insisted they join us. Laughter and friendship aren’t just good for the soul, they part of good health.

I’m on the mend.

See you here again soon. Sorry I was gone so long (I was otherwise detained as outlined above) but I hope you liked this and I plan on getting back to normal in more ways than one.

Bob Wilber, at your service with gratitude.

It’s been a while. My new book has been my main focus for many months now, and without any doubt this blog would not have survived without truly expert help from my friend Elon Werner, who stepped up, grabbed a bat, and pinch hit for me for quite a while.

I didn’t really have much choice. “How Far?” (my new book) had to take precedence and it basically consumed me. I’m proud of it, and proud of how I managed to finish it, but more about that later in this comeback blog.

First, I want to write about Matt Mauser. The name may not be familiar to you. His name, his personality, his stage presence, and his overwhelming talent have been familiar to me for many years. I want to share him and his story with everyone.

For many of the CSK years, with Worsham Racing, we celebrated the end of every NHRA season with a rousing pit party after the season finale in Pomona, populated by friends, fellow racers, and families. At many of those parties, we were lucky enough to be joined by The Tijuana Dogs, a phenomenal band from Southern California. They rocked, and made those parties legendary. Matt Mauser was their leader, and lead singer. He was nothing short of magnetic when he performed. For the most part, I’d stand in our hospitality area, just a few feet from him, and wonder “How in the hell is this guy not a star?”

I moved on, we all moved on, but I never forgot Matt and the band. Those were incredible nights, and our Nitro-powered MegaRita machine was the co-star at many of those Pomona soirees.

On January 26, 2020, not long before Covid would change all our lives, I heard about the breaking news of Kobe Bryant’s death aboard a chartered helicopter. It was stunning and horrible to digest.

What was more stunning was the word I got from Del Worsham, informing me that Matt Mauser’s wife Christina, a highly respected teacher and girls basketball coach who was also on the helicopter, passed away as well. Matt and Christina had three children.

I was flattened. I couldn’t fathom it. I couldn’t even think of it. My brain would simply not process it.

Time has passed. Matt and his kids are still living with it and dealing with it every single day. And now, he’s about to be that star I always assumed he would be. He’s auditioning on TV for a spot on “America’s Got Talent.”

He blew the judges and the audience away with his first song.

You must watch this. It will blow you away as well.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2021/07/08/kobe-bryant-crash-matt-mauser-americas-got-talent/7904440002/

My heart goes out to you Matt, and to your remarkable kids. Much love to you my “Pit Party Brother.”

And now, on to words about my new book. I finished principal writing less than a week ago.

Yes, the deadline for submitting it to the publisher was a fluid target. No, I didn’t write it as fast as I could. Yes, I did write it as well as I could.

When we got to the middle of June, my publisher Ryan said “If you can get this to me by July 6, I think we’re all good to go on our original timeline.”

I replied, “I won’t get it to you on the 6th. I will get it to you before then. July 4 at the latest. No matter what.”

About 10 days before my self-imposed July 4 deadline, I was counting the days and estimating the chapters left to write, and it looked daunting. Throughout the process, until then, I’d been averaging a chapter a week. Two chapters a week seemed like the limit. I was still looking for that groove that would get me to the finish line with style and flow.

So I went with a technique that had failed me throughout the process. I scribbled out another outline just to see where I really was.

Why had outlines failed me before? Because the book was organic. It had its own flow. The goalposts were always moving, and new angles and stories were always presenting themselves. It was out of my control. I was just typing.

Every time I’d done any sort of outline before, it would be obsolete and useless within days. Why? Because my two characters, Brooks and Eric, had taken over. They were writing the book. They were in control. I was just along for the ride and doing the typing. I’m not kidding. That’s how it was.

I’d think I was starting a chapter with a clear vision of where it was going, but before I knew it one of the two fictional guys would throw a complete new angle at me. From out of nowhere, I’d be writing about new drama, new people, and new developments. It had a life of its own. I really had no idea when it would end.

But, faced with the pressure to get it done by July 4, I found the focus and found the path to the finish line.

For one thing, I made the commitment to actually do it and not fold under the pressure of “I’m not done yet, I have to keep going.” I mapped out the days for the last week or so, and realized I’d have to take it to a completely new level. Whereas I’d been writing one or two chapters a week for well more than a year, I had to dial it up.

I laid out the schedule. Having an outline about the content didn’t matter. Whatever the content was going to be was irrelevant. I just needed to get it done and do it right. And to do that, the scribbled outline informed me I needed to start writing two chapters a day. That’s not the whole process, of course. I’d also have research to do, in order to make sure the “historical” side to this “historical fiction” book was accurate. It was going to be a “strap in and hold on” effort.

It was very physical. Yeah, I just celebrated my 65th birthday in June, but this effort would exhaust just about anybody. Some days, there were 10 solid hours of nonstop writing. Most days, I’d hit a wall well short of my goal and allow myself to think, “That’s all I have, I can’t do anymore” but I’d take a break and get back at it. I ate dinner at my desk. I felt the compressed discs in my neck and lower back screaming at me. My hands hurt. My fingers were cramping up. I even ended up with a stomach issue for three days that might have been an ulcer. Barbara was afraid it was appendicitis. I was moaning and couldn’t eat. There were multiple days when I consumed nothing more than a few crackers or an apple.

As I’ve mentioned before, I wrote the book as a series of independent files on Google Docs. Each chapter was its own file. My paranoia about losing the the whole thing was the motivation for that. I also printed out each chapter after my esteemed editor Greg Halling got it back to me with his input and changes. That way, if I were to somehow lose a chapter to a glitch in the matrix, that would be all I’d lose. Not the whole thing. I’m a little old-school in that regard, but having backup was key to my stress levels. If I lost one chapter, I still had it in print. My two big binders filled up beyond capacity at that point.

When I started the binders, I bought a set of tabs numbered 1 through 50. I figured I’d never get to 50. Oh, but I did.

I ended up needing to finish off binder No. 2 using Post-It Notes once I got beyond 50.

And chapters were not the defining issue. I never really dwelled on how many chapters it would be. Some are fairly long, like 13 or 14 pages, and some are short and to the point, like 6 or 7 pages. And when I talk of pages, at this point, I’m talking about single-sided 8.5 x 10 inch sheets from my printer, so that still has to be adjusted to fit in a 6 x 9 two-sided book format.

Again, it was only about the story to me. That had to be right. If it was 40 chapters, that would be fine. If it was 57, so be it. The story dictated the chapter count.

The marathon to finish was a test of my will and my writing abilities. I was obsessed with it. I was not to be denied.

Around 3:00 in the afternoon, on July 4, I put a period on the end of a sentence and matter-of-factly said to myself, “OK, I think I’m done” as if I was done for that shift, or that day. It took me a while to realize I was done with the manuscript.

The celebration came that night, when we joined many of our great friends from the old neighborhood at the small park just around the corner from our former home. Woodbury puts on a fine fireworks show about a mile away, at the Bielenberg Sports Center, and if we set up our lawn chairs and open our coolers at the little park, we can see it all without dealing with the traffic and madness.

We popped open some Prosecco and shared a toast. Plastic cups don’t make the requisite “clink” sound but it’s the thought that counts. It meant the world to me.

A book written. Good friends. The 4th of July. A loving wife who cheered me on and stayed out of my way during that last stretch, giving me the room to gut my way through it, with my assistant Buster keeping a sharp eye on me throughout each long day.

And, within a few hours after I finished that last chapter, all of my maladies were gone. I felt absolutely normal. Stress can do a lot to your mind and your body. Relieving that stress, and defeating it, can cure a lot of bad things.

We’re a long way from done. It took me multiple days to format all 57 chapters, plus the dedication, foreward, and epilogue, into two giant files and share those with my publisher, and I’m still proofing and pruning right now, but we’re past the writing stage.

Do I know when it will be out? Not yet. I basically don’t know what it will look like, or any other details. My job, to this point, was to write it.

It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. When I took on the challenge of creating this book, I thought I knew what I was biting off. It was WAY outside my comfort zone. It was amazingly complicated. It was just a concept in my head.

And as time went on, it became part of me. The two characters seem like real people. I actually miss hearing their voices tell me what to write, each day. And I miss hearing from my editor Greg. Every morning, throughout all that time, I’d get up and check my Google Docs page and my e-mail, just to see if he’d sent anything back to me or made any comments. Every one of those mornings felt like a little mini-Christmas, and when I was strapped in and pounding for those last 10 days, he upped his work as well. He stayed right with me.

Greg is a very busy man with a ton of responsibilities in the world of print journalism. And for those last 10 days or so, he found a way to stay with me, keep the pace, and help make it happen. I don’t know how I could have done it without him. As my mentor and editor, he knows my style better than anyone, and he rescued me from my own writing foibles and errors on a daily basis. Thanks, buddy!

Now, back to work.

And hey… If you just finished this exercise in getting back on the Blog Bike and riding it, please take the time to click on the “Like” button at the bottom. That’s a stress reliever if there ever was one.

See you next week!

Bob Wilber, at your service with another book on my resume’.

 

Hey everyone. I think most of you know I’m on a super tight deadline of June 15 to get my new book done, so I’m cranking as fast as I can while doing the research and editing with my colleague Greg to make it sound right and flow correctly. With that in mind, I’m going to dive right back into that and just post what is a great blog installment from my friend Elon Werner.

See you again soon!

And remember to click on that “Like” button at the bottom!

Bob Wilber

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Finally an “off” weekend

Since the beginning of May, I have been all over the place every weekend. Don’t get me wrong, it was all good stuff but I didn’t feel like I had any chance to catch my breath for almost a month. We went to Missouri for daughter Abby’s honor society induction the first weekend, and the next weekend I flew to Washington DC to pick up son Nicholas from George Washington University and then we drove back to Dallas. I had back to back NHRA national events in Charlotte and Houston to close out the month. I was very much looking forward to four days in a row of just doing things around the house and with my wife Jennifer.

On Thursday I took a couple hours to repair our backyard gate that had been off the hinges for almost three weeks. We added a French drain on our side yard and I needed to shorten the gate so it would clear the new hard surface. I had limited tools but neighbor Craig came over and we got it all squared away. It was a team effort and felt good to do a project that required a skill saw.

Leading into the weekend I got the chance on Friday to head up to the Addison Improv, the second oldest Improv club in the U.S. behind Los Angeles. My long-time friend Chris Voth was performing with Ron White. I have known Chris for over 20 years going back to when I was the PR guy for the Texas Motorplex full-time and Chris was an NHRA advance media PR rep. Back then NHRA would send a media rep into each market 10 days before the event to generate media attention. We got along great and have stayed in touch ever since. Chris has always pursued a career in comedy and has made a pretty good living on the road, but like so any comics he has a full-time job as well. Chris also teaches high school English, has a doctorate in education and is the girl’s high school basketball coach. The teacher schedule allowed him to go on the road in the summer,

I have seen Chris perform in Greeley, Colorado in a very shaky basement club and also I saw him once in San Francisco. Every time I saw him perform I came away with a new appreciation for his sense of humor and his great comedic timing.

The show on Friday night in Addison (north Dallas) was packed and Chris and Ron killed. It was really cool to be backstage while Ron was on and listen as Chris reacted or gave me a heads up on a big punch line that was coming up. It was like being in the coach’s booth or sitting with a top level analyst. After the show I walked back to the hotel Chris and Ron were staying in and hearing them breakdown their sets was incredible. They reviewed things I had no idea about when it came to performing live. It was almost a 10-minute “Master’s Class” on stand-up comedy.

On Saturday morning I had arranged for Chris and Ron to play golf at The Tribute Golf Course in The Colony. It is a very cool course that copied some of the most famous link course holes from St. Andrews, Muirfield or Royal Troon. The course was designed by well-known golf architect Tripp Davis and is a links-style course that highlighted the challenge of playing holes from the Open Championship, also known as the British Open.  I was able to snap a picture with them before they went out on the course. 

On Saturday night I had a date with my wife and two other couples from our neighborhood. One of the local restaurants in Mansfield also has a stage for small concerts. That night they featured Def Leggend, a Def Leppard tribute band that I had heard good things about. The gig started at 9 p.m. and their opening band, a Dio/Black Sabbath cover band, played a little long but the wait was worth it. 

The first concert I saw with my then girlfriend, now wife, was Def Leppard at Reunion Arena in Dallas in the early 1990s. I was the Dallas Mavericks intern and I got to know the security guys that ran all the events. One of them mentioned if I wanted to stay for any concerts to just let him know and he would set me up. I took him up on the offer and invited Jenn to the concert. I met her outside of the arena and she asked me where our seats were. I told her I wasn’t sure and we went inside to see Mario at the blue security desk. Mario said to just go in and sit anywhere we found an open seat and if someone showed up with a ticket to just come back and see him. That was exactly what we did. We had to move around a few times but every time we went and saw Mario he would take us to a new area of the arena, closer to the stage and set us up. Jennifer didn’t seem to mind the weirdness of hopping around from one seat to the next and I knew right then I had found the girl for me. By the end of the night we were just about right up front and the concert was amazing. 

This past Saturday were had a reserved table and didn’t have to move a single time. Oh how almost 30 years changed things. Def Leggend played all their hits and when we walked out all six of us were singing our favorites from the concert. It was back-to-back late nights for me so I felt like I was back in college.

I managed to sleep in a little on Sunday and then I had the most normal day since the pandemic. We had two other couples over to play Mexican Train dominoes at our house. Prior to the pandemic we were big time game players and would have people over all the time or go places and play for hours. We pretty much shut all that down for over a year. If you aren’t familiar with Mexican Train it is similar to Chicken Foot. If you aren’t familiar with either of those domino games then hit up Google. We had a blast on Sunday afternoon. Everyone was vaccinated so we sat around our dining room table and enjoyed some great snacks and trash talk. I was the big winner.

After everyone left we headed to the airport to pick up daughter Abby who was flying back from St. Louis where she had just returned from a two week road trip visiting eight national parks with her boyfriend Adam. They had an amazing time and I was very jealous they were able to put over 5,000 miles on their rental car, see the Grand Canyon and not have to join one single Zoom call.

Monday we had plans to enjoy some time at a neighbors pool but Mother Nature had other ideas as a huge rain storm moved in and washed away any plans for outdoor activities. We did take some time to think about and reflect on some of our family and friends who had served or had loved ones who served. We talked about how we are to be able recognize the sacrifices that made Memorial Day possible.

This week was also high school graduation so our across the street neighbors the Webbs’ youngest daughter Sydney graduated and was heading off to Texas A&M, her parents’ alma mater. There was a great neighborhood celebration on Tuesday and for once the weather cooperated. It was great to see everyone again. We have more rain in Texas the past month than any of us could remember. No one has really been enjoying their pools, which is also very unusual. Talk turned to summer plans and also more neighborhood festivities. There will be a lull in high school activities after five straight years of seniors on our street. It was a Tuesday evening event so it wrapped up around eight at night. There was still a cooler full of beer left over the decision was made to reconvene every day at around 5 p.m. until the cooler was empty.

I am looking forward to another “off” weekend coming up and this one is setting up to be very relaxing. Looking forward to filling weekends like this reading Bob’s new book which I hear is careening to the finish line as I type.

Whew! So I’m basically in full-on writing mode right now. My deadline for getting my new book manuscript done is just weeks away, and I’m thrashing as best I can to make it happen.

When Elon Werner sent me a blog installment this morning, my first thought was “I won’t even have time to format this and post it.” But, here we are and I have least gotten it up on the correct day.

Rain delays… I never headed back to the team hotel more exhausted than when I was on a day-long rain-out. It’s far more tiring than a day of racing, when as a PR rep you’re running nonstop. Sitting around is brutal.

Below, Elon describes a time we were totally rained out at Atlanta Dragway, and the race was postponed for a week. My team (Team Wilkerson) was staying at a hotel about 30 miles west of the track. When word came down, I was assigned the duty of driving to the hotel immediately, not just to get my stuff and check-out, but to alert the hotel that our whole team was leaving. That was a 30-mile drive, followed by another 30-mile drive back to the track for some reason (I don’t remember why) then the immediate turn-around to drive back to the west (passing the hotel) to get to the Atlanta airport, which is about 80 miles away. Somehow, the hotel manager allowed us all to bug out early without a charge for that day, and he booked us all back in a week later. In NHRA life, that’s what we call a miracle.

What you’ll read below is life on the NHRA tour. Some years, it never rains. Other years, it seems to rain every race week. Del Worsham and I used to say “If it rains at the first race, it will rain at every race. If it doesn’t, we’ll get them all in on time. That’s how weather works.” That was nonsense, of course, but it seemed to also be true.

Now I need to put my head down and get back to writing my new book. I’m on chapter 37. Only about six or seven more to go! And it’s raining here in Woodbury, Minn. It has been since the break of dawn. It’s gloomy and wet. Reminds me of rainy days at the race track.

BW

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Hi everyone. Elon here, back with you.

Last weekend, I had to suffer through one of the worst aspects of drag racing that happens at least once a season. The dreaded rain-out or rain delay.

The week leading up to the SpringNationals saw most of Texas, and especially Houston, get hammered with multiple days of rain. By the time rigs started pulling into Houston Raceway Park there was standing water everywhere and the spectator parking lot was a potential mud bog. The NHRA cancelled Friday night qualifying and moved up the schedule on Saturday. Both of those decisions were the right calls. We got one and a half of the qualifying sessions in on Saturday and on race day we were all hopeful we could get some, if not all of the race in.

We were foiled by Mother Nature as the lightest of rain showers began just after we started Top Fuel eliminations. Only six pairs of dragsters made it down the track before the race was put on hold and after nearly seven hours of delay it was announced the race would be postponed until Monday morning.

During the down-time on Sunday I spent time talking with a lot of teams but I also spent some time in the press room on a research project I had been thinking about. I looked up the minimum number of round wins historically needed to make the Countdown. I had already done this a few years ago for Funny Car and Top Fuel when Courtney Force was on the edge of not making the playoffs.

I did both categories at the time, even though we had no interest in Top Fuel. That project saved me a couple of hours on Sunday in Houston, since I was able to pick up that old info and I only had to go back about five seasons. Interestingly, over the course of the Countdown, which started in its current format in 2008, the average number of round wins to get the 10^th spot was 10.6. But, over the past seven seasons the average has jumped to 13 round wins.

There is no real correlation to winning races or being No. 1 qualifier. It all comes down to round wins. I even looked at the impact of the bonus points a driver can pick up during qualifying, and there was no major impact in the regular season. The bonus points really come into play in the Countdown when the teams are bunched together and those 3-2-1 points can close the gap over a couple races.

This was not the first project like this I had completed during a rain delay. In Norwalk in 2008 I did a Mike Neff versus Bob Tasca III rookie year comparison. We had a rain delay and we were at the midpoint of the season, so I thought I would compare the top two contenders for the rookie of the year award. I looked at round wins, race wins, average qualifying position, their head-to-head records against past champions and of course their record against John Force. I came up with about eight or nine categories and Neff held the edge in the majority of them.  I wrote up a quick release outlining how Neff was the front-runner based on this research and shot it out to my media list.

It was standard PR promotion but it created quite the stir in the press room. One of the NHRA media services representatives told me I couldn’t refer to Neff as a front-runner because there was no ongoing tabulation throughout the season. There was simply a media vote at the end of the year. I saw his point but didn’t really care. I wanted to plant that seed in the minds of the voting media that Neff was the season-long clear choice. He didn’t have the strongest start to his rookie season losing eight straight races in the first round so I needed to get him some media momentum.

During the start of that season he at least came up with about eight different ways to lose. He crossed the centerline. He hit the wall. He red-lit. He lost on a holeshot. He smoked the tires. He was also simply outrun a couple of times. It was a rough start capped off with one round in Topeka when his steering wheel came off on a run and he had to slam it back on the steering column as his Funny Car was careening towards the guard wall. I had a job to do!

Rain delays are tough, but the long ones were also usually times for the crew guys to get caught up on their endless list of things to check or recheck. There was only so much maintenance work a group of young guys could do before boredom or just the sheer monotony of repetitive measuring led to distraction.

The usual outlets included low stakes gambling, usually tossing quarters.  Quarter tossing typically involved four or five guys seeing who could toss a quarter and have it land as close as possible to the back wall of the hauler. I was terrible at this game which was why whenever the crew guys started playing I was immediately summoned to join in. I always played because I never wanted to miss the chance to bond with the crew. 

The oddest time-killer I ever participated in was the “C” Team head weighing competition.  The John Force Racing teams were internally referred to as “A” team (John Force), “B” Team (Ashley Force), “C” Team (Robert Hight), and “D” Team (Mike Neff). One of the crew guys had the team’s scale out and after an hour of weighing some part (again I am not a car guy) he decided to see how much his head weighed. In true crew guy fashion he figured out a way to position the scale on the floor of the trailer so it was raised perfectly to allow a person to lay on their side and rest their head on the scale to get a measurement. It was not exact but we all took our turns weighing our heads. I had the third heaviest head on the team which I am not sure was a good or bad thing. Again, it was all about bonding and killing time.

The worst rain out I had to deal with at John Force Racing was Atlanta in 2013. The race weekend rained out and we had to come back the next weekend, which was Mother’s Day. I remember standing in the hotel lobby waiting to hear what the new schedule would be, and as word spread that we would be back the following weekend you could hear a collective groan throughout the first floor as crew guys knew they were going to get an earful from their wives about missing Mother’s Day. We came back and ran qualifying on Friday and the race on Saturday but that still left Sunday as a travel day for the people that flew and meant the crew guys driving the rigs wouldn’t be back in Indy until well into the evening after a nine-hour drive. In motorsports there are two weekends they try to keep open every year, Mother’s Day and Easter. We would run every other holiday weekend but those two were sacrosanct. 

When I was working at the Texas Motorplex the FallNationals rained out two weekends in a row and we ultimately had to set the field based on points for the first time in NHRA history. I remember standing in a midway tent while NHRA Vice-President Graham Light explained what was happening to all the drivers. It was pouring down rain, with lightning, while Graham laid out the weather forecast and the options for the teams. As he was speaking, lightning was striking so close to the tent the hair on my arms stood up.

When Graham announced that qualifying positions would be based on points you could see there were four or five guys in each class who didn’t know where they were in the point standings. They didn’t know if they should agree or argue. I had printed out the point standings for all the classes and began passing them around. It was funny to look at their faces as they scanned the list to see if they were in the show. It was very reminiscent of a drama student scanning the call list of a high school musical or a football player checking the roster to see if they made the travel team. There were a few objections but for the most part everyone knew the NHRA was in a tough spot. We got the race in and it was just another one of those things.

I will admit I caught some of the racing action from the NASCAR race at COTA while we were waiting and I was very jealous they were able to run in the rain. Maybe someday, some genius at Goodyear will come up with a wet-track tire that can hold 11,000 horsepower to the track so we can finish in the rain. If I was a lot smarter maybe that could be my next rain delay research project.

Greetings to all on yet another Thursday. Elon Werner has submitted a great installment that really takes you into the nitty gritty of what people like him (and me, before I retired) go through to get a big event worked out, plotted out, and executed perfectly.

Reading this took me back to my days with Worsham Racing, when we’d race at the Checker, Schuck’s, Kragen Nationals in Phoenix. It was a marathon every year, but we got used to it and never missed a beat as long as they sponsored us and the event. We’d get in on Tuesday and have media work, displays, and other events set up until late on Thursday night. My day-to-day contact at CSK, my friend the late Joe Spica, used to say, “We’re going to run you ragged for a few days but after Thursday night it’s over. Once we get done with that, you guys can focus on racing.” It always worked, and we won the CSK Nationals twice.

So what you read below will give you a flavor for what pros like Elon go through to make the magic happen. It’s great stuff.

As for an update on my new book “How Far?” here you go. I have roughly three weeks to get the manuscript done and fired off to my publisher. Today, rather than write Chapter 36 I instead plotted out how much I have left and what each remaining chapter will be about. Basically, I have nine chapters to write in the next three weeks. It doesn’t matter if I feel up to it. I have to be up to it. I have to get this done. It looks like it’s going to be around 44 chapters, as of this moment. I hope it’s worth the read…

And if you even slightly like this blog, clicking on the “Like” button at the bottom would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Bob Wilber

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Last weekend in Charlotte, at the NGK NTK Four-Wide Nationals, I had one of those races where I hit the ground running on Thursday and I felt like I never took my foot off the gas until Sunday night. I was involved with three press events, a car unveiling, and I worked with an amazing charity organization all before the second round of qualifying started on Saturday. It was also a four-wide event so the racing action was fast and furious. This was the kind of event that made me really love my job because I got to see a lot of pre-event planning come together.

On Thursday, Kalitta Motorsports hosted NASCAR drivers Bubba Wallace and Daniel Hemric for a full day of racing activities that started at the Toyota Racing Development (TRD) office outside of Charlotte. The event was a Toyota Racing cross-over event put together by Golin PR, the massive global PR firm that handles all of Toyota’s public relations needs and activities. This PR group is the all-star of all-star teams led by Lisa Hughes-Kennedy and Cody Poor. Cody used to be on the NHRA tour as Kalitta Motorsports’ PR guy. They put the entire event together and I was able to float around and help keep the trains running on time.

At TRD our drivers, Shawn Langdon and J.R. Todd, got some seat time in the NASCAR simulator which was as real as it gets when it comes to giving a driver the experience of turning laps at almost 200 mph. The mapping of the race tracks was exact down to every bump on the course. The seat was on hydraulics which gave you the sensation of movement and the screen was the complete wrap-around version so you felt like you were in a race car or truck making laps. By the time drivers climbed out of the simulator after a couple of hours they were drenched in sweat.

From TRD the group made its way to zMAX Dragway where Daniel and Bubba were given a pit tour of the DHL Kalitta Air Top Fuel operation by Shawn. Daniel and Bubba had a ton of questions and they were really into learning about what it was like to go 330 mph. As part of the experience we had Daniel climb into Shawn’s dragster and the team let him warm up the race car. Shawn was right by his side giving him instructions on the procedure for the warm-up. As the fumes from the nitro cloud settled around all the media, PR reps and drivers, there were more than a few runny noses and wet eyes in the crowd.

From the DHL Top Fuel pit we made our way to J.R.’s DHL Toyota Camry Funny Car pit. Getting the group to move from one pit to the other was a bit of a production. The Golin folks had lined up a film crew from “NASCAR On FOX” as well as a crew from “NHRA on FOX” and there were a number of local TV stations covering the event. There was also an 11-person crew from Netflix who were following Bubba around for his upcoming six-episode Netflix series coming out in 2022. In addition, there were social media people, crew guys and reporters from RACER Magazine, The Athletic, RacinToday.com and a few other outlets. It was a huge crowd and filled up just about every inch of the pits.

J.R. gave Bubba the run-down on the Toyota Camry Funny Car and how sitting behind the motor sometimes can get interesting when it came to motor explosions. Bubba also got his chance to run through the paces of a warm-up and J.R. was right beside him giving him tips and instruction. Again, the nitro cloud gassed everyone out and Bubba definitely got a snoot full. He scampered out of the cockpit in record time trying to find some clean air to refill his lungs. He loved the experience and afterward Bubba and Daniel talked to the media gaggle about how cool it was to get to experience something like this.

The four drivers all went up to the starting line for a special treat that included Shawn and J.R. doing side-by-side burnouts in their respective race cars. Bubba and Daniel were positioned right between them on the starting line. Chad Head, the Kalitta General Manager, told our drivers to go ahead and do longer than normal burnouts since we wouldn’t be making a run afterwards. J.R. and Shawn both really put on a show taking their race cars well past half-track to the delight of everyone on the starting line. Bubba and Daniel were visibly surprised by the power they felt through the ground just from the two burnouts.

We pulled the race cars back to the starting line and the crews towed them back to the pits. The drivers all stayed because the final experience of the day was a four-wide race in Toyota Supras. J.R. and Shawn walked the NASCAR guys through the staging process and each of them said they felt comfortable with the Christmas Tree. We had to spend a little extra time on the starting line to allow for the Netflix crew to get just the right shots and positioning. Those kinds of hold-ups took me right back to my time with John Force Racing when we had the A&E reality show “Driving Force.” 

The drivers hopped into their Supras and rolled them up to the starting line. In a surprise outcome, Bubba had a pretty good reaction time and he took the win and trophy. There was plenty of ribbing afterwards as Bubba talked about getting the best of the NHRA drivers. 

After the NASCAR guys took off, the Kalitta drivers rolled right into the sponsor customer race with NGK and NTK Spark Plugs guests. They were racing Toyota Camrys. Each customer was allowed a couple qualifying runs and then they went right into eliminations. J.R. and Shawn were giving starting line tips and then they each raced the finalist. It was a long but productive day and the race hadn’t event started yet.

The next day I had an even busier day because I had a Kalitta event which led right up to a Justin Ashley Racing event. NASCAR driver and owner of Rowdy Energy drink, Kyle Busch, came to the track to spend time with the Kalitta drivers before the qualifying session started. He hopped in J.R.’s Funny Car and warmed it up. The group talked with another sizable group of media about NASCAR versus NHRA and also about the Rowdy Energy drink and Kalitta Motorsports sponsorship. After the warm-up, all the drivers went to the zMAX Dragway media center for another media gathering. 

Prior to that press event I was conducting a sponsorship announcement with Justin Ashley and his new primary sponsor Smart Sanitizer in the media center. Smart Sanitizer would be joining Strutmasters.com as co-primary sponsors for the rest of the season on Justin’s Top Fuel dragster. We had a packed press room for the announcement and the event went off without a hitch. There were a number of great questions from the media about the sponsorship and most importantly we got a lot of info about Justin Ashley to the media.

Before the first qualifying session, we unveiled Justin’s new look Top Fuel dragster. His team did an amazing job designing the look of the race car as well as getting his hauler redesigned and new uniform shirts and a new firesuit. They got this all done in less than two weeks which is record-setting. We were able to work with the NHRA marketing department to get a break in the action before Justin ran, to have Joe Castello, the NHRA starting line announcer, get the crowd fired up about the announcement and then we did the actual unveiling.

The crowd loved it and the Smart Sanitizer people were very impressed. They also have a sponsorship relationship with a NASCAR team but they were blown away by everything they saw at the Four-Wide Nationals. They were so impressed they are coming back to the SpringNationals this weekend in Houston.

With all those events behind me I still had a few major off-track events to coordinate. Saturday morning Kalitta Motorsports was hosting Camden Nobles and his family at the track, as part of our relationship with a great organization called A Kid Again.

Camden, a 12-year-old from the Charlotte area, is battling an illness that prevents him from participating in contact sports, among other issues. The A Kid Again organization hosts “Adventures” for kids suffering from life threatening illnesses, and their families get to experience it with them. We had arranged for an 11:30 a.m. full pit tour with the drivers as well as some seat time for Camden and his sister Bliss in the race cars.

At 10:30 a.m. Doug Kalitta came through the hospitality area and saw Camden and immediately started chatting him up. He took Camden over to J.R.’s Funny Car and began telling all about how the car worked. They had a great conversation and Doug helped Camden get into the cockpit and he walked him through all the pedals and controls. He also did the same thing with Camden’s sister Bliss. It was really cool to see but it was also way ahead of schedule. When 11:30 rolled around Doug had spent about an hour with the kids showing them everything I had planned to show them with all the drivers. It all worked out and we got some great photos but most importantly Camden and his family had a wonderful time. Schedules are really just like a goal sheet anyway.

Following that event we were able to focus on racing and regular sponsor activations, like “meet and greets” and “Q&As” in the hospitality area. The race went off without a hitch and it was great to see J.R. get a runner-up in the DHL Toyota Funny Car. The weekend was a blur but it was a good kind of blur.

On to Houston this weekend where we will be battling Mother Nature. I will pack my Camping World rain coat and hope for the best.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

 

Hola everyone. I’m trying to stick to a steady schedule of cranking on the rest of my new book with my deadline looming, so Elon Werner has stepped up to the plate again to file a new blog for all of us.

It’s a great installment, all about how proud a father can be when it comes to his kids. He should be proud. Abby and Nicholas are two amazing young people. Barbara and I flew down to Dallas a couple of years ago (seems like yesterday) to attend a party at the Werner home, and we were absolutely amazed by them. So thoughtful, collected, and willing to spend time with two “old folks” like us. They are the product of outstanding upbringings.

Family is a key part of life. Although we have no human children (Boofus and Buster are our kids) we understand the value of family. This past weekend, we were honored and thrilled to have Barbara’s brother Tim and his wife Kelly in Woodbury with us, to celebrate Barbara’s birthday. It was marvelous and incredibly valuable. Great people, and priceless family members.

Tim and I joined my buddy Terry for what was supposed to be a round of golf on Monday. It was exactly that for them. What it was for me I can’t explain. A few good (lucky) shots here or there, but basically the worst nine holes I’ve played since I was 12 years old. Just awful. I stopped keeping score when the row of numbers that never wavered off of 7 or 8 nearly filled the scorecard. And now my back is killing me, so that’s my penance for playing so badly. I stunk. Not as badly as the Minnesota Twins right now, but I stunk it up.

So here’s Elon’s story about his wonderful children. Enjoy!

And if you like it, please click on the “Like” button at the bottom.

See you next week. I hope to have at least two or three new chapters “in the can” by then.

BW

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Hello everyone! Elon here. It’s been a busy two weeks for me as I have been hitting the open road. Shockingly, the hectic pace was not work related. Thanks to my flexible work schedule, I was able to make a couple of road trips to celebrate a major accomplishment for my daughter Abby and move my son Nicholas out of his dorm in Washington DC.

Two weeks ago Abby wrapped up her internship in Washington DC as part of her Strategic Communications degree program at Mizzou (University of Missouri – Columbia). She spent the semester working for Growing Hope Globally, a non-profit focused on connecting farmers in our country with farmers in developing countries to help find solutions to hunger issues. She worked with the marketing team on their social media messaging and strategy. She enjoyed the work and the people and she was pleasantly surprised to be asked to stay on over the summer as a virtual paid intern. 

Midway through the semester she was contacted by an honor society on campus, letting her know that she was being considered for induction into one of Mizzou’s “secret” honor societies. This was not a “Skull and Bones” type secret society but rather a national organization focused on high academic achievement and volunteerism.

In early April, Abby was notified she had indeed been accepted and there would be an in-person induction ceremony on Mizzou’s campus on April 30. Luckily, that worked out perfectly with Abby’s internship schedule and she was able to attend. My wife and I were also able to attend and we made the 10-hour drive from Dallas to Mizzou the day before.

The day of the ceremony was a picture perfect “Chamber of Commerce weather” kind of day. We grabbed some breakfast with Abby and her boyfriend Adam at a cool joint just off campus and then we took a stroll, just taking in the scene. It was great to see students on the quad studying and relaxing. They did the society inductions in waves and Mortar Board, the 100+ year old society Abby was being inducted into, didn’t hold their ceremony until after lunch. We made the obligatory stop at the campus book story and picked up some gear because you can never have enough Mizzou t-shirts, pull-overs or now swim suits.

We arrived at Jesse Hall just in time to give Abby a hug and then she disappeared to get ready for the ceremony. The day was officially called Tap Day and the tradition was no one knew who was being “tapped” until this ceremony. They would be revealed during the special ceremony and they would work as a group on various philanthropic and volunteer projects without any additional fanfare. Prior to Abby’s induction they recognized the 2020 class who did not get an in-person ceremony last year due to Covid-19. A number of the inductees came back and it was quite impressive to hear where they had landed after they left Mizzou. The university is recognized as the top journalism school in the country and it showed in the jobs many of these recent graduates had landed. They were already working for The New York Times, Buzz Feed, Time magazine and the State Department just to name a few key gigs.

The president of Mortar Board began with a brief explanation about the organization and then she began the introductions. We did not know when Abby would be “tapped” but it was anti-climactic when the first person the president spoke about was introduced as a Mansfield, Texas resident. The description of Abby’s accomplishments and what the professor that nominated her said about here made my proud dad heart swell. She has quite the giving spirit and it was great to see her hard work being recognized. 

Following the ceremony there were group photos taken and then each inductee was able to take a few photos with the ceremonial Mortar Board gavel. It was quite a piece of hardware and, as you can imagine, there were some fun photos taken. I was hoping they treated the gavel as a traveling trophy like the Stanley Cup, and every inductee would be able to have it for a day, but alas that was not part of the tradition. I can only imagine how much fun our neighbors would have had with the huge gavel. We could hold the Kangaroo Court of all Kangaroo Courts.

We took Abby and some of her friends to dinner that night and the next day we drove her home for the summer. We rehashed the ceremony and her plans for the summer while we were on the road. It was a great day of just chatting and getting caught up.

The following weekend, I flew to Washington DC to help my son Nicholas move out of his dorm at George Washington University. He was able to be on campus this spring semester even though all his classes were still online. He made the most of the experience by getting to know the urban campus and also connecting with some of his Marine ROTC buddies. He is pursuing a degree in International Affairs at the Elliott School and following graduation he will join the Marines as an officer. 

Nicholas had all his gear packed up and we were able to load it on Saturday night after I landed so we could get an early start back to Texas on Sunday morning. In case you haven’t figured it out, I love to drive. The next morning Nicholas checked out of his dorm and we hit the road. It was a nice but rainy drive through Virginia to Tennessee and into Arkansas on the first day. We drove by Bristol Motor Speedway and it was good to see the track. We will be back at Thunder Valley in mid-October for NHRA racing, which was welcome news this week as well. The drive across Tennessee was uneventful and it turns out we tempted fate as we crossed from Tennessee to Arkansas.

Earlier this week just two days after we crossed the Mississippi River on I-40 west the bridge we used was closed due to a huge crack on the underside. I don’t know what we would have done if we would have rolled up and that bridge had been closed. On the first day we made it from DC to Little Rock and we pulled into the Holiday Inn Express parking lot at 11:30 p.m. I did most of the driving with Nicholas giving me a break in the middle. We had a sweet Dodge Caravan minivan for the one-way rental.

The only issue with the trip was the van pick-up after I landed at Ronald Reagan National Airport. It may come as a shock but I don’t have any credit cards. I have a business debit card and a personal debit card. Before the pandemic I was very much a “cash only” guy. More than ten years ago my family went through the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace program at our church and we dug ourselves out of a ton of consumer debt in just under two years. One of Ramsey’s main directives was to minimize and really eliminate any and all credit. I only ran into issues with this caveat when it came to renting cars it seemed. I have been able to work around it with most rental car companies by having them put an additional couple hundred dollars on hold during the rental period. On this trip, since it was a one-way rental, I found out at the counter that I had to have a credit card to pick up the van. There was no way for them to charge me right there on my debit card in advance of the rental. They had to swipe a card to release the van. 

After a series of phone calls I was able to connect with my lifelong friend Max Finberg who lives in DC. He graciously stopped what he was doing on Saturday night at 8:30 p.m. and drove to the airport so the rental car company could swipe his credit card. They didn’t charge him anything, they just had to swipe a card. We caught up for a few minutes and then he went back to his family and I headed to meet Nicholas. As far as hiccups go it was minor, but at the time highly frustrating.

The two-day drive with my son was magical. We talked about his plan for the next three years at George Washington as well as his career plans after graduation. He talked excitedly about his commitment to the Marines and the opportunities in front of him. The Marines are very pro-education and encourage their officers to pursue master’s degrees, law degrees and even doctorates. Nicholas’ immediate goal is to become a Marine aviator and then possibly pursue a career in academia. It was very cool to hear him talking so enthusiastically about his future.

In the immediate future he will be heading to San Diego soon for four weeks on-base as part of Marine Month. The program, he explained, was part classroom instruction and part physical exercises, including machine guns and helicopters. I can’t wait to hear the stories about that. 

My kids are turning into amazing adults right in front of my eyes. Time has flown by so the chance to have them trapped in a car or van for hours on end was a welcome opportunity. The open road is fantastic and I can’t wait for the next time I get the chance to head out on the highway.

Embrace your family. Hug your kids. Treasure the time you have.

Thanks for reading. -Elon

Hey everyone! It’s actually me today. Remember me? My name is Bob.

Today’s headline is not literal. I do not, by rule, ride horses. I have ridden horses, when I was much younger and the ground seemed much softer, but even that was basically just holding the reins while the horse walked. One time, a couple of friends who actually knew how to ride, gave their horses a nudge as we headed back to the stable and all the horses took off. The 14-year old version of me was as petrified as I’d be today. All I could do was pull on the reins (the horse ignored that idea) and hold onto the horn (thereby letting the horse know I was a newbie who didn’t know how to ride.) I am surprised, to this day, that I held on until we got back. That was the last time I’ve ridden a horse. And thus, it shall remain that way.

What the headline does signify is that it was a big week, and this is a big day.

Over the weekend and early part of the week, we got back to real life. We are fully vaccinated and so are most of our Woodbury besties, so we accompanied our friends Joe and Mary Beth on a four-night trip up to their incredible condo on the North Shore of Lake Superior. They hosted us so that we could all mutually celebrate Barbara’s birthday as well as Mary Beth’s. It was so… How do I put this? It was so… NORMAL! It was like being back in the saddle.

The second reference is the very fact that I’m writing this blog all by my lonesome. Elon Werner and I have had a telepathic connection since shortly after we met. Whenever I think of something, he tends to bring it up. This time it was blog related. I thought “I have enough material to do this one straight through, myself, and I really want to do that again” and no more than 45 minutes later my phone rang. Elon said, “I’m up to my eyeballs this week. I hate to be ‘that guy’ but I don’t think I have a blog in me. Sorry.”

I immediately said, “Well, you and I have done it again. I was just about to call you and say I want to get back in the saddle and write the whole thing myself.”

So here we are. And here’s the next key tidbit that will tell you I might be back off the saddle by next week, which was another big reason why I wanted to write this one solo.

I exchanged lengthy notes with my publisher yesterday, and it went kind of like this:

Ryan: “I’m with you all the way on this book, and all I want to do is get it published and get it out there. But here are some key dates to keep in mind for now. I have you slotted for an October release to make sure we have it out by Christmas. Can you do that?”

Me: “Well, walk me backwards from October and give me a firm deadline for finishing the manuscript.”

Ryan: “Um. That would be June 15th. If that’s not realistic for you, and if you want to push the publishing out to the first quarter of 2022, I’m happy do that, but we’ll miss Christmas.”

Me: “Well, that’s all I need to hear. I will have this done and in your hands by June 15. It’s my full-time job starting now.”

So yes, I made the commitment to have the book finished and gone by June 15. That’s basically five weeks from now. I’m thinking of ordering a custom seat belt for my office chair to keep me in place for these next five weeks. Maybe a HANS Device to keep my neck stable too. I have a lot of ground to cover, but I know I can do it. I mean, the two characters are writing it. I’m just typing what they say. And I swear I’m not nuts. As far as I know. At least I’m pretty sure I’m not. They’re good dudes. I like them. Every few days I say something to Barbara like “Brooks had a big day today” or “Eric took a huge step in this chapter.”

I’ll need help from guest bloggers to keep this thing in place while I finish the book. I know Elon is swamped, so maybe I can enlist some other trusted friends and colleagues to submit some installments. As always, I will lead each one off with a short introduction. Plow forward!!!

Back to the condo on the North Shore…

We’ve been up there multiple times with Joe and Mary Beth, but never in the spring. It’s a beautiful lake house, and so warm and comfortable. It feels like “home” when we’re there. Also, if “location is everything” it’s priceless. Right on the water with panoramic views. Plus, they are friends of the highest order and this was a special occasion because of our wives’ mutual birthday celebration.

Joe and I handled all the details, which drove both wives a little nuts. We just said “We have this. All you have to do is enjoy it.” We made notes and divided up responsibilities. We even had an actual meeting to go over everything. We had shopping lists, cooking schedules, and every meal mapped out. We also had a plan to make our arrival at the condo a big surprise for the ladies.

Joe ordered flowers, champagne, and chocolate covered strawberries for each of them, and the condo manager put it all in the home, so we knew we’d all have to walk in together for the surprise to work. But, since we were driving in different cars, we had to figure out the timing. It’s a three-hour drive, so it’s hard to stay bumper-to-bumper that far on I-35. The plan we concocted was exquisite.

Barbara and I had never been to the Glensheen Mansion. It’s a museum now, but it has such history. Plus, it’s both famous and infamous, and on top of that it’s simply amazing. It also sits on some of the most prized real estate on the shore of Lake Superior, just outside Duluth. Barbara and I had seen a play about the murders that took place there, but weren’t totally up to speed on the history of the family and the philanthropy they were known for. It’s all incredible. Just Google “Glensheen” to learn more.

We knew if we met at Glensheen we could take the tour and then drive the remaining 20-minutes to Larsmont and the condo. That way, we’d all get there at the same time.

We went up on Friday and the Glensheen gambit played out perfectly. Plus, the entire tour was incredible. We got back in our cars and drove the last bit up toward Larsmont, but in the interest of fair reporting I’ll admit we stopped along the way at a fabulous food truck. I had the street tacos.

Upon arrival at the condo, there was a slight hiccup in our master plan but it was OK. We were all busy opening car doors and trunks and getting ready to load everything into the condo, but Mary Beth went on inside to get the doors opened. She came back out with a sheepish grin and said “Barbara, I think you need to come with me. Don’t carry anything in. Just come with me.”

The flowers, champagne, and strawberries were waiting for them. It kinda sorta blew them away. We were two very proud husbands. Yes, the champagne was magnificent. Why wait? “POP!”

And here’s the best part: Like I said before, it all just felt so NORMAL! We masked up anytime we were in public with people we didn’t know, and we’re all so used to that now it’s just second nature and no hassle at all, but when it was just the four of us it was back to normal. Totally and wonderfully normal. It felt incredible. Like turning back the hands on the giant “life clock” and going back to when socializing and vacationing seemed simple and wonderful. My gosh how we’ve missed it. Talk about “back in the saddle.” We were back in the saddle and riding free.

Saturday was our spa and relaxation day. We slept in, had a great breakfast, then had massages at the resort. After that, the coup de grace was having our friend Chef Uriah Hefter do a full Chef’s dinner for us at the condo.

When we had our guys’ retreat at the condo a couple of winters ago, Chef Uriah blew us away with his creative dishes, his knowledge, and mostly his insane sense of humor. He’s a magnificent chef, but he could make a living as a stand-up comedian. (Note to Uriah: I’m just sayin’ dude. You could.)

We had five courses, each paired with a specific wine that Joe and I had picked out in advance. It was sublime, all while laughing hysterically at Chef Uriah’s nonstop running monologue. Seriously, the guy would slay it on-stage at any comedy club. Plus, he’s basically a doppelgänger for our actor buddy Buck Hujabre. About 10 minutes into the hilarity, I turned to Barb and said “My gosh, he’s Buck!” and she said “I was just thinking the same thing.” Interesting that Buck and Uriah have never been seen together. Hmmmm.

We had red snapper, lamb chops, brisket, and much more. The laughs never stopped, and we learned a ton about creative recipes and what each ingredient can do to the dish. Priceless stuff.

The weather changed after that perfect Saturday, but it will do that up there on the North Shore. We just rolled with it. On Monday, when it was about 45 degrees, Joe took us on one of our favorite day-trips, up the highway to Grand Marais. It’s a beautiful drive up the shore of Superior. We had lunch at the Gun Flint Tavern, and it was fantastic. Best quesadilla I’ve had in years.

For the record, Superior is the largest fresh-water lake in the United States and is “technically” the second-largest fresh-water lake in the world. I say “technically” because the one listed as Number One is the Caspian Sea. It’s a SEA for crying out loud. Superior is a lake! Oh well, it’s a phenomenal place.

The whole thing was just wonderful, and it gave us hope that life will be totally back to normal again soon. If a few more people will just step up, be good citizens, and get their vaccines, we’ll be very close to that. We’re not out of the woods yet, and things in India and Brazil are downright scary, but the vaccine is the way to beat this thing. That’s my rant.

So it was great to be back in the saddle again. And this time the horse didn’t take off galloping on me. That’s a good thing.

I leave you with one final photo from our brief but fantastic trip. This is the view from our bedroom window at Joe and Mary Beth’s condo. It never gets old.

And, if you just read this and didn’t hate it, clicking the “Like” button at the bottom would be greatly appreciated. “Likes” are just like the old S&H Green Stamps. If you collect enough of them, you might get a free pencil.

I’ll be strapped in finishing this crazy book from here on out until June 15. I’ll drop in and say hi every time I can. Be safe, be healthy, get that shot!

Bob Wilber, at your service and wishing I could live at the North Shore until June 15th. Kauai in August and September will just have to do!  More on those plans later, but you know I’m a giver and a great cat-sitter, so there you have it.

Here’s to NORMAL!  Cheers! (clink)

 

Greetings all! Today’s collaboration is about one of my favorite subjects. It’s about friends.

When anyone we know asks us about living in Minnesota, and questions our sanity in terms of the stout winters we have here, we just say “This is our home now. We made the best friends we’ve ever had here. It’s priceless.”

Yesterday was Barbara’s birthday. It was a big “landmark” birthday, too. The kind that ends in a zero. Yes, she’s finally 30 which means we got married when she was six. Well, she sure as heck still looks and acts like a 30-year old.

We talked about what we would do, and whether or not we’d play it low-key or do something big. It was pretty clear she just wanted to do something low-key. So I booked a table for us, out on the patio at Crave (one of our favorite restaurants here) and I bought her a nice gift. And then one of her “gang” of Woodbury women texted me about stepping it up a notch. A “surprise party” concept was hatched.

Barbara had a spa appointment in the late afternoon with our friend Kristy, and the spa is right across from Crave, so it all fit together well. Between Kristy and friend Annette, they put the word out to the whole group from the old neighborhood and we ended up with two tables. The original one for just Barbara and me, and a table for six of her best friends ever. She was stunned, confused, and overjoyed.

We’re all vaccinated now, although we still practice all sorts of care when it comes to being together. Everyone still had their masks on when I took the original group photo, but then we took another one of all the friends without masks. Barbara had her eyes closed, but it was all pretty much “spur of the moment” stuff so we don’t care. It was the photographer’s fault.

That’s Barb in the middle, of course, and her dear friends Nichol, Kristy, Annette, Barb, Lynn, and Mary Beth from left to right.

As the only guy there, I got a great taste of what it’s like when these crazy ladies all get together on their own. The word “hilarious” defines it pretty well. At one point I said “If you all came along to a get-together of my buddies and me, I think you’d be sadly disappointed. We’re not this nuts.”

It was really fantastic. And it just felt so great to be out and about while feeling pretty safe about it. This is life. This is friendship. This is caring. It’s all good.

And here’s Elon Werner with his take on neighbors and friends. Once again, we illustrate just how much we have in common despite living in totally different parts of the country.

If you like this stuff, please take the time to click on the “Like” button at the bottom.

Barbara and I are off to the North Shore of Lake Superior with Mary Beth and her hubby Joe tomorrow. We’re feeling quite a bit of normalcy. I just hope more people get their vaccines.

BW

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I know, from reading Bob’s blogs, he has made some amazing friendships with his neighbors over the years. I can relate, since almost ten years ago my family moved into a neighborhood with, hands down, the best neighbors ever. When we had the house under contract we drove the streets surrounding our house and saw so many people out working on their landscaping while kids played in front yards. Once we moved in we quickly got to know the families that lived directly beside and across the street from us, as well as families one or two houses over. It was an amazing group of people that has only gotten better as a few new neighbors have moved in over the past five years. The current neighbor line-up is stocked full of all-stars when it comes to being supportive without being nosy, while also being up for anything when it comes to entertaining and having a good time.

Each family has taken ownership of a holiday or a special event throughout the year. I wrote about my family’s Christmas party and cookie extravaganza. In addition to our holiday event, families have annually hosted a July 4^th party, Memorial Day Bar Be Que, Cinco De Mayo/Kentucky Derby celebrations and most recently the annual crawfish boil.

My neighbor Dale is from Louisiana and it is no secret. He is a diehard LSU and New Orleans Saints fan. During college and pro football seasons he puts out signs, inflatables and banners in support of the Tigers and Saints. There are Texas A&M fans, Michigan fans, Mizzou fans (yours truly) and University of Texas fans along our street so when the LSU Tigers are playing against one of those teams Dale ramps up the rivalry even more. It is all in good fun but needless to say Dale loves Louisiana and he loves to boil crawfish.

Last year we didn’t have the neighborhood crawfish boil because of COVID, obviously, but this year just about everyone in our neighborhood has been vaccinated and we still keep our distance when we are outside. Dale asked a few weeks ago how interested and comfortable the group was with the idea of him doing a big boil. He said he would keep it just to our group and spread out more than in past years. He would still have to sling the grub on the long tables but we could set up two so we could spread out.

The big event was last Saturday and the buzz in the neighborhood, in anticipation of filling our bellies with crawfish and all the fixin’s, started on Friday. Throughout the day on Saturday Dale began his set up and everyone chipped in to help. As we got closer to the event the group text string began to light up with people updating everyone with what desserts they planned on bringing or what snacks we could munch on before the main event. I looked at all the items and tasty treats on the horizon and it made my heart swell. I also began planning my strategy to get the maximum benefit from the event.

Dale did three rounds of crawfish. The first boil came out at 5 p.m. with crawfish mixed with potatoes, corn, garlic bulbs, onions, mushrooms and multiple types of sausage. Dale mixed it up this year with Earl Campbell sausage, Andouille sausage and pecan jalapeno sausage. He covered long tables with plastic wrap and cardboard and everyone gathered around to get their fill. We ate in waves again to spread out the people. The second wave dropped at 5:30 p.m. and this was just like the first wave only no mushrooms. Dale knew we had a couple people are allergic to mushrooms so he did a special boil for them. The final boil dropped on the tables at about 6:30 p.m. and his batch was not for the faint of heart.

The final boil had three times the spices and was heat level of 11 on a 10-point scale. The corn on the cob really sucked in the heat and lit up your lips with true Cajun heat. All the sides had a little extra kick but it was so delicious. I ate my weight in crawfish and enjoyed many of the sides. My favorite was the garlic bulbs. They popped out of the skin like butter and tasted amazing. 

The event lasted about four hours and by the end of the night half of the neighbors were in a food coma in Dale’s front yard. If you didn’t leave with a full belly you weren’t trying hard enough. Dale and his wife also made goodie bags with leftovers for anyone that wanted to take some grub home. It was an amazing event and a nice reminder that things are starting to get a little better.

On Sunday we gathered again to rehash how delicious all the food was and also we celebrated Dale’s culinary skills when it came to boiling crawfish. The big winner of the event was the pecan jalapeno sausage. It was a new addition and got unanimous support to make a strong return in 2022. Next up is the Cinco de Mayo/Kentucky Derby party.

I was able to recover from the weekend to get some work done this week and the highlight was reconnecting with five-time Super Bowl champion and NFL Hall of Famer Charles Haley. After his playing days with the Dallas Cowboys wrapped up Haley made his home in Dallas and has been involved in all sorts of events and appearances. We have worked events together for a variety of clients including Beckett Media, Panini Trading Cards and various Dallas Cowboys events. On Wednesday we hooked up to talk about one of his new passions, collecting classic cars.

I heard he had some nice rides that he was working on getting restored and he had some finished cars that were in nearly mint condition. He was kind enough to talk about two of his favorite cars for the Milwaukee Area Technical College virtual car show which gets started May 12. I met him at his house and he already had his cars in his driveway. He also had his dog King, a sizeable Doberman Pincher, in front of his house. I took my time walking up to Haley’s house because I did not want to become King’s chew toy. I was greeted with a big hug from Haley and that gave King the alert I was not to be gnawed on.

Haley had his latest acquisition out which was a classis Lincoln Continental that was purple and featured suicide doors on the driver’s side. This car still needed a lot of work and it was obvious King was very comfortable in this car. The other car Haley had out was a near mint condition silver Mustang that was a thing of beauty. He had originally bought the car for his dad and after his dad passed away he gave it to his daughter who was studying at Stanford. I could just picture this convertible cruising around the Stanford campus as well as the California coast.

I wanted to get a two to three minute video of Haley describing his cars and also talking about the importance of students pursuing a degree in auto tech. I gave Haley a run down and then asked him if he was ready to go. He said he was all good so I hit the record button. He immediately started talking about how much he loved his cars and described all the elements he was going to improve. He also really got into talking about the importance of education in general as well as the need for auto technicians. It was amazing and he went on for almost five minutes of video gold. I could not have been happier with the finished product.

I thanked him for his time and then we chatted for about fifteen minutes about different speaking engagements he had done spreading the word about getting an education. His bottom line message was knowledge is power and no matter how old you are you can still pursue your dreams. He told me his mother dropped out of school in the sixth grade but at the age of 53 she went back to school and got her GED diploma. I could tell his mom’s accomplishment was just as impactful to him as winning a Super Bowl. It was a great way to get over hump day and motivate me for the rest of the week and beyond.

Thanks for reading, everyone. See you again soon!

Hey there, everyone. Guess what happened this week? Well, Elon Werner and I have a lot of things in common, including our PR careers, our love of sports, and our mutual sense of sarcastic humor. This week, we both completely zoned out on the fact yesterday was Thursday. Sometime around 8:00 pm, it occurred to me that it was blog day and I hadn’t gotten anything from Elon. I wasn’t going to bug him at the time, so I went with the belief that it would all work out, at some point. Or maybe he was just tired of doing it. Or he’d been abducted by aliens. Anything was possible. The alien abduction would’ve made for some incredible blog content, too. I was hopeful. I mean, hopeful for good alien stories but not hopeful they had done anything “uncomfortable” to him.

Then, when I was just about nodding off watching mindless TV shows about giant Canadian tow trucks, house hunting in Hawaii, home repairs (love me some Mike Holmes!) or aerial drone footage of famous locations, I got a text from Elon about missing the deadline. Ha! We both missed it. Just one more thing we have in common.

It’s been a busy week for me, and as you’ll see below it’s been even busier for Mr. Werner. I’ve been writing, but I also took off a few hours to play my first round of golf in 2021. My buddies Joe and Terry, along with Terry’s son Dylan, picked Tuesday as our first day on the course. After a string of spring days in the glorious 50s, 60s, and even the 70s, we just happened to have our tee time on a day when it was a blustery 42 degrees with a 35-degree windchill. So I blame the weather on my abysmal performance. That and the fact I never got to a driving range to sort out my swing and didn’t even hit any balls before we teed off.

My philosophy on that is as follows: During every year of my lengthy baseball career (I played well past my 39th birthday) the best day of batting practice every year was the first day. I think it was because, as an over-thinker of such endeavors, I grabbed a bat on that day and had no bad habits. I just hit. Naturally. Day 2 would always be much worse as I started to tinker and over-analyze.

So I was about frozen by the end of our round, and then Barbara and I went directly to a volunteer trash-collecting day on the massive grounds surrounding the corporate headquarters where she works. A large group of employees showed up to wear bright orange vests, use trash “picker-uppers” and put garbage we found in huge plastic bags. It was all good, and I’m glad we did it. We brought in quite a haul of coffee cups, plastic bottles, and other stuff drivers had willfully and knowingly tossed from the windows of their cars or trucks as they drove by the H.B. Fuller world headquarters and its huge nature preserve. This land-based flotsam and jetsam also included a lot of small booze bottles and empty cans of Skoal. The life lesson I learned was this: Some people are pigs. It’s basically disgusting to pick up their trash, and they did it on purpose, throwing their junk on the property of an upstanding civic-minded company where they don’t even work. That’s why it felt good to join the group and do our part for Barb’s company. But still…  Pigs! And I will state this as a fact: I have NEVER ONCE thrown any trash out of my car window. NEVER! I don’t understand humans.

And even though it was still cold and I hadn’t really warmed up after pretending to play golf, it still felt good to do it.

So here’s Elon, explaining why he blew his deadline. I might have to dock his pay a percentage, although a percentage of zero is still zero. Now I have to finish Chapter 35 of the new book. That’s my self-imposed deadline.

See you next week. Hopefully on the right day!

BW

PS: As always, if you finish this blog and found you even slightly enjoyed it, please tell your fingers to click on the “Like” button at the bottom. Gracias.

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Hello blog faithful! Elon Werner here. Something happened this week that I honestly think has only happened once or twice in my 30 years as a PR professional. I missed a deadline. Specifically, I missed the deadline for writing this blog!

My schedule for planning and writing this blog had been foolproof since last October. I would start thinking about blog topics on Saturday or Sunday before my Wednesday deadline. On Monday and Tuesday I would jot down notes in a word document and on Wednesday afternoons I wrote the blog and gathered up a few photos. I usually tried to send the blog to Bob by mid-afternoon that day. There were a few occasions I knew I had something going on, or something popped up, and I sent the blog to Bob on Thursday morning. There was always some sort of communication to Bob about my timing. Not this time.

On Thursday night of this week, at 10:47 p.m. Dallas time, I suddenly realized I hadn’t done anything for the blog and I hadn’t given Bob any indication I wasn’t sending him a blog. I felt terrible as I typed a quick text apologizing. Bob was, of course, very understanding and I think this week might have flown by him as well. The thing was at the time I didn’t think this week had been that crazy, but then I thought about it.

Last weekend I spent Friday through Sunday in Las Vegas at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals. I had a lot going on from the second I landed. I traveled on Friday morning and my first event was a lunch meeting with Kalitta Motorsports’ sponsor Revchem Composites at the Aliante Hotel and Casino, which was basically right across the highway from the race track. 

My flight’s takeoff, however, was delayed by a thunderstorm that rolled through Dallas. I am glad I was on the ground because it was a very intense, but short, storm. We took off 45 minutes late, but that ate up all the buffer time I had built in to get to the lunch on time. I landed in Las Vegas at 10:30 a.m. and I needed to be at the Aliante by 11:30 a.m.. I hustled off the plane and rode the tram to the main terminal in record time. I caught the bus to the rental car center, grabbed my car, and was on the road by 11:05 a.m. but I was 30 minutes from the meeting according to Siri. Shockingly, there wasn’t a delay on the highway (if you know typical Vegas traffic you know what I mean) and I walked into the hotel just a few minutes late. I texted the Kalitta guys and gave them a heads up, so it all worked out, but it was a hectic start to a busy weekend.

The Las Vegas race had one qualifying run on Friday and two on Saturday, so after the lunch meeting I headed to the track. I made the rounds to check in with my other clients, Justin Ashley and Alexis DeJoria. Justin had some guests from his sponsor Auto Shocker at the race, as well as a couple potential sponsors. I was able to talk with them briefly and let them know Justin was one of the rising stars of the NHRA.

The Friday night qualifying session came off without a hitch and I was in my hotel room by 10:30 p.m. after a whirlwind 12 hour day. We stayed at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino, which was a new location for me. I have to say, unfortunately, I was not a fan. My floor was incredibly noisy and it wasn’t just the usual Las Vegas hallway noise. It was way worse. I wasn’t the only one with issues. A couple people in our group changed rooms because their floors were so rowdy. Saturday night was better but I am definitely getting old. 

Saturday at the track was another stacked day of activities. The Kalitta team has started doing live Zoom tours of the pit area at select events. I ran the camera, Luke Fath, Kalitta Motorsports Social Media Manager, ran the computer and Shawn Langdon and J.R. Todd did all the talking. We started in Shawn’s DHL pit area and walked through the Mac Tools pit, our hospitality area and finally arrived at J.R.’s DHL Funny Car pit area. During the live Zoom tours our sponsors got a behind the scenes look at the action and then asked the drivers questions. It has become a great tool for us to bring the sponsors and potential sponsors closer to the action.

After the tour we hosted a quick Q&A for the guests that were at the track in person. The good news is more and more people are getting the COVID vaccine, so more people are able to come to the track. The two qualifying sessions ran smoothly and we wrapped up Saturday in good positions to go rounds on Sunday. I was able to spend some time with Will Hauser, a photographer hired by FOX to get some photos of the event and their talent. He’s a great guy and he brought a whole new perspective to drag racing photography. We bumped into each other throughout the day and at the end of the event he shared some of the photos he shot. They were amazing and he was nice enough to snap a couple photos of me talking with some of the drivers. It is very rare for me to get photos of myself at the track working.

Race day flew by and Doug Kalitta grabbed another runner-up finish at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Almost all of the drivers I worked with advanced to the second round or beyond. That made for a good day of writing, since cranking out a lot of “first round runner-up” releases is tough on the brain. I flew home on Monday and went to work on other client business.

In addition to my at-track motorsports clients I also cover Major League Rugby, TMS Titanium, Texas Motorplex, and Milwaukee Area Technical College. They all had things going on this week and I think that was how I got knocked off my blog routine. The Motorplex was hosting a huge EDM concert that was expected to have 20,000+ people in attendance. EDM stands for Electronic Dance Music which is the new way of saying there’s a DJ. More than 60 EDM artists descended on Texas Motorplex for a two day camping and music festival. In addition, client TMS Titanium was ramping up a 15-year anniversary plan and MATC has a virtual car show on the horizon next month, so there was planning for that.

The virtual car show was something I helped MATC put together last year and I encourage all of you readers who have classic cars or trucks to enter this year. The website is www.MATCcarshow.com and it will be open for entries beginning May 12. Fans can post photos of their favorite ride in any of the over a dozen categories from May 12 to May 22 and on the day of the show, May 22, people can vote for their favorite ride. It is cool because you can enter from anywhere across the country or around the world. Last year there were entries from more than 20 states as well as Canada.

Anyway, to get back to why I missed my deadline, I was working on all those projects and I never made my daily “to-do” list. That was where the ultimate breakdown happened. I am a list maker. Grocery lists, interview lists, weekend task lists, and my trusty daily “to-do” list. I went into the office every morning and just started working. I won’t miss making my list again.

One big highlight from this week was catching up with my good friend and motorsports writer Elana Scherr. She was in town, actually Fort Worth, Texas, filming a segment for Hemmings.com online series Road To Improvement. She and Mike Musto are driving a spectacular green Suburban across the country and rebuilding it as they go. They were in Texas to have an air conditioning system and new radiator installed. Instead of the standard “stay in a shop and rebuild” they are driving  from city to city and making additions as they go, including a new transmission, A/C, and eventually the interior when they get to the West Coast. When it is all tricked out it will be sold at auction during SEMA to raise money for SEMA’s educational programs. Elana and I had a blast as we talked about our favorite road trips and show ideas. She was also nice enough to sign my Snake biography that she co-wrote alongside Don Prudhomme.

It was a crazy week and again I can’t believe I blew right past Wednesday and Thursday. I’ll do better next week because I will make my “to-do” list. 

Hey everyone. BW here. I just got home on this Thursday afternoon from my appointment to receive Pfizer vaccine shot #2. Had to drive back up to Fridley to get it, but the process was even smoother than it was for the first shot. Way more people getting the second one, so that eliminates one whole layer of paperwork. You just show up with your card and get poked.

Barbara is four days ahead of me in the process. When she got her second shot on Sunday, she was pretty much fine for 24 hours (other than soreness in her arm) but right at the 24-hour mark she started to feel all the after-effects. It only lasted a day, but she was pretty miserable. We’ll see how it goes for me.

The blog below, again submitted by Elon Werner who has really taken partial ownership of this endeavor while I finish my new book, is a great one about a group of professional people who bring the sport of drag racing to millions of eyeballs all year long. They are the professional photographers who cover the sport, either working as contracted free-lancers who shoot for paying clients or as staff members for various publications and websites, including National Dragster and NHRA.com. They are phenomenally dedicated and equally talented.

I’ve had great relationships with many of the “shooters” he mentions, and have hired a few for specific jobs. Mark Rebilas is a world-class photographer who shoots Super Bowls, World Cups, and Olympics for major publications. We’re all fortunate that he loves NHRA Drag Racing enough to cover our sport as well. And he’s a great guy. I hired him to shoot front and back cover photos for my book “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” because I knew he’d understand my vision for it and do something really creative. He delivered. Richard Shute was shooting photos on the NHRA tour before I ever got in the sport, and is still out there. He contributed some photos for my book as well. They were photos from the weekend we swept the Skoal Showdown and the Mac Tools US National in 2005, and I had bought them as prints back then. I worked out an arrangement with Richard to use them in the book.

And that brings up a key point Elon mentions in this blog. The photographers who cover our favorite sport aren’t doing it for fun. It may actually be fun, but they are working and making a living. They’ve invested heavily to get where they are. They need to get paid. Far too many racers or fans don’t get that. Those photos belong to the photographer. You can pay to get them, but they’re not free.

As a fun side note, when Mark Rebilas is shooting a major event, like a Super Bowl, we often play “Spot Rebilas” while watching TV. We should turn that into a drinking game, but I don’t actually play drinking games so maybe not. I love wine, but don’t need a game to make the consumption of said wine actually happen.

So, enjoy Elon’s words about the great group of photographers we’ve had the good fortune to know and work with. And click on that “Like” button at the bottom. Especially if your name is Mark Rebilas.

See you next week!

Bob Wilber

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The recent Funny Car Chaos event at the Texas Motorplex provided me the chance to add two amazing photos of the Blue Max Funny Car to my collection, thanks to the talents of Randy Anderson and Marc Gewertz. Seeing the prints in person and then hanging each of them on the wall in my photo gallery got me thinking of all the great photographers I have worked with. There are too many to make a comprehensive list right now so forgive me if I leave off your favorite sharp shooter.

When I started working at the Texas Motorplex in the early 1990s I spent a considerable amount of time pitching the Dallas Morning News on covering our events, especially the NHRA FallNationals. At the time the Chief Auto Parts NHRA Nationals was the only major motorsports event consistently held in the Metroplex of Dallas and Ft. Worth. It took a lot of time and persistent effort, but eventually the paper covered the event with some outstanding editorial content and photos.

At the 1999 NHRA FallNationals Eddie Hill suffered a huge engine explosion that created a fireball behind his Top Fuel dragster. From the press room it appeared to stretch for a hundred feet. The next day on the front of the Dallas Morning News was an amazing shot of the explosion from photographer Milton Hinnant. I sent Milton a congratulatory email on capturing such a cool image and two weeks later he asked me to swing by the newsroom. I was stunned when he presented me with a print of the photo which I immediately framed and displayed. 

I have seen some amazing shots captured by photographers like Steve Reyes, Will Lester, Mark Rebilas, Jose Carlos Fajardo, Randy Anderson, Marc Gewertz, Jerry Foss, Richard Shute, and Gary Nastase. They all had their own styles and specialties. Rebilas always seemed to be in the right place at the right time to capture some insane crash photos. He was known to stake out a location on the track based on previous history. 

Photographers like Gewertz would sometimes go to an event with an idea of an image they would like to capture. That was the case with the amazing photo he shot of the Blue Max Funny Car on the starting line at Funny Car Chaos. I don’t know all the technical specifics but he knew he wanted to get a photo lit a certain way with the reflections and accents bursting off the image. He captured it perfectly and as soon as I saw the photo on his webpage I knew I needed to buy a print. It had a magical quality to it that almost took you back in time. Photography can do that like no other media sometimes.

I have had the longest professional relationship with Randy Anderson. He’s a Dallas-based photographer that I met when I was working at the Motorplex. He was a professional photographer with a passion for cars. His primary business was fashion photography and corporate work for big companies like Mary Kay. I don’t remember how we got connected but he became a regular at shooting major events at the Motorplex and eventually started working select events for the NHRA. 

I learned a valuable lesson from Randy about photo ownership, and this is a lesson many people still need to learn. We had a huge concert event at the Motorplex called “Oldies Fest” which was sponsored by KLUV, the huge oldies radio station in Dallas. They gave away tens of thousands of free tickets and it was their major fall event. We wooed them to the Motorplex knowing that a major event like that in September could do wonders for introducing the track to new fans for our October NHRA FallNationals. The station estimated the crowd at close to 80,000 people. Randy got some great crowd shots of the largest single day event the track has ever hosted. After the event he shared a couple of the photos with me and in my naiveté I assumed I could make copies of the photos and display them in the office. I placed an order with the photo print lab that Randy had always recommended. A few days later he called me and very politely said we had a problem. He explained he had shared those photos as a courtesy and if I wanted to make prints I needed to have his permission and pay him. I was very embarrassed but realized he was 100 percent right. He had made the investment in equipment and time, done the work and produced a product. He needed to be compensated. We worked out a deal and have been friends and colleagues ever since. 

What I loved about Randy’s work was he shot digital but he also still shot on film. He would come to a race with the idea of getting candid shots of drivers and crew chiefs doing their behind the scenes work. Through a variety of processes he could manipulate a photo with color and texture that made a great image amazing. During Funny Car Chaos he was leaving the track after midnight and saw the Blue Max and the Brutus Funny Cars in the staging lanes with great lighting. He took out his camera and laid on the ground to get the perfect angle of these two epic Funny Cars. Again, as soon as I saw that photo I knew I had to have a copy.  

The great thing about all these photographers was that they love what they do and they are some of the hardest working people at the race track. They had to shoot all the professional runs, which usually meant getting shots in the staging lanes and then getting to a position trackside to get action shots. They had to plan their shots based on which lane a particular race car would be in. They also had to make the decision of being on the starting line or finish line or half-track. Every decision has the risk of missing a great shot. Between rounds they were in the pits getting shots of teams working on cars or drivers making appearances. At the end of the day they had to cull through hundreds of images and then do some minor color correcting and resizing to deliver the photos to media outlets or to their team clients. Much like a PR representative, when the race was over there was even more work to do. They had to invest tens of thousands of dollars in equipment and also troubleshoot issues when a flash or lens malfunctioned.

I have one amazing shot that Gary Nastase took of Courtney Force’s Traxxas Funny Car leaving the starting line at night. You can see the headers flames perfectly and the fuel creates a great visual effect of all the people on the starting line. Courtney liked the photo so much she bought prints of it and gave all her crew guys the image that was wrapped around a Bluetooth speaker. I had this photo in my office and streamed my favorite songs through it. It was one of the coolest pieces of functional art I had ever seen.

Photographers really earned their money when it came to taking winner’s circle photos. These were some of the most chaotic scenes and also the most fun. You had a number of groups at cross purposes when it came to winner’s circle photos. There were the marketing people that wanted to get hat photos for different sponsors which meant getting 10-12 team members to put on one hat, pose for a photos, discard that hat and don a different hat for a new photo. We call it “the hat dance.” Some teams did this for 15-20 sponsors.

The crew guys really just wanted to celebrate and have a beer or two so their interest and attention spans were very limited to say the least. The photographers were the conductors of this circus. Richard Shute and Gary Nastase are the masters of choreographing these photos. They would double check that all the crew people had the same hat and then they shouted, “Look right here!” snapped a couple shots and then yelled “Switch!” New hats were distributed and the process proceeded. 

After the hat photos there were trophy photos with various sponsors or VIPs stepping in to stand beside the driver for a celebratory photo. Crew guys would get an individual photo with their driver for significant wins like the U.S. Nationals or if it was their first win on the team. On rare occasions PR people would get a photo in the winner’s circle. Usually we were running around getting quotes or helping with hat distribution, or we needed to get back to the pressroom to start writing the post-race story. 

I will never forget my first winner’s circle photo. I was finishing up my first season with John Force Racing as a contract PR rep supporting Dave Densmore and Force was trying to win his 14^th championship. He took the title on Sunday and Densmore and I immediately began shooting out press releases and championship updates. I had to get quotes from our other drivers as well as crew chiefs so I was running back and forth to the press room. Throughout the season Force had a hard time remembering my name and many times instead of Elon he called me Ian. On one of my last trips through the winner’s circle celebration I heard Force yelling “Ian! Ian! Get over here!” I assumed he wanted to add something to his quotes or needed me to get him something. As I got closer he handed me the PowerAde world championship trophy and said, “Let’s get a picture.” I was blown away. He asked me if I was interested in coming back to the team for the next season and of course I told him I would love to. It was the worst negotiation of my career. 

Prior to that race my wife had asked if I could rework my deal with Force for an increase in my retainer. The original deal did not include traveling to the races and over the course of the season I had attended 7-8 races. I would work all week at my full time job and then fly to races on Friday afternoons and return on Sunday red-eyes or early Monday morning flights and go right back into the office. I never got a chance to talk with Force during the event and after our winner’s circle conversation I knew I was locked in for 2007 with the same deal. It was well worth it as an investment in my career, and every time I see the photo of me and Force in the winner’s circle I have to chuckle because I think Force knew exactly what he was doing. It was a heady experience to be standing with the world champ holding the trophy, and thanks to a great photographer that image was captured forever.

Thanks for reading, everyone. I’m loving helping Bob on this project and hope you’re enjoying the words I’m stringing together every week.

  

So here we go with another stellar installment from Mr. Elon Werner. I think I’ve touched on this subject once or twice over the years, but he digs in deep and delivers the goods about a subject most people, other than those on the racing tour, don’t know that much about.

It’s the lifestyle. It’s the apparel. It’s the closet. It’s how it all goes down in the world of NHRA Drag Racing. To us, it’s second nature. To those who only travel occasionally on vacations or for the odd business trip, it’s a different world.

As you’ll see below, Elon and I lived parallel lives when it came to travel for work. Same procedures, same schedules, same packing schemes, and many other things. And none of us in the PR or marketing world ever really talked about it. We all just fell into the same rhythms and routines.

We have two guest bedrooms on the lower level of our house. With no guests coming to see us for the last year, one has a closet that has become our Covid storage unit for paper towels and toilet tissue. We’re still in good shape. The other is known as the “kitty litter room” since that where two litter boxes are kept and maintained. The boyz have their habits and routines, as well, and they get out of sorts when they are interrupted.

The closet in that room is home to an entire rack of jerseys, shirts, and jackets. And it’s only a small percentage of all that sort of stuff I’ve owned or still have. There is another rack full of newer stuff from the Team Wilkerson years in the utility room. There is also my NHRA baseball jersey from the night we played the NASCAR boys in a softball game near Charlotte. I was the “manager” although that quickly devolved into just standing back and letting everyone play. Rules be damned! Yes, it drove me a bit nuts. And we killed them. I’m undefeated as a manager in softball games pitting drivers from two different racing disciplines, in which no rules were followed.

This particular closet is not restricted to racing stuff. Yes, there are a lot of racing jerseys and jackets, from the old original embroidered stuff right up to the printed (the technical word is “sublimated”) apparel.

On this one rack you can find old baseball jerseys and jackets, soccer jerseys, a signed USA Hockey jersey from Jim Craig, the goalie for the 1980 Olympic “Miracle On Ice” team, and even a football jersey signed by Lui Passaglia, the greatest kicker in Canadian Football League history. Thank you, Kim The Lawyer, for that great gift. The BC Lions are well represented in my closet.

Two of the jackets in the closet are near and dear to me, and for good reason. Throughout the Worsham Racing years, we won a lot of races. Del would often buy “winner’s jackets” for us, or we’d buy them ourselves. It got to be a superstition. It was like, “If I don’t buy one this time, maybe we’ll never win again.” They piled up into a very expensive rack of heavy coats. I’ve given at least half of them away.

But, the Labor Day weekend of 2005 was special. We had earned our way into the 8-car Skoal Showdown and we won it. $100,000 in the bank just like that. The next day, we somehow managed to plow straight through four round-wins to “double up” and win the Mac Tools US Nationals as well. That was another $75,000 plus a $50,000 NHRA bonus for winning both events. Add in sponsor bonuses and contingency prizes, and we had won about a quarter-million dollars in just 48 hours. Our first sponsorship with CSK, back in 1997, was far less than that. It was huge and none of us will ever forget it. It was also the most nervous I’ve ever been at a sporting even I was involved in. I have no idea how I held the video camera steady during the final round.

We talked about jackets and had two ideas. The first was: Can the company that makes the jackets do a Skoal Showdown version for us? The second one was: How can we make the Mac Tools US Nationals jacket even more special? We’d just completed what had to be considered a career-defining week. We needed to do something outside the box.

I called the company and asked them if they could do a Skoal jacket for us. The answer was, “Well, we’ve never done one but we can do it. We’ll have to digitize the logo but we’ll do that for you guys. You earned it. And we have some cool green leather we’ve never used before. Want to use that for the sleeves? It will really stand out as something unique.” That sounded awesome.

I then asked if we could take the regular Mac Tools US Nationals jacket and put a huge logo on the back, in addition to the stuff on the front. A regular winner’s jacket only had the race logo, the current NHRA series sponsor (POWERade at the time) and our names embroidered on the front. We wanted this bad boy to stand out in a crowd and forever remind us of what we’d done. The answer was “Cool! No problem.”

As for the packing and traveling, Elon nails it below. It’s a real benefit to know that every time you get on a plane to head to another race, the exact same stuff goes in your suitcase. Black slacks, at least three starting line shirts, t-shirts, black shoes and socks, your shaving kit, and underwear. Just like Elon, I could pack for a race in less than 5 minutes. As for my traveling clothes, I’d usually wear jeans with an embroidered team golf shirt. Sometimes, if I left the track on race day and went straight to the airport, I’d fly home in my starting line stuff. That always felt weird and kind of filthy, especially if it had been hot and humid. And speaking of dirty clothes, the first stop when I got home was the dry cleaners. They knew me when I walked in and knew just what to do with all those speckled shirts and slacks. I was such a valuable customer I got a big discount and “next day” pick-up.

So, again, I hope I haven’t stolen any of Elon’s thunder. I just wanted to add my own harmony of thunder to his. We’re kind of like Lennon and McCartney. Right?

Here’s his magic. Please click on that “Like” button at the bottom to show Elon how much you appreciate his work.

See you next week!

Bob Wilber

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Hello again, everyone!

The second NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series event is coming up in Las Vegas, which just sounds weird since throughout my entire drag racing career the first two races have been Pomona and Phoenix. There are certain rites and passages, as well as memories, that go along with the start of the NHRA season. I touched on a few of the “first day of school” memories a few weeks ago but one topic that also came to the front of my mind was something that is unique to the world of motorsports and sports in general. There are a variety of uniforms involved, and every year those uniforms have to be updated. I know people who have a closet full of suits or really nice business wear to go into the office, or even be presentable from the chest up on a Zoom call. For more than 30 years I was lucky to have most of my working wardrobe provided to me. It was a great cost savings but if black wasn’t your favorite color you were definitely out of luck.

Pomona was always the highlight to get the season started during my early years with John Force Racing because it felt like Christmas. I knew I would get two big bags full of gear, compliments of Castrol, as well as a few items from the sponsors representing our other teams. Castrol was always the big haul.

Every year everyone on the JFR marketing team received two or three very nice sweatshirts, half a dozen t-shirts, three or four long-sleeve t-shirts and a lightweight jacket. Every other year we either received a rain coat or a very nice three-in-one jacket. That bounty of gear was to insure that no matter what the occasion or personal appearance was coming up, you were expected to be representing Castrol. We also got six to eight uniform shirts which we were expected to wear every day at the races. All of these items had the Castrol logo on the front breast and many of them added a huge Castrol logo on the back. 

After a few years of this program my closet could easily have been confused for Johnny Cash’s, since my working wardrobe made me look like the motorsports man in black. The one exception was the one year Castrol gave a few of us white uniform shirts. This was a good idea in theory since the shirts looked like the Castrol GTX bottle but the race track is a dirty place. Every race it felt like I was getting a rubber marks or grease stains on my uniform, just by being around the race cars. I wasn’t working on them, but I would occasionally brush up against them or there were a couple times I received a post-win hug for John Force who was covered in clutch dust, which meant I became covered in clutch dust. Those stains did not wash out completely, no matter how quickly they were treated. I burned through about 25 uniform shirts that season. The white shirts did not return and we were back in black the rest of my career.

Over the years I accumulated quite a few sweatshirts to the point that I ran out of space to keep them. At one point I had over a dozen barely-worn Castrol sweatshirts promoting their various brands. I gave some out as gifts to my motorsports buddies but I still had quite a few filling up space in my closet. My wife asked me one day if she could take them to her job and give them to her patients. She worked as a social worker at a dialysis center and they kept the treatment room very cold so sweatshirts were a great addition for some of her patients that were on a fixed income. I said sure and loaded her down with a huge bag of shirts. I was quite pleased with myself that I had done a good deed and cleared out a lot of space in my closet. A few days later my PR brain went into overdrive and I asked my wife if she could maybe ask her patients to wear the shirts on the same day and see if she could get a photo for me to promote the generosity of Castrol. Sadly, and appropriately, that was a big “No” when you consider medical privacy issues. I totally got it and simply passed word along to my Castrol reps that I had found a nice home for their gear and they were getting maximum logo saturation in the Dallas/Fort Worth dialysis community.

Castrol spared no expense on the quality of their gear. I left John Force Racing in 2017 and I kept a couple items because they were just so nice and fit so well I didn’t want to let them go. Sponsors and team loyalties had changed so I didn’t feel comfortable wearing them out and about but I held onto them. With the switch to Camping World as the NHRA series sponsor I saw an opportunity to get a couple items back into the rotation. I reached out to Evan Jonat, with the NHRA marketing department, about getting a couple Camping World logo patches. He said no problem and had them sent to my house. As soon as they arrived I pulled out a JFR pullover and a JFR/Castrol rain coat from the back of my closet. The new Camping World logos were the perfect size to cover up the original logos and I was back in business representing the new series sponsor on two items of clothing I had been holding onto for nearly four years. This was not a new technique of course but I was very fired up to be able to get these articles of clothing back in the game.

Now that I am with Kalitta Motorsports I have been able to add their various sponsor gear to my wardrobe and it is great to represent Kalitta Air, DHL, Mac Tools, Mobil 1 and Toyota. Again lots of black but the price is right. When I left the world of motorsports, the shock of having to buy work clothes, combined with having to pay for soft drinks in an office, contributed to my return one year later. Sometimes the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. For over two decades I had unfettered access to a nearly unlimited supply of free soft drinks and bottled water in the press room or pit area. People in offices had to pay almost two dollars PER DRINK! That alone, to a Diet Coke addict like myself, was a huge shock.

I was very appreciative of all our sponsors and their willingness to provide gear throughout the season. I liked the fact that it made packing very easy and there was really no mental energy expended with the age old question of “What am I going to wear today?” Geniuses like Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day because they did not want to waste any brainpower making frivolous decisions about what to wear. Before every race I throw four black polos, four black undershirts, a couple black pullovers and dark slacks into my suitcase along with socks and underwear and I am done packing. It takes about three minutes.

I have one jacket that I will hold on to for a long time thanks to the great folks at Castrol. The year Force won his 15^th championship was also the 25^th anniversary year of Castrol being his sponsor. It was an amazing feat considering it was his first championship after the accident in 2007. At the end of the season Castrol sent a few key people amazing bomber style jackets with the 25^th anniversary logo on the back. It is the most John Force over-the-top jacket and I loved to wear when it got cold enough in Texas. It was a 100 percent conversation starter kind of fashion statement.

As a reward for making it this far in the blog I will leave you with one John Force fashion story I personally witnessed during one of the Charlotte races. The second or third year of the Spring Four-Wide Nationals, Bruton Smith invited some of the NHRA team owners and NHRA officials to a special event on Friday night at the Speedway Club, which is attached to the NASCAR track. The invitation said the dress code for the event was business casual but the race ran long that night and Force and I came straight from the track. When we walked in, the first person we saw was rival team owner Don Schumacher and at the time he and Force were in the middle of a tense portion of their relationship. Schumacher had obviously had a chance to get away and change clothes at his hotel while Force was in a clean uniform shirt, his standard black jeans and boots. As we were walking in Schumacher asked Force if he considered his outfit business casual, to which Force replied he did, because he did a lot of business wearing his uniform shirt, which I thought was a pretty good response. Schumacher followed his first question up with what he thought would be a good zinger and pointedly asked Force what he wore for serious business meetings. Without missing a beat Force told him he wore a leather jacket that said “15-time Funny Car World Champion” on the back. I about cracked up and we strolled into the party. It was classic Force and I will never forget the look on Don’s face.

That scene and memory always remind me of a great line from the must-watch HBO series “The Wire” where Omar, one of the best tough-guy characters in all of TV history, issues the line, “If you come at the King you best not miss.”

Greetings on a Thursday evening. I don’t have much to add to the top of this Elon Werner blog because I’ve never experienced anything like it. Of course, in my years in the sport of drag racing I often heard about “the good old days” when 64-car Funny Car shows were the rage, but those days were long gone once the sport went so professional and highly sponsored by the time I was on the scene. From every account I’ve heard, near and far, this event in Dallas this past weekend ranged from “spectacular” to “nostalgic” to “overwhelmingly incredible.”  Elon was there.

Enjoy! And click on that “Like” button at the bottom.

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Funny Car Chaos Was The Coolest Kind of Chaos

I don’t want to say I am jaded when it comes to NHRA races or drag racing events in general, but after nearly 30 years in the sport there is definitely a feeling of “been there and seen that.” When the Texas Motorplex added the Funny Car Chaos event over the off-season my initial thought was this would be a nice addition to their schedule. As the 2021 season got underway and word began to spread about Funny Car Chaos coming to the Motorplex I was blown away. I knew the track had a tiger by its tail when NHRA professional drivers and team members were calling me asking for more details about how they could participate. 

Two days before the race Don “The Snake” Prudhomme called me to verify there were really going to be over 64 Funny Cars at the race. He told me Funny Car Chaos was all anyone on the West Coast was talking about. I told him he definitely needed to plan on coming to the event next year. Two-time NHRA world champion Del Worsham reached out about running his Funny Car with a special tribute design for his dad Chuck, and Tim Wilkerson wanted to bring his Summit Racing Fuel Altered to make a run at the ¼ mile ET and speed world records. Scott Palmer was entered in the event and Kebin Kinsley was also planning on setting the world record in the War Wagon Fuel Altered. Suddenly not only did we have a huge Funny Car event we had an old school Fuel Altered match race between Wilkerson and Kinsley. 

When I said huge Funny Car event that was an understatement, this was the biggest Funny Car event in almost 50 years. There were 70 Funny Cars entered when we rolled into race week and while a couple teams had issues we still had over 65 Funny Cars on the property vying for 32 qualified spots. The field was wide open since there were no performance limitations and any style or type of Funny Car was welcome. Everyone was racing to the 1/8 mile which leveled the playing field considerably and as you walked through the pits you saw every era of Funny Car racing represented. It was like strolling through a combination museum, car show, and national event. 

When qualifying got underway on Friday the first session took over three hours and that was just for the Funny Cars. There were minimal stoppages for oil downs or on-track incidents, which was quite an accomplishment. It just takes a long time to run over 60 Funny Cars. They had two sessions scheduled on Friday and the first day wrapped up well after midnight. As Brad Littlefield so perfectly posted on Twitter, “if you like drag racing and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, then Funny Car Chaos was the event for you.” 

Saturday got started with one more qualifying session and then eliminations at 5 p.m. Leading up to the races I attempted to coordinate a group photo with all the Funny Cars in attendance. Chris Graves, the founder and promoter of Funny Car Chaos, had given me his blessing to try and arrange this shot but also told me there was about a zero percent chance of it coming together. He made an announcement at the driver’s meeting on Friday that before Saturday’s Q3 session he would like everyone to bring their cars to the staging lanes for a historic photo. I had photographers lined up as well as ladders for elevated shots. I was shooing people out of the staging lane area behind the tower in anticipation of a ton of race cars showing up. At the appointed time Funny Cars did begin to fill the lanes and I worked to get them bunched together so we could get as many in the shot as possible. Unfortunately, racers being racers, they were not at the event for photos. They were there to race and we only got about 30 Funny Cars to show up. The picture was cool but not overwhelming. Chris and I decided next year we would have a scheduled time on Friday to get everyone in the shot.

Seeing all the Funny Cars from the different eras was really a sight to behold. I spoke with a number of the guys running these tribute cars and their passion level was off the charts. On Friday night there was a big oil down right in front of the Lew Arrington Brutus Funny Car. That team had a mascot of sorts, dressed as a Spartan who stood at attention beside the car until it ran. That guy stood at attention for over an hour waiting for the oil down to be cleaned up. It was a performance that would have made a Beefeater guard from Buckingham Palace proud.

In addition to mascots there were also more than a few back-up girls. Again, this was a throwback event to a different time and the pageantry was half of the racing experience. The role of the back-up person was very important and not something that could just be performed without preparation and training. 

There were also a number of special guests at the race including Constance Nunes, one of the stars of the Netflix series Car Masters: Rust to Riches, who was taking in her first big time drag racing event. She was very interested in the role of the back-up girl and inquired about getting into the action. I connected her with Leeza Diehl, wife of and back-up girl for NHRA Funny Car driver Jeff Diehl, and she walked Constance through the processes and procedures for backing up a race car. It was a fifteen minute tutorial that really only hit the high points. At the end of the conversation Constance had a new appreciation for the job of backing up race cars and definitely understood it was not an entry level position. 

It was great to introduce someone like Constance to drag racing. She has a ton of experience on the car building and restoration side of the business but would like to get more involved in the racing angle too. She is a Mustang person who is interested in Fuel Altereds so I connected her with Tim Wilkerson who gave here the full tour of his race car program that was making history just about every pass down the track.

On Friday Wilkerson and Kinsley thought it would be cool to have a side-by-side exhibition run before the first Funny Car qualifying session. They had each made some test runs earlier in the day but they were going to take a shot at the world record to see who might grab some bragging rights. Both Altereds launched hard and at half-track they were welded together. In the right lane, Kinsley’s race car drove into extreme tire shake and Wilkerson’s race car, being driven by his good friend and Nitro crew chief Richard Hartman, stayed hooked up. It lit up the scoreboard with a record setting elapsed time of 4.92 seconds at 296 mph. It obliterated both ends of the Fuel Altered world record of 5.28 seconds and 286 mph. The crowd went wild and Wilkerson immediately shifted his focus to trying to become the first Fuel Altered to run over 300 mph. For Kinsley it was a tough race since he had been focusing his attention on being the first in the fours for a while and the damage his race car suffered on the run was extensive. He got back to his pit, evaluated the damage and dispatched a crew person to his Arlington, Texas, shop to grab the materials and tools needed to get back into the race. He was not out of the fight by a long shot.

On Saturday Wilkerson and Hartman were the first to break the 300 mph barrier in a Fuel Altered with a 304.53 mph run but Kinsley was able to leave with the speed record when he blasted down the all-concrete quarter mile with a speed of 304.59 mph. It was an amazing weekend of performance by both teams and made the event truly historic. Those runs showed the world the Texas Motorplex was still a facility that could rewrite the history books.

I was able to take a walk through the pit area with Texas Motorplex founder and former Funny Car racer Billy Meyer and it was a cool experience to listen to him talk about his career and also the event. One of the competitors had his 1973 “The Motivator” Funny Car, which had been painstakingly refurnished to look just like it did 48 years ago. The racer had been campaigning the car for a number of years before Meyer found out about this tribute car of sorts. Once it was on his radar he took an immediate interest. Having a tribute car has its positives and negatives. Once Meyer realized how detailed it was right down to having his name on the side he asked the owner to make some modifications for legal reasons. He didn’t want his name on a car that he didn’t have any control or interest in which is understandable. A few alterations were made and as Meyer and I looked at the car in the Motorplex pit area it looked just like it did in the 70s. The stark difference between that race car and the modern day Funny Car were startling.

It had been many years since I was truly excited about a drag race and Meyer was in the same mindset. We talked about how cool the Funny Car Chaos event was because it was so relaxed. There were safety measures in place but on the technical side it was pretty straightforward. If you had a Funny Car you could haul it out and race it. There weren’t any performance restrictions and you just needed to be able to cut a light and keep all eight candles lit to have a chance. The diversity of the race teams was also very cool to see. They ran the gamut from Del Worsham, Scott Palmer and Kebin Kinsley with full-size 18-wheeler haulers to guys with mini Chaparral trailers and pick-up trucks. In the staging lanes and on the track they were all equals. Del was No. 1 qualifier with his 2021 Toyota Camry Funny Car but he did not get the event win. He was defeated in the final by Kyle Smith and his Smith Family Racing team.

I spent two days weaving through the staging lanes and watching from the starting line and the whole time I was just happy. I was able to see my favorite nostalgia Funny Car, Raymond Beadle’s famed Blue Max. I don’t know what it is about that race car but every time I see it I could tell it was a beast on the track and struck fear into its competition.  It was great to see so many people digging drag racing and especially Funny Car drag racing. There is a very bright future for Funny Car Chaos and Chris Graves was doing it right by not over managing the series. There will be five more races across the country this season and while I don’t think any of them will be as big as the Texas Motorplex event they would definitely be worth checking out.  

Today’s headline seems like a great title for a PBS show, with a soft-talking host who’s way too smiley and kind. I’m a visionary.

On a completely different subject, I just walked back in the door after getting my first Covid vaccine and it could not have possibly gone any smoother. I was so impressed.

Barbara and I have been scouring the “Vaccination Finder” websites to find open slots anywhere in Woodbury or our surrounding communities but it’s always like being the last kids to the Easter Egg hunt. They disappear in a flash. She found an open slot up in Fridley, which is about 45 minutes away if traffic is good on I-694. Traffic is rarely good on 694, but I wasn’t going to turn it down. As it turned out, other than the over-the-road truckers trying to run everyone over, traffic kept moving and I found the clinic with no problem.

It was an amazing process. I’ve been going to doctors, specialists, and clinics since just after birth (thanks to my chronic asthma and allergies as a kid, numerous baseball injuries, and then arthritis as an old guy) and I know the drill. 90% waiting, maybe 10% meeting with the doc. This was not like that.

It was crowded. So crowded I had to circle the parking lot twice to find someone backing out of a spot. But when I walked in the door, absolutely certain it was going to be mayhem, I couldn’t believe it. They called “Next” about every 20 seconds for check-in. Then had me fill out one simple form and head up to the third floor. They even used green tape on the carpet to keep everyone from getting lost. Just follow the green arrows.

I came to the next checkpoint and thought, “OK, this is where it gets bad. Behind that door will be madness.”

Wrong again. 30 seconds after arriving I was at the front of the line and a friendly Minnesota nurse came out and took me to another nurse who was waiting for me. Needle out. Syringe filled. Shot administered. Took all of 12 seconds. Then to the post-shot room where they schedule your second jab, and where they want you to wait 15 minutes before leaving. All done in 15 minutes plus 15 seconds. Incredibly efficient, and everyone was as “Minnesota Nice” as they could be.

So glad I got this. We’ve been super-careful for a year now. I’m high risk with my history of asthma and bronchial allergies. Proud to have made it this far, masking up and following protocols everywhere with never a complaint. We’ve lost a close relative and some friends, and watched as other friends battled it mightily while going through pure hell. And people complain about wearing masks. I don’t get it.

Three weeks until my next shot and then about two weeks until the vaccine is fully ready to go to war if needed.

For the record, I got the Pfizer and the shot was not totally painless, but almost. As I posted on Facebook, I’ve been plunked in the arm with slow hanging curveballs that hurt way worse than that. And can’t even compare it taking a fastball in the arm and ending up with a bruise that perfectly mirrored the seams on the ball. Those were always fun.

So here’s Elon, writing about road trips, and rugby, and fishing. But not really all at once.

See you next week! And please give this a “Like” if you enjoy Elon’s tales. They’re always worth a “Like.”

Bob Wilber

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Road Tripping

Last weekend I took a work road trip to Austin to take in my first professional rugby match. In addition to drag racing public relations I also work with Major League Rugby, handling their national media services and public relations through Tony Fay Public Relations.

We started working with the league last August. They weren’t playing due to COVID but we worked on a media plan for 2021 as well as some social media initiatives leading up to the start of the 2021 season. They have 13 teams across the county including teams in Austin and Houston. The Austin team was playing their home opener against the Utah Warriors and I wanted to see, firsthand, what I had been writing about and promoting to national and international media.

The first surprise of the trip was realizing their stadium was inside the Circuit of the America’s footprint and overlooked the track. It was a crazy collision of my two primary sports worlds. When they are warming up they have to be careful not to kick a ball over or around the nets at the end of the pitch or it could wind up on the race course. They have had events that have overlapped and forced two teams to warm up on the same end of the pitch to wait for racing activities to wrap up.

The drive from Dallas to Austin was an easy three and half hours with minimal stoppages for construction. Once I arrived at the stadium I was able to take a quick tour with the team’s marketing director. It was a great scene with a very upbeat vibe. The weather could not have been nicer and their patio seating area was packed, well over an hour before kick-off. They were keeping their players in a bubble so I was not able to get out onto the pitch (what they call their field) but it really didn’t matter because I was so close to the action just from being in the grandstands.

I had watched a couple videos to get a better understanding of the rules but I was immediately transported back to the early 1990s when I attended my first drag race with limited knowledge of the cars and classes. I knew the play would look a lot like a combination of football and soccer but the little rules took a while to pick up. I loved the fact that they had two 40 minute halves with a running clock. There was very little time wasted but it definitely kept the action moving. The play was exciting and the tackling was brutal. These guys wore no pads and they were colliding at full speed. The sound of two enormous athletes making contact sounded like two sides of beef slamming together at 30 mph.

There were a number of times I was convinced a stretcher would be dispatched to carry a player off, only to see both players hop up and play on. The visiting team from Utah got off to a fast start but the Austin team battled back and had a chance to kick a game winning try (field goal) from about 40 yards for the win. The kick came up about three yards short and time expired shortly afterwards. Both teams walked out onto the pitch, lined up and then shook each other’s hands. It was a nice display of sportsmanship and I found out there is usually a big post-match dinner that traditionally both teams and the officials all attend to rehash the match. I can’t wait to check that out, hopefully later in the season. I can’t imagine how hungry these guys must be at the end of the day.

I am excited to be learning a new sport and also introducing it to more fans and media. The MLR has launched a free streaming online channel called, The Rugby Network, which lets fans watch all the games anywhere in the world. The only exceptions are local TV blackouts and the two matches that are aired weekly on CBS Sports Network and FS1/FS2, respectively. Their championship match will be contested on August 1 and will be aired live on CBS, which is a great accomplishment for a league that is entering its fourth season.

The road trip reminded me of some other adventures I have experienced over the years. Growing up in Texarkana, Texas, my dad and I were big time fishermen. We would fish for crappie in the fall at Millwood Lake in Arkansas and then in the spring and summer we would head to Wright Patman Lake to fish for bass. Also each summer we would take a big road trip to Canada to fish Whitefish Lake outside of Ontario. We would drive my dad’s Blazer and pull our bass boat all the way. We made this trip eight or nine times as I was growing up. It took us a couple of days to get from home to my grandmother’s house in New York. We stayed with her for a couple days and then we would make the day long drive to Whitefish Lodge. When we rolled up we could not have looked more over-the-top Texas. Most boats on the lake were small 8 to 10-foot aluminum boats with a 30 mph motor. We rolled up with a 15-foot bass boat powered by a 150 mph Mercury motor. We could go from one end of the lake to the other in 10 minutes. We fished for lake trout, northern pike and rock bass every day.

On one trip I was driving and we were headed into construction zone when I looked out my side window and saw something terrible. As I was slowing down I heard a thud and saw one of the boat trailer wheels go rolling past me. For a split second I thought I could keep going but I immediately felt the trailer start fishtailing and I pulled over. Amazingly, we were able to track down the tire and we took two lug nuts off the other tire, gingerly reattached the lost tire and made it to an exit ramp and garage. There was minimal damage to the trailer and in less than an hour we were back on the road. I will never forget seeing that tire roll past me and thinking, “That can’t be good.”

Those trips instilled a love for driving that I still have to this day. They also set me up for success with the crew guys in the drag racing world because we could talk about different tricks we utilized to stay awake when driving overnight.

The longest road trip I took when I was working with John Force Racing was during the Western Swing in 2008. I had suggested to ESPN they chronicle the team as they drove from Seattle to Sonoma since that is a decent trip with some cool scenery along the way. I was tasked with shooting the footage and Robert Hight came along to help drive one of the haulers. He started out as a crewman so this was like old times for him. We left Seattle midday and after a quick stop at a favorite beef jerky shop the caravan was on its way. The teams tried to keep at least two haulers together on the road in case one of them had an issue, and if so there would be some back up. I had never really ridden in an 18-wheeler before so it was very cool to be so elevated as we were cruising down the highway. We made a stop midway and I was treated to the most amazing skill I have ever seen a crewman execute.

I watched in awe as one of the crew guys emptied the dirty water from one of the lounge bathrooms wearing shorts and flip flops. You can guess what dirty water is but I will bring you up to speed. The haulers all have lounges with bathrooms which all the crew guys use all weekend since they can’t really get away when they are working on the race cars. For four to five days, eight to ten guys are doing their business in that bathroom. At the end of the event the tank needs to be emptied and you do this by attaching a hose to the bottom of the tank and then to a receiving tank at the truck stop. You do not want to spill anything and I would have been wearing a hazmat suit if someone asked me to execute this maneuver. I can’t remember which crew guy was handling this job but he hooked the hose up to the trailer and then attached it to the receiving tank, threw a level and just stood back. After a few minutes he carefully removed the hose and put it away. I was completely impressed. We all loaded up and continued to head south.

The teams switched drivers regularly and I was able to keep chatting with a new crew guys every three or four hours. I didn’t want to seem rude and take a nap so, basically, I was awake for almost 24 hours straight. The drive time from Seattle to Sonoma was a little under 13 hours but with a few stops and also a run through the truck wash we wound up rolling into Sonoma very early. I happened to be sharing a room with Robert for the first couple of days and I let him know I hadn’t gotten any sleep. He told me I was crazy and that I should have gotten some shut-eye, since everyone else was sleeping when they weren’t driving. Lesson learned. Robert went on to win the race and gave me a winner’s jacket which I still have.

My other favorite road trip from my time with John Force Racing was a trip I took to the March Meet in Bakersfield with John Force. The drive wasn’t that great but the stories were unbelievable. Force talked non-stop from Yorba Linda to Bakersfield. It was amazing. He told stories about his early days racing with his brother Louie and also about getting thrown out of tracks for being such a menace because his race car was in such bad shape. In the very early days his entire racing operation was a Funny Car chassis and some tools. That was it. No motor. No tires. No trailer. He had a Funny Car chassis and a dream. He drove all over the country and probably has more miles under his belt than any other Funny Car driver on the NHRA tour.

Being a road warrior was instilled in me early on thanks to my dad and our trips to Canada. Those trips made a 3-4 hour drive to see a single rugby match an easy adventure. It was worth the miles to create the memories. 

Thanks for reading, everyone. See you again here soon.

Hey gang! Happy Blog Day to everyone. Another great post from my man Elon Werner is below, and it bears mentioning that he’s doing PR work for Kalitta Motorsports, in case you didn’t know that. That would explain why he was at the starting line when J.R. Todd ran in the Funny Car final round this past Sunday, in Gainesville.

In this blog, there’s one particular story about his former boss, John Force, that is absolutely a Top-5 anecdote of all time. On multiple levels! I’m about to assume that Elon has literally an endless well of John Force and JFR stories to dip into, and we’re all good with that!

Elon is also right about the annual February trip to Pomona for the Winternationals, which sadly didn’t happen this year. It was always the “first day of school” as he references in his submission. The NHRA family is tight knit, and we all have great affection for one another, but very few of us were ever able to even see each other between the World Finals in November and the Winternationals in February. You’d spend the entire weekend walking around the Pomona property having conversations with just about everyone you’d see, whether in the pits, walking in the staging lanes, or in the media center, just to reconnect. I miss those days. They were very special.

As an editing note, I just texted Elon to tell him that the WordPress spellcheck software that runs the posts on this blog is about to throw the rods out and catch on fire when trying what to make of “firesuit” versus “fire suit” and it can’t even find a way to be consistent. In one line, it will automatically adjust “fire suit” into one word. In the next sentence it will flag “firesuit” as not even being a word, and automatically put a space in there. I even Googled “Firesuit versus Fire Suit” and came up with no definitive answer. The links were about 50/50. So I let Elon decide which way he wanted to go.

I think it’s a matter of the term being modern and really just part of the motorsports lexicon, rather than standard language. If that’s the case, go with the version actual firesuit manufacturers use, even if you have to override spellcheck like I just did in this sentence. And I thought having to figure out only one space after a sentence, rather than the two I was taught by stern Jesuit instructors in high school, was hard to adapt to!

See you next week. And remember, if you enjoy the words you’re about to read please consider clicking on the “Like” button at the bottom, if only to show Elon Werner the love….

Bob Wilber

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The NHRA season has started and it had a brand new feel this year. Normally, the first race is on the west coast at the Winternationals, in Pomona, and it would always have a real “first day of school” feel.

There would be a big “media day” event at the track on the Wednesday of race week, and then I usually conducted a media tour for my team with a driver or two on Thursday. There were also a lot of photos. Drivers needed to get updated shots for National Dragster and the FOX broadcast, plus all their sponsors wanted pictures in brand new firesuits with shiny helmets. There were photos taken inside with perfect lighting and make-up, and then teams would sometimes go out on the track to get majestic shots on-track with the snow-capped mountains in the background.  Those photos were also fun as you tried to get three or four drivers to walk in step and look straight ahead while a photographer laid on the track 50 feet away trying to get the perfect picture with all eyes open and no goofy expressions. 

One year with John Force Racing we were doing on-track photos first, followed by studio shots. We had a gap between the sessions so we decided to grab some breakfast in La Verne, which is the quaint town right next to the Auto Club Raceway at Pomona. I hopped in Robert Hight’s truck, since he offered to drive, and we waited for John Force to join us. Robert had changed into street clothes, since he had already done his studio shots the day before. A few minutes later Force hopped in the passenger seat still in his firesuit. Robert asked him why he hadn’t changed clothes, since we were leaving the property to go to breakfast before the next photo session. Force said he didn’t feel like changing. Robert just shook his head and off we drove.

La Verne has a ton of cool shops and restaurants in its small downtown area, but it also has very tight streets and parking spaces. We found a spot but it was a little tricky to get into. Force immediately jumped out of the truck and started directing traffic so Robert could make a three point turn to get his truck into the space. It was a wild scene as Force was waving cars past us and stopping others all while wearing his Castrol GTX firesuit.

We walked into the restaurant and it was packed with regulars plus a fair amount of racers and team personnel. All eyes turned to Force. We waited a few minutes and eventually got a table in the back. A few tables over, Chad Head and Del Worsham were eating and Chad did a double take when he saw us walk in. A few minutes later Del was texting me asking why Force was in his firesuit. We enjoyed breakfast and the check arrived. Robert pulled out a credit card and we were informed they were having credit card issues and it was cash only. He didn’t have any cash and I had about $20 which left us short of covering the bill. To our amazement, Force reached into the pocket of his firesuit and pulled out two $20 bills.

Two things jumped out at me right away. First, I had no idea firesuits had pockets and, secondly, I had no idea why Force had cash in the pocket of his firesuit. I asked Robert if he kept money in his firesuit and he looked at me like I was nuts. Later that day I asked Force why he had money in his firesuit and he said he had no idea. It was just one of those Force things, I guess.

Once you got past the photoshoots and media day interviews it was all about the racing. Qualifying started on Friday and as you walked through the pits you were seeing so many familiar faces it was really exciting. Again, “first day of school” stuff, every year.

This year, as we are still doing what we can to come out of the pandemic, we didn’t start the season in Pomona and we had a wait a few extra weeks to get started, but the 2021 kick-off in Gainesville was a huge success. Every state across the country has handled the pandemic differently and now more and more states are opening up, as the vaccine becomes more widely available, and Florida was in the unique position to be more open than most states and ripe for an event like the Gatornationals.

There was a lot of buzz about the first full season with Camping World as the series sponsor and they did not disappoint. A highlight of the weekend was an RV drag race on Saturday. I was shocked to see the scoreboards light up showing 19-second runs for each RV in a quarter mile. Also, I would have lost a lot of money when one RV jumped off the line well in front of the other only to be run down at the finish line in a losing effort. Two fans were selected as “team reps” with the winning rep getting to keep the RV they had driven. Of course, Camping World CEO Marcus Lemonis would never want to disappoint a potential customer and as the winner was celebrating they announced both fans would win RVs. Waterworks ensued and we were then allowed to roll into the final qualifying session for the pro classes. 

Throughout the weekend I was reminded how far drag racing has come in the last year, both on the performance side and with spectator attendance. There were full fields in all four professional categories with quality teams from top to bottom. New sponsors were announced by multiple teams leading up to the event and Kalitta Motorsports announced the addition of Rowdy Energy drink on Friday right before the first qualifying session. That was a huge deal because Coca-Cola had previously owned exclusive rights across all soft drinks, certain energy drinks, and bottled water when it came to sponsorship and on-site activation. 

In every pro category it looked like there were new faces, as a number of rookies introduced themselves to the NHRA universe. Most notably was the addition of Top Fuel racer Krista Baldwin, granddaughter of Chris “The Greek” Karamesines. Krista works for Funny Car driver Paul Lee’s McCleod Components as the Creative Director and was a big focus of attention all weekend. Josh Hart was also making his first Top Fuel start and while his debut did not receive the initial fanfare of Baldwin’s he announced his presence with authority. In the Pro Stock ranks former Summit Racing car chief Dallas Glenn made his pro debut behind the wheel of a KB Racing Pro Stock entry while Texas businessman Mike Callahan was living his own dream wheeling one of the eCarMover-backed Dodge Darts tuned and operated by Alan Prusiensky. Both Glenn and Callahan were seeing their dreams come true when they pulled up in front of nearly packed grandstands on Friday for the lone qualifying session. There was a lot of positive momentum and we hadn’t even seen any race cars on the track yet.

When race day finally rolled around, there was an earlier than usual start for eliminations so the race could fit into the FOX national window leading into the NASCAR broadcast in the afternoon. All the competitors also lost an hour of sleep from Saturday to Sunday thanks to daylight saving time. As soon as the first pair of Top Fuel dragsters fired up, all the cobwebs and any lethargy flew out of Gainesville Raceway faster than University of Florida Gator running back in the open field.

There was still some rust to be knocked off after a year-long lay-off as Brittany Force and Mike Salinas were ousted in the first round of Top Fuel and reigning champs Erica Enders and Matt Hagan had their first race of 2021 spoiled by early exits. The stars of the day turned out to be Funny Car champion J.R. Todd and rookie Josh Hart. They were both looking to make a little history in their own special ways.

J.R. was trying to become just the seventh Funny Car driver to win a championship as well as all four of the NHRA “Majors.” Most historians consider the Winternationals, the Gatornationals, the U.S. Nationals and the World Finals as the four most historic races. The now defunct SuperNationals in Englishtown would also haven been on par with those events as well but it left the NHRA schedule three years ago. A win on Sunday would add J.R.’s name to a list that included Don Prudhomme, Kenny Bernstein, John Force, Cruz Pedregon, Robert Hight and Jack Beckman.

I rarely go to the starting line, but I didn’t want to miss the chance to see a little history. When J.R. took off and smoked his tires my heart dropped but right after that Robert Hight smoked his tires in the other lane and the race was back on. J.R. is one of the best drivers when it comes to pedaling his Funny Car and he was able to get his momentum going and raced to the win. It was an emotional top end as J.R. talked about his late friend and competitor Eric Medlen, who lost his life in a testing accident at Gainesville Raceway in 2007. This was a race J.R had circled as a must win for a lot of seasons. 

After J.R. got his first Gatornationals win I was hopeful his teammate Shawn Langdon could wrap up the first Kalitta Motorsports double-up Top Fuel and Funny Car weekend in his DHL Top Fuel dragster. But, it was rookie Josh Hart’s day and he got his first Top Fuel win at his first NHRA national event. More history for sure and no one on Shawn’s team was hanging their heads, knowing we need fresh blood in the sport. Guys like Josh who work hard and have a passion for the sport are a welcome addition.

I swung by Josh’s pit to congratulate him on his win and was blown away when I saw Don Garlits just hanging out with Josh’s crew. Apparently Josh and Garlits have shops about seven miles apart in Ocala, Florida, and spend quite a bit of time together. No wonder he wasn’t the least bit intimidated by racing in his first national event. When you have the greatest drag racer of all-time in your corner, I would think that would give you quite a bit of confidence. 

One last thought on confidence and the NHRA. As the season moves along I am confident the events will get bigger and better. If you can’t get to an event you will be thrilled with the product the NHRA and FOX are putting together on the broadcast side. Sunday’s race was viewed by an average of one million viewers, throughout its three-hour “live” window, but more importantly almost two million people watched the last 15 minutes of the broadcast and they saw amazing racing action as they waited for the NASCAR race to start. I would be shocked if they didn’t tune in to the Las Vegas NHRA race. 

Thanks for reading, everyone. See you next week!

Elon

I shall quote the words of a comedic genius, the one-and-only John Cleese, who often uttered this line with deadpan sincerity on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” when he’d say “And now for something completely different.”

I’ve been mentally toying with the idea of collaborating a little more directly with my colleague Elon Werner, on this blog. I miss doing it by myself, but my new book demands so much attention I just can’t do it justice, week in and week out. So, as you’ve no doubt noticed, I typically add an introduction atop each of his submissions. That served a purpose, and kept me connected, but it wasn’t a true collaboration.

And then it hit me. Let’s actually write a blog together! Not a classic formal “Q & A” thing, but more of a conversation between the two of us. Just two friends asking questions about each other’s lives and interests. Could we do that? Are we good enough at this thing to make that even readable?  I guess we’re about to find out.

If you enjoy it, you know there’s a “Like” button at the bottom and that would be a wonderful thing to click on.

Here’s our ad lib “conversation”…

Bob- My man. I know a lot about your career from the Texas Motorplex on through the John Force years, but tell me about your childhood. It was just recently that I learned that you grew up in Texarkana, on the Texas side of the road. What was it like? What were your parents like? Just fill me in on young Elon…

Elon: I had a great childhood. As an only child I had to entertain myself growing up but my parents also made it a point to include me in events and quality time with other adults, even as a young kid. Both of my parents worked for universities, which led to our move to Texas. They were both working at Auburn University in Alabama when I was born. Ironically, I was born on Columbus Day in Columbus, Georgia and was almost named Christopher. My dad was offered a position at East Texas State University in Texarkana, Texas when I was about four or five so we moved and I have been a Texan ever since.

Texarkana was a cool town, since it was split down the middle by State Line Avenue. One side of the city was in Arkansas and the other side in Texas. The courthouse straddled the state line so one side handled Arkansas business and the other side of the building handled Texas. The Arkansas county was allowed to sell beer and wine and the Texas side was a dry county, so State Line Avenue was a funny street. One side had all the beer stores and the other side had all the fast food joints. 

We lived in four houses while I was in Texarkana. The first one was in Pleasant Grove which was sort of outside of town. We moved to a smaller house on Holiday Lane when I was in elementary school and I got a trampoline. I loved bouncing and flipping on that thing. One time I wrecked my bike and managed to cut a gash in my ankle. At the hospital they stitched me up and as they were discharging me I asked them what I could and couldn’t do. They said I could pretty much do anything I wanted, so as soon as I got home I got right on my trampoline. An hour later we were back in the ER re-stitching my ankle since I had blown out all the stitches.

We moved to a bigger split level house when I was in junior high and that was great. My parents were big entertainers. They would host an annual wine and cheese party and it was kind of a big deal in Texarkana. They would drive to Dallas and get cases of wine and specialty cheeses for the affair. It was a really cool mix of people from the University, my mom’s consulting business, our church, neighborhood people, and people my parents knew professionally. I was encouraged and expected to make the rounds talking with the adults. This is the best gift my parents ever gave me. The ability to carry on a conversation with a stranger, or having the confidence to introduce myself to someone new, was a skill I continue to try and perfect.

Bob- So tell me more about the split of the town into the Arkansas side and the Texas side. Must have been a heck of a sports rivalry, right?

Elon- The high school rivalry between Texas High and Arkansas High was ranked by ESPN a few years ago as one of the fiercest in the country. People would egg your house and we camped out in front of the high school to “protect” our marquee which had a Tiger on top. One year it was painted red by some Arkansas kids so we tried to never let that happen again. My senior year I bought a pig’s head from a butcher and had it on a stick at the football game. By the second quarter I realized that was a terrible idea. The smell just about allowed me to have my own section.

Elon- OK, your turn. I visited St. Louis a couple years ago with my family and really fell in love with the city. The history and also all the different neighborhoods. I know you have been away for quite a while but it must have been a great place to grow up and then to go back and visit. What, for you, has changed the most and also stayed the same?

Bob- I honestly believe St. Louis has never been better. It’s in its glory days right now, and I love going back. We’ll likely never leave Minnesota and all of our great friends here, but if something ever came up that directed us to move to St. Louis I would do it in a heartbeat.

All the way up through high school, St. Louis seemed stuck in a kind of malaise. So much great history, so many incredible things to do and see, but it was just rough around the edges. Like it needed a fresh start or a deep cleaning.

It got the first “fresh start” in the early 60s when a dreary old downtown full of brick warehouses left over from the riverboat days, was cleared away for the construction of the Gateway Arch. I watched it go up, section by section, as a kid. At the same time, Busch Stadium (what we now call Busch 2, the circular park with the arch-shaped openings in the overhang) was also being built. It was like taking an eraser to the downtown chalkboard and starting over. It made a huge difference.

But, despite the Arch, the sports, and the restaurants, downtown never really was a place people lived. They worked there, then went home to the suburbs, just like my mom did when she worked for the Cardinals at Busch and we lived in Kirkwood. I wasn’t sure that was ever going to change.

It has now. It’s not Manhattan by any stretch, but people do live downtown. It’s got a totally different vibe to it and I love it. And now, the Arch and its renovated grounds have been named a National Park. Up until recently, it was “just” a National Monument. Having a National Park in your downtown brings in a large amount of new tourists. And the renovation of the grounds included, finally (after only about 50+ years,) the fact the Arch is now directly connected to downtown with a beautiful park. Up until now, I-70 sliced between downtown and the Arch, making it a really unpleasant walk from any hotel or the ballpark.

And when the current Busch Stadium was built, we heard grand plans about “Ballpark Village” being built just north of it. Throughout my life, those “visions” always sounded great but never seemed to happen. It took Ballpark Village a while to happen, but now it’s a fabulous mixed-use area with condos, apartments, and entertainment. When the Cardinals are in town, it’s the place to be. Imagine having a condo right next to Busch Stadium, and sitting on your balcony when the Redbirds are playing the Cubs.

On top of all that, all the truly great stuff is still great. Forest Park is better than ever. The Zoo. The Art Museum. The Muny Opera, the Fox Theater, and on and on. Plus all the various entertainment and dining areas all around the city and the suburbs. And man, the St. Louis-style pizza and toasted ravioli still rock my world. I’d live there again tomorrow. I truly would. I miss it enormously.

Bob- Now back to you, Mr. Werner. I know you spent some time with the Dallas Mavericks. Tell me more about that, the NBA experience, and what the players and staff members were like. Right now, I’ve just finished Kevin Garnett’s book “KG – A to Z” and it was fabulous. Very open, extremely honest, and a real view into a basketball world I really know almost nothing about, other than as a spectator. I highly recommend it.

Elon- I’ll have to read that book. Sounds great. We have talked about internships and mentors before but getting the job as an intern at the Dallas Mavericks was one of the those opportunities that changed my life. My bosses, Kevin “Sully” Sullivan and Tony Fay, taught me so much and I am still working with them today on projects. Seeing the inner workings of a professional basketball team was eye-opening. There was so much that went on and the players, even in the early 90s, were totally taken care of by people in the organization.

Everyone working for the team wanted to be there, so the atmosphere always had a cool energy. The Mavericks, at the time, were in the process of becoming terrible. The 1992-93 season we went 11-71 and then the next season we went 13-69. There were times when they would make announcements for everyone in the upper level to just come down to the lower level so the stands looked better on TV.

The relationship between the players and the staff was also an interesting dynamic. Staff members helped the players find houses or apartments. There were sponsorship deals that provided cars or trucks for some players in exchange for endorsements. This was all really early in the endorsement game so players were doing things for the team rather than themselves.

I became close friends with the late Sean Rooks and I was at his house one day, and he had three huge TVs, still in the boxes, in his living room. He was named player of the month three months in a row and the award was a TV. I asked him what he was going to do with all those TVs and he offered me one. I didn’t need a TV but I told him I bet he could trade one or two of the TVs for an entertainment center or another appliance. He wound up calling the appliance store and swapped two of the TVs for a new fridge and stereo. 

The hours working for a professional team were very long which should be no surprise. I mean, you know that, right? On game day most people on the team got to work by 8 a.m. and didn’t leave the arena until well after midnight. I know there were some staffers that would just spend the night at work on back-to-back game days. Not very glamorous but you were on the inside. It was awesome.

Elon- Let’s shift to baseball. The clubhouse and dugout are two almost secretive societies in my opinion. I would love to hear about two of your experiences living in those worlds. The first being around your dad’s teams and then as a college or pro player.

Bob- To a great degree, that theory is correct. But, if I told you anything from those days I’d have to kill you and then go into the witness protection program. That’s surprisingly not true, but seriously, it’s a fraternity and those guys are your brothers. You’re literally with them every single day, through good times and bad. Wins and losses were team things. We all won and we all lost. Never anything individual. Hugs were shared and tears were shed together, with no self-consciousness or reservation. And bus rides. So many bus rides. So many shoulders to sleep on, deep in the night as the hum from the diesel hopefully rocks you to sleep. You look out for each other, but no one takes kindly to guys who aren’t loyal to the collective. That can be a problem.

The thing I most remember about my dad’s teams at the Triple-A level, was how close-knit the guys were. I might have been too young to really understand the old line “What you see here, what you say here, what you hear here, let it stay here when you leave here.” I think they took some care in not getting too graphic around the manager’s teenage son. But I knew later in life that minor league ball could be really tight and really bonded, or really mercenary, when everyone was just looking out for themselves.

You’d think at Triple-A that it would be the latter, but my dad’s teams always seemed really bonded and the guys were all truly good friends. They ended up as good friends of mine.

In college and pro ball, it was something I was experiencing myself rather than witnessing as the manager’s kid. There was definitely a “look out for each other” mentality. Once, in college, we were playing down at the University of Evansville when a big storm rolled in. We were getting drenched in the dugout, so we ran for the bus to ride out the storm in there.

In the bus we told stories about exploits that were strictly among us. That was just understood. We were a team. Later in the week, we heard one night, at our Edwardsville hangout Spanky’s, that one of our teammates was telling a batgirl about the day on the bus in Evansville. He was throwing all of us under that bus, making it clear we were bad guys, and I think he was just trying to impress her by illustrating that he was the only really “good guy” in the room. That did not go over well with the boys. That created a rift that never really healed. Ever. He wasn’t ostracized but he knew we had lost trust in him. On a drunken Thursday night he put himself ahead of the team.

An aside: Spanky’s was a great place, but not for any specific reason. It was just your basic bar and always packed, but almost all the SIUE athletes from the various teams would be there every Thursday night, and if my baseball buddy Kent Hendrickson was working the bar that night, he would pour draft beers in a very inexpensive and liberal way. Like, if you ordered a glass he’d hand you an empty one, but then also hand you a full pitcher to go with it. We rarely spent more than a dollar to be there all night and the local girls were always around, eyeing us up. It was very different then, compared to anything you’d experience now. What a strange and “wild” era that was.

Are any of us proud of stuff like that? No. A little embarrassed is more like it. But, it was the 70s and times were very different. We were clearly a product of those times. And, we were baseball players. It was a lot like “Bull Durham” in many ways.

Bob- OK, so tell me about your time in the DFW area. I’ve been to your current house in Mansfield, and it’s wonderful. How many other places have you lived in or owned in the area?

Elon- When Jennifer and I got married I was working at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis and she was working as a social worker for a dialysis center in Ft. Worth.

We bought a house in Cedar Hill, Texas because it was right in the middle of our commutes. It was an 1,800 square foot one-story in a nice neighborhood with an elementary school around the corner and a fire station three blocks over. I think we had planned on staying there for a few years and wound up living there for over a decade. We realized the school district was just OK, and our kids had gotten into swimming so we were driving 40 minutes round-trip to swim practice in Mansfield, four nights a week for practices that lasted an hour and half. We were also driving our kids to a charter school that was 45 minutes away, but we split the carpooling with two other families. We decided we could “buy back” almost two hours a day by moving to Mansfield, so we started looking for houses.

We got incredibly lucky to get our current house. It was a house that was in foreclosure and was a wreck. The previous home owners were having some serious issues and we got a great deal. Our neighbors are amazing and thanks to the rebound in the housing market our house has tripled in value. We will never realize that increase since I am never moving. I love to entertain and our house has the perfect flow and layout. We are planning some remodeling improvements in the coming years once the kids get out of college but we could not be happier. 

Mansfield is growing but still isn’t nearly as congested as north Dallas. We are 20 minutes from downtown Ft. Worth or downtown Dallas so when we can start going out again we will have tons of options for restaurants and entertainment.

Elon- Speaking of homes and areas… Being from Texas my whole life, the fact that you and Barb have lived in cities/towns that have winter amazes me. Like real seasonal winter… How do you handle that and is it something you just grew up around and have adapted to? I have no idea about winterizing or snow plows… I think I would last about two weeks if I had to constantly clear snow to get to my mailbox or out of my driveway.

Bob- Growing up in St. Louis we definitely had four seasons, and we’d get the odd below-zero night about every year. But mostly, winter was just dreary. We got a lot of sleet and freezing rain and it seemed the sun would never come out. I can recall, after college, thinking “If I’m going to live some place that has winter, I’d like it to be a real winter. Where people embrace it and enjoy it. The dreary stuff is just depressing.”

As it turned out, I graduated from SIUE in 1980 and married Barbara in 1997. Then it only took us five more years to move to Minnesota. It’s everything we thought, and hoped, it would be.

Yes, it’s cold for a few months. And we can sometimes have more than four feet of snow piled up on the curb when nothing melts but the storms keep rolling through and the city plows keep coming by. But people here embrace it. You have to. You can’t be a hermit. This stuff is around from November to April. And it’s not a shutdown calamity if we do get a foot of snow. The Twin Cities collectively enjoys an absolute army of snow plows. You should see MSP Airport in a blizzard. It’s a choreographed ballet of snow plows and de-icing trucks. Here, our neighborhood hires a company to clear our drives, walks, and porches. We just hunker down with a fire in the fireplace and binge-watch TV. It’s not the end of the world.

I learned a few tricks of the trade the hard way, after we originally moved here. Like not just turning off the sprinklers in the fall, but having them professionally blown out. That next spring, I turned the sprinklers back on and we had geysers all over the yard. Cost me way more to fix that than if I’d just hired someone to blow them out. What did I know? Not much.

You’ve got to turn off the outdoor spigots, but new houses here are almost always built to make that easy. You can get to the valves and the back-flow caps with no problem and no ladder.

The most mundane thing is also my least favorite. Our furnace has a diverter, so you can send most of the air either upstairs, downstairs, or both. In the winter, we send the hot air to the lower level because it will rise and keep the upstairs warm. We do just the opposite in the summer, when we send the AC to the upper level and let it sink. It’s not just the diverter though. I go around and open or close all the vents in the appropriate level. Downstairs, all the vents are ceiling mounted. I have to pull the ladder around to about a dozen vents to either open or close them, and it’s not just a lever. They’re round and they screw in. It takes about five minutes for each vent. This ex-baseball player’s right shoulder doesn’t like that.

But it’s OK. It’s better than OK. We love it here. And when the sun is shining, just like it is today, it really doesn’t matter what the temperature is. And as warm as it’s been the last week (we’ve been in the 50s and almost all the snow is gone) we never forget one specific fact: The two snowiest months of the year here, in terms of total inches, are March and April. This time of year, it’s warm enough for the snow to be very wet and very heavy when it comes down in copious quantities. Just yesterday, it poured rain all day. I bet we got three inches or more. It was a deluge! Had it been about eight degrees colder, we would’ve gotten about 18 inches of snow. Missed it by “That Much.” This is typically when we get our blizzards. So, we’re not over the hump yet.

Bob- Back to you. Now, walk me through how you ended up at John Force Racing and then how that job evolved. I’m assuming you wouldn’t go back and change a thing if you could. That’s actually a dumb thing to say. None of us can go back and change anything so why worry about it, right?

Elon- I started at JFR as the assistant to Dave Densmore. Dave was handling the Castrol PR and as Force’s operation grew Dave just started doing all of the PR for all the teams even though he was not technically a JFR employee. He worked for Castrol. I was the first PR person Force ever paid out of his own pocket.

The first couple of years I basically just followed Dave around and listened and learned. I would write releases and Dave would improve them dramatically because he was, and still is, an amazing writer, both technically and creatively. My role evolved as Force started trusting me more and I got comfortable pitching ideas and trying to get us mainstream media. The job was really so much more than traditional PR. I wrote releases and coordinated interviews but I also spent time with sponsors in the pits, social media became a thing and then there were the dinners. Force liked having people he was comfortable with join him at every family dinner or sponsor dinner. I got to meet a lot of interesting people and that was the great thing about JFR. There was always something going on.

I think if I could change anything, I would have done more things with Force. He was a media machine. There were times when I could have pushed harder to get more media but I didn’t want to work seven days a week. I have 100 percent confidence Force would have done more media too, but there were times when I personally had to take a mental break. Now I look back and think I should have gone to more NASCAR events with him or pushed to go to an Formula One event to increase our coverage and meet more media people.

Elon- While we’re on the racing side, I have had the luxury of working for big teams but I always admired the small teams who were doing it all with a skeleton crew. Guys like Tim Wilkerson, who asked you to do certain defined jobs and then other duties as assigned. I think your breadth of experience is greater than mine. I never got to film on the starting line. What would you say your job titles were with Wilk or even the early days with Del Worsham?

Bob- I think I’m the luckiest guy in NHRA history, in terms of the stuff we do, because I worked with Del and Tim. Two incredible guys. My title was “Team Manager” for both organizations, and that was born out of necessity. I was originally part of Worsham Racing, back in 1997, as a PR guy. But, I certainly jumped in to help wherever Del needed me. Then, within a year, the CSK sponsorship was growing fast and it was the marketing guy on their side, my counterpart Joe Spica, who told Del and me, in no uncertain terms, “Someone needs to directly manage this whole thing. Right now, it’s just a bunch of people doing their jobs however they want to do them and it doesn’t seem like things get communicated very well. Del, you should make Bob the manager for the whole team.”

I was honored, and excited, and kind of scared. I had no experience doing that in a racing setting. But I dove in head-first and learned it on the fly. Within a year, we had processes in place, a crew handbook that laid out all the rules, far better communications between the Worshams and the crew, and my relationship with all the CSK people was solid. I spoke to Joe Spica on the phone literally every single day. And when Jim Schoenberger joined the CSK marketing effort, I made a friend I will have for life. What a “Renaissance Man” he is!

Until the end, in 2008 when O’Reilly bought CSK and we lost the deal, I was closely involved in anything that had to do with presentation, hospitality, logistics, PR, communications, and management. I even installed our associate sponsor decals and still fret when I walk though my office and see a slightly crooked one in a photo on the wall. DAMMIT!!! And there was the video job. For all those years I was the closest team member to the car. I was right next to it at the starting line, but pretty much had the worst view, looking through that tiny viewfinder. It all changed my life and after dreaming that all I’d ever be was a baseball player since I was a tiny kid, it was totally unexpected. I think you and I have that in common, Elon. We never imagined being in drag racing, but we both made huge marks in the sport. I think we should both be pretty proud about what we’ve done.

When I joined Tim Wilkerson, it was slightly different. He’d always been very hands-on and really didn’t need a lot of management in terms of what he and the crew were doing. They had that down. I managed the hotel reservations and Krista Wilkerson still thanks me for one policy I instituted. We would no longer stay in any motel that had a number in its name, just because it was $5 cheaper.

Working for Tim was much more a PR effort and a sponsor liaison job. And I loved it. I bonded with Dick Levi and the Levi, Ray, & Shoup group right away. It was a wonderful relationship and they really appreciated what I did. Don’t ever discount the value of being appreciated. It’s pure gold for someone who pours their heart into their work. And man it was fun.

We had a dedicated hospitality person, Annette, who was super talented so I didn’t have to worry about ordering food or drinks, keeping the buffet line going, or checking people in. I just had to be the between-rounds entertainer. I absolutely loved that. I was kind of a natural. Tim, who didn’t hand out compliments freely, once told me, up in his office in the transporter, “I really can’t hear what you’re saying out there, but I hear them laughing and clapping so keep it up. They seem to love it, and Dick loves you.”

Elon- This was cool. Let’s do it again, and let me say how much I appreciate that you’ve let me get involved in your blog. It’s a new thing for me, and I’m learning new stuff every week.

Bob- I agree. We should do this again as soon as we can. Thanks buddy. You’re the man!

Hey everyone! This one is fun, and I’m going to add my 2.5 cents up here at the top before you get to enjoy Elon Werner’s trip back through time to talk about all the cars he’s owned and driven.

It’s a fun subject, and while my list is substantially longer than his we still have a lot of parallels. Both of us spent many years in the top level of motorsports, but neither of us were really “car guys” before we did that. Just like Elon writes below, when I interviewed to be the General Manager at Heartland Park Topeka, I knew absolutely nothing about racing, other than watching the Indy 500 on TV. Like Elon, I’d been exposed to NHRA Drag Racing mostly because I was a devoted watcher of ABC’s Wide World of Sports and I just enjoyed the wide variety of things they showed. That’s the only reason I even knew names like Don “The Snake” Prudhomme, “Big Daddy” Don Garlits, and Shirley Muldowney.

I learned fast though, and so did Elon.

Rather than duplicate his fantastic blog, I’m just going to list all the cars that have been my daily drivers (with some highlights or low lights as explanations) not counting the family 1971 Impala I could drive right after I got my license. It wasn’t my car. It was my parents’ car. I had to ask (beg for) permission to use it to go on a date.

My history goes like this:

1973 Volkswagen Beetle. 4-speed manual. My parents bought it, brand new at a little over $2,000, for me as a graduation gift, although they did so at the beginning of my senior year in high school because I’m pretty sure my mom was tired of driving me 12.5 miles to school. It was powder blue. I installed a cassette deck in the glove compartment and glued red shag carpet to the floor in front of both front seats. Loved that car.

1976 Triumph TR-7. 4-speed manual. Sexiest car ever. Also worst car ever, in terms of quality. I drooled over the TR-7 for months before I could convince my folks to let me trade in the VW and pay the $150 per month payment myself. It spent more time in the shop than on the road, and I got it brand new. But damn, it was so cool.

1978 Ford Fiesta. 4-speed manual. After two years of battling issue after issue with the TR-7, I just wanted a reliable car. The Fiesta, which was built in Germany and imported to the US by Ford, was that car. It was impervious to snow. My college roomies and I actually tried to get it stuck a few times and couldn’t.

1980 Chrysler Cordoba. Automatic. No, I never met Ricardo Montalban and it did not have fine Corinthian leather seats. I had just taken a job as a Scouting Supervisor for the Toronto Blue Jays and the Fiesta was not going to cut it as a scout’s car, on the road for 250 days a year. Basically a big boat but I got it super-cheap. A guy I played minor league ball against, Barry Jenkins who had been with the Twins, was working as a regional sales manager for Chrysler. He sold me the Cordoba, which had been a company executive car, for $3,600. It had only 8,000 miles on it.

1981 Datsun 200SX. 4-speed manual. The Cordoba drove me crazy. It was such a behemoth and it guzzled gas. So I downsized to a very sporty Datsun (they hadn’t transitioned to Nissan yet) and it was a great car. Way fun to drive. I piled about 60,000 miles a year on it. Scouting will do that.

1984 Toyota Celica. After a couple of years of scouting abuse, I sold the 200SX and bought a Celica. It was the model with the headlights that laid flat along the tilted grill (although face up) when off, but would pop up when you turned them on. Awesome car. I drove the wheels off it my last three years of scouting. Put at least 140,000 miles on it. Never an issue.

1986 Plymouth Voyager. Automatic. Minivan. I’d left baseball and taken a job with Converse Shoes, which came with a company car. The best thing I can say about it was that Converse paid for all the gas, it carried all the shoes I ever needed to have with me at any time, and the company really didn’t care where we drove our cars. They just handed us the keys.

1986 Saab 900 Turbo. 4-speed manual. My dream car. I’d coveted the Saab for years, but could never afford one. When I got the Converse job, I was making pretty good money and had the free company car, so I went and test drove a 900 Turbo. It was love at first rev. I even took delivery of it in London (as in England) with Saab’s European Delivery Plan. That chopped $3,000 off the price, and thanks to Holiday Inn’s Priority Club I had earned a free week at any Holiday Inn and airline tickets to get there. I’d never been to Europe, so I chose London. Drove it around France and Belgium, too, and dropped it off at the docks in Antwerp. Saab shipped it to Houston for free. The single greatest car on this list. Magnificent. I loved it but only drove it part-time. The Voyager was always full of shoes. The Saab was for fun. And so many Swedish quirks to this car. Ignition slot was by the gear shift in the center console, and you had to put the car in reverse after turning it off, or the key wouldn’t come out.

1988 Chrysler LeBaron. Automatic. Yeah quite a transition, right? I’d left Converse and gone to work for my brother Del’s sports marketing company. One of our biggest clients was Chrysler and their brands. Let’s just say there was a “suggestion” that all of us working on any of those projects should drive Chryslers. Bye-bye Saab. It was wonderful to know you. Sad that a year later the agency landed a big contract to do marketing for Audi. I was stuck in a 5-year lease on the LeBaron.

1991 Corvette. 5-speed manual. My company car at Heartland Park, as part of our Chevy sponsorship. It also doubled as the pace car for road races. An absolute rocket. I’m lucky I survived.

1993 Toyota Corolla. 4-speed manual. I’d left Heartland Park and a year later struck out on my own as a PR and Marketing guru, who basically knew nothing. I was trying to pay the rent and not starve. I needed a cheap car that would get me around. The Corolla did fine. Definitely not sexy.

1994 Toyota Camry. I joined the Kansas City Attack indoor soccer team and was provided a company car. It was white, and plastered with Attack decals. But I liked it. Comfortable and reliable. And the decals gave it a “head-turning quotient” of 9.5 on a 1 to 10 scale.

1996 Saab 900.  4-speed manual. I went to work as GM for the Indianapolis Twisters indoor soccer team. Big money for me. Straight back to the Saab dealership I went. Love at second sight.

1995 BMW 325i. 4-speed manual. When I met Barbara and moved to Chapel Hill to live with her, she was driving an older Miata. We sold that, she got the Saab, and I bought a used BMW. Very fun car, but whoever owned it before me wasn’t kind to it. I later sold it to Del Worsham. He enjoyed it too.

2001 Pontiac Trans-Am WS6. Automatic. Del Worsham and I each got one of these to drive in 2001, thanks to our great sponsorship from Pontiac. Another absolute rocket. Like with the Corvette, at Heartland Park, I was lucky to survive in this monster for a year, but damn it was fun to drive. Top speed for me? Around 110 mph. Del got his up to 115 and said “Then the front end started feeling really light, so I lifted.”

2002 Saab 9-5 Turbo. I don’t remember the transmission. After the Pontiac deal, Barbara and I went hunting for another Saab. Her negotiating skills had the dealership team begging for mercy. After six hours, the GM of the dealership said “OK, we’ll go with that price. Just go out back and pick out any car you want. I’m hungry and I need to go home.” She got to drive it more than I did.

2003 VW Passat. Automatic. With Barbara driving the Saab, I needed a good car. The Passat was fine. A really good car.

2005 VW Touareg. Automatic. We traded the Passat in on the Touareg so that at least one of our cars would have room to haul mulch home from Home Depot. Good car, though. Barb had an Audi A6 by then.

2012 Audi Q5. Automatic. When we moved out to Spokane, I upgraded to an Audi, the “big brother” to the VW. Great vehicle. Really great.

2015 Lexus NX 200T F-Sport. Automatic. My current car. Another rocket dressed up like a compact SUV. Absolutely love it. I’ve only put 40,000 miles on it in six years, so we’ll see where we go from here. We are now officially a “two Lexus family” because Barbara owns an ES-350 sedan. We love the brand, the customer service, and the cars.

Wow. I guess I’ve owned or driven a lot of cars. I even left a few out! Hope I didn’t steal any thunder from Elon’s submission below. It’s fun and funny. And yes, we still have a plan to do something together in the near future that will be very different and hopefully very fun.

Oh, and on the book front I just finished another chapter and it was 27 pages long! I think that’s a record. I think it topped out around 16,000 words. We’re getting there!

Remember, hit that “Like” button at the bottom if you enjoyed any of this.  See ya! Here’s Elon!!!

Bob Wilber

PS: I think my 2.5 cents ended up being about $25 worth. Don’t judge. I got all caught up in the memories…

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I have worked in motorsports for almost 30 years and a lot of people assume I grew up as a car guy. Most of my contemporaries in the industry have had a life-long passion for either racing or car restoration. I didn’t really know much about drag racing until I started working at the Texas Motorplex in 1993. I had vague memories of watching ABC’s Wide World of Sports and seeing Don Prudhomme, “Big Daddy” Don Garlits and Shirley Muldowney on TV. When I interviewed with track owner Billy Meyer I had no idea he was a former racer and I thought all drag strips looked like the Texas Motorplex. To say I wasn’t a car guy didn’t really reflect my level of ignorance when it came to cars and racing. 

I did however have a great history with cars. When I turned 15 I was able to take driver’s education and got a provisional license because I had a part-time job. I took the driving test in my mom’s Pontiac Bonneville with a Texas State Trooper riding shotgun. My hometown of Texarkana, Texas was a decent sized city but everyone still knew everyone and since my parents both worked for the local college their network of friends was pretty broad. As soon as I passed my driver’s test my dad was waiting at the DMV to hand off the keys to my new daily driver, a 1970 maroon convertible Stingray Corvette with a 454 under the hood. It was an automatic and felt like a rocket taking off when you hit the gas. As I was about to get behind the wheel, the State Trooper that gave me my driving test rolled by in his black and white sedan, rolled down his window and said he was sure he would be seeing me again real soon.

About two hours later the same trooper was giving me my first speeding ticket for going 75 mph in a 55 mph zone on the main highway. He didn’t even try to hide his joy as he handed over the ticket.  I drove that Corvette my whole high school career. It was a terrible and spectacular car to have as a teenager. I loved driving it around town with the top down, but any minor infraction was reported back to my parents within hours. There was a network of people that took great joy in letting my parents know that I was speeding or maybe doing a short burnout.

The fastest speed I ever reached behind the wheel was just over 125 mph on the flattest and straightest stretch of State Line Avenue. I had the top down and it was a perfectly clear day. When the speedometer needle crept past 125 mph I felt the front end bounce just a little and immediately lifted off the gas pedal. It was an exhilarating feeling and I didn’t experience anything close to that feeling until I spent a day at the Frank Hawley Driving School when I worked at the Texas Motorplex.

My dad sold the Corvette a few years after I graduated from high school and I know it was hard to let that car go. At one time he had the 1970 Stingray and a white 1967 Corvette that was a five speed and would do about 90 mph in second gear. He had the back quarter-panels cutout to run bigger slicks on the rear end. The maroon Corvette was as close as I ever got to driving a real hot rod.

After the Corvette I bought a Nissan Pulsar and I drove that car into the ground. Literally, I was driving to a college party and there was a huge drop off that I didn’t see. I hit it at about 30 mph and when my car touched down it tore the bottom of the oil pan off. I was able to drive it to a parking spot where it sat for two months before I could get it towed to a mechanic in Sherman, Texas. I was able to get it repaired and the mechanic actually bought it from me. 

After the Pulsar I got a used Pontiac Grand Prix which I again didn’t take care of very well. I learned a valuable lesson about not ignoring the check engine light. For some reason I kept putting off getting the oil changed for a couple months. That was a terrible idea in case anyone was wondering. Eventually your engine block will crack and your car won’t function properly. You will also have to face down the withering stare of a Pontiac service manager when you told him you can’t remember the last time you changed your oil.

The last car that I bought for a while after the Grand Prix debacle was a used Ford Tempo and that car carried me through college and into the workforce. I drove the Tempo for a couple years as I sold cell phones in Texarkana and looked for a way to get back into the sports PR game. I was hired by the Texas Motorplex and as my first year at the track was wrapping up I was given a raise and most importantly, I was provided a company car. It was actually an Isuzu Rodeo and it was hands down the best company car deal ever. The Buz Post dealership in Arlington was on an Isuzu program where they made more money per car selling lease returns, so I got a new Rodeo every 3,000 miles. I was constantly driving a new car. When my odometer rolled over 3,000 miles I simply drove it back to the dealership and they gave me a brand new Rodeo. It was amazing.

A few years after that deal started they upgraded me to a GMC Yukon. I got a new one every year and again it was so cool to have a big truck, especially as my family started growing with the addition of kids. When I eventually left the Motorplex after nearly ten years I was faced with the cruel reality of having to find my own car. Luckily my in-laws were in the market for new wheels so I was able to buy their old Honda Accord. They gave me a sweet deal and again I drove that car for years.

My current ride is a far cry from the 1970 Corvette. In 2003 when we had two toddlers I bought my wife her dream car, a new Honda Odyssey. It was the perfect mom mobile and she drove that minivan for years. We paid it off in about four years and I have been driving it as my daily driver for about 15 years. We rolled over 300,000 miles on Big Blue as he is known in our neighborhood. He looks like he has 300K miles and he has his own odor from days and days of carpooling swimmers and little leaguers to practices, games and meets. I wouldn’t trade him for anything since he is so dependable. 

The only time he let me down was when my daughter was in the sixth grade and I we were headed to Austin to see Taylor Swift in concert. That was a huge daughter / dad event. One of my all-time PR buddies, the great Jay Wells, got me two free primo tickets. We were about an hour out of town when the transmission gave out. I called AAA and my wife. My wife brought me her car and we swapped vehicles. I kept heading south with my daughter and my wife waited for the tow truck. My wife is the best and she understood we could not miss the concert, since Abby had told all her friends she was going to the show to see Taylor Swift. We made there just in time and it was a magical night. We put a used transmission in Big Blue the next week and he has kept on trucking. My daughter is a junior at Mizzou now and I plan on driving this minivan until he can’t go any longer. 

I love the fact that we haven’t had a car payment in almost two decades. My relationship with cars started out strong but has now become completely utilitarian. I don’t see cars as status symbols but just as a way to get from point A to point B. I do, however, love getting new rental cars when I am on the road. When I was with John Force Racing it was Fords then Chevys all the time. Now that I am with Kalitta Motorsports I love getting a new Camry or Corolla and have gotten lucky a couple times to get a Tacoma or Tundra truck. I love all the new accessories and technology I see in cars now. It is also cool to think that many of the safety features have come from the cars I see on the track every weekend during the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series.

That’s my car story and I’m sticking to it.  -Elon

Here’s another insightful installment from Elon Werner, all about interviews. Most fans just see the athlete, or coach, in front of a microphone, or in a room full of shouting reporters, and don’t have any idea how all of that happens, or why some sports stars might seem put off or grumpy to have to do it. There’s former football star Marshawn Lynch with his classic answer for every question, “I’m only here so I don’t get fined” and star big league pitcher Zack Greinke, who has suffered from social anxiety disorder his whole life. It got so bad right after he made the Major Leagues he wanted to quit the game, despite his love for pitching and the many millions of dollars he would eventually be paid. If you don’t have it, you can’t relate. I try to relate, but I don’t have it.

People are different. Some crave the limelight and others want nothing to do with it. Some can’t wait to talk to reporters and others think there is nothing worse in their world. I’m telling you it doesn’t define them as good or bad people. We’re all just people. We’re different. I understand it. As a matter of fact, many of the most reclusive athletes who seem to hate interviews are consistently considered great teammates and friends in the locker room and on the field. They’re good guys. They just aren’t comfortable with a mic in their face.

Personally, in my own small corner of the sports universe, I’ve been interviewed far more times than I’ve been the host. I’ve, obviously, seen both sides of it a million times, and in motorsports I know who is apt to give the same canned answers versus the drivers who will ramble on for multiple minutes. We’re all different.

When I first started working for Del Worsham, back in 1997, he was basically terrified of microphones and cameras. It all started when he won two races as a 21-year-old rookie and had to do impromptu interviews at the top end after just having jumped out of the car. As he put it, “I knew they were there, so I drove the car all the way around the corner and down the return road to get away from them. And when I got out of the car there they were. They followed me!”

Del didn’t dislike the media. He liked them a lot, as people. He just didn’t have the confidence to feel like he had anything important to say. He was nervous. He really just wanted to drive but professional sports aren’t conducted in a vacuum, so he had to adapt.

One day, maybe a year after I joined the team, I got interviewed about something, and Del was watching and listening. When it was over he said, “You made that look so easy. How do you do that? How can you make it look so easy?”

I said, “I’m just talking. Just like you and I are right now. It’s just conversation. Just talk. Just be you.”

From that point on, he got better and better. The Del Worsham of today bears absolutely no resemblance to the guy who tried to drive away from the camera crew after winning his first race. He’s a gracious, insightful, and honest interview subject. He’s not just good at it, he’s great at it.

So here’s Elon’s take on the whole thing. Enjoy, and make sure to click on the “Like” button at the bottom if you did, indeed, like these stories.

NOTE: The Vandergriff story, below, will give me nightmares for the next week. I’m serious. Yikes.

Bob Wilber

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Athlete and coach’s interviews are part of the fabric of sporting events. We have all seen joyful interviews following world championships or big wins, and we have seen short, curt interviews where the player or coach would obviously rather be anywhere instead of in front of a microphone. I have been lucky in my career to experience many more joyful interviews than the opposite.

Racing, and drag racing in particular, has a well-earned reputation for featuring some of the best interview subjects and also the most open relationship with the media. Most all the drivers have some level of the gift of gab but hands down the king of the quote is John Force. The only other athletes I could compare him to when it comes to memorable quotes or wild interviews would be the great Muhammad Ali or Charles Barkley. Both of those legendary talkers always brought their “A game” to the every interview and Force, in my opinion, outshines them both.

There are always two sides to every interview, those being the interviewer and the interviewee. Midway through my career at John Force Racing we launched John Force Entertainment, which was a company that Ashley Force Hood ran thanks to her immense talent behind the camera and in the editing booth. She earned a degree from Cal State-Fullerton in Communications with an emphasis on Film Production, so not only was she a natural behind the camera she had an excellent education to back up her skills. One of the ideas we came up with was an internet show called Nitro Rewind. At the time we were looking to add an element to our television deal with ESPN and give more teams exposure. It was a novel idea for one team to look to promote other teams but it was done altruistically to promote the whole series.

I was tapped to be the interviewer since I had decent relationships with all the teams. Each race we would try and talk with one or two teams about how their season was going or if they had a special story line. I would also interview the winners of Top Fuel and Funny Car at the end of the event.

One weekend in Atlanta we had reached out to talk with Bob Vandergriff Jr. for the show, since he was from the area and had also just added a number of sponsors. I set up a time to go to his pit for the interview and he was right on time, which is always nice. I set up my camera, plugged in my microphone and dove right into the questions. Bob was great, answering with thoughtful and funny lines about racing and business. We talked for about 10 minutes and I wrapped up the interview. I thanked him and began to break down my equipment. I realized something was wrong when I hit the record button to stop the recording and the red light came on. I had forgotten hit the record button at the beginning of the interview and had recorded none of what Vandergriff had said. 

I swallowed by pride and re-approached Vandergriff and explained the situation. He was miffed but willing to do the interview again if I could wait for him to warm up his Top Fuel dragster. I told him of course I could wait, and fifteen minutes later I restarted the interview. The first thing he said when we started was to confirm I was really recording. I told him I triple-checked and yes we were rolling. He was great again and I packed up my equipment and went back to the JFR pit area and our media center. I popped the data card out of the camera and slid it into my laptop. I had to transfer all the recordings onto a hard drive that we overnighted back to California so the show could be edited on Tuesday and then posted first thing Wednesday morning. This was way before WeTransfer or Google Drives for massive data transfers.

I opened up the file and started listening to the interview so I could log key sections for Ashley to more easily find good segments. The video started and I could see Vandergriff on my laptop screen but I could not hear anything. I thought the speakers might have been turned off but unfortunately my microphone had recorded zero audio. To say I was devastated was an understatement. I was mortified about the prospect of having to go back to Vandergriff’s pit and ask him to do the interview for a third time. When he rolled back into his pit after his qualifying run he saw me with my tripod and camera and just shook his head. I sheepishly approached him and explained by situation. He took it in stride understanding that I was a PR guy trying to do TV production work and he told me he would give me one more shot. 

The third time was the charm and I finally got everything to work. I think it took me about two hours of videoing, waiting around and downloading to get a four or five minute segment for Nitro Rewind. I was sure to share it with Vandergriff when it posted and I think his feedback was the first take was the best. I quickly got out of the film production business, luckily, as Ashley started coming out on the road more. Running those interviews always gave me a greater appreciation for the camera guys working for ESPN then and FOX now. If I had a chance to help them out I always took it, since I knew they were having to deal with all sorts of issues throughout the day.

In addition to getting experience as a television producer I was lucky to also have a two-year run as the host of a motorsports talk show on KTCK 1310 AM “The Ticket” in the late-90s when I was the PR guy for the Texas Motorplex. The station was very young in the Dallas market but was quickly gaining popularity. I met with the new program director Bruce Gilbert to give him a pitch for more motorsports coverage. He said he left the content of the weekly shows to the host but he was thinking about adding some live programming to the weekends and he would consider some motorsports content. I thanked him, picked up the check, and went back to the track.

The next day Bruce called me and said he was thinking about having a motorsports show on Saturday morning. I told him I thought that would be a tough time slot for a show but I would help the host however I could. Bruce shocked me by asking if I would be the host of the show. He said he would give me an hour to talk about whatever I wanted to in the motorsports universe and it would be the lead-in to The Tee Box, which was a pretty popular golf show.

I hosted the show for two years. The first year the time slot was Saturday mornings from 6am-7am. I had a lot of loyal listeners that were UPS delivery guys loading trucks or overnight convenience store employees. It was a blast and after a year I was moved to Sunday afternoons and given a two-hour show. The biggest perk was being able to go to any motorsports event in Dallas – Fort Worth as a member of the media. I was able to go to the Richard Petty Driving Experience at Texas Motor Speedway and The King himself autographed a copy of his coffee table book chronicling the history of every one of his No. 43 stock cars. I even did radio remotes on location in advance of the NASCAR race. The highlight was being the “talent” along with Rusty Wallace for a round-table about the growth of motorsports in North Texas. I will say one of my career regrets is not pursuing that show as a possible full-time gig. The Ticket has become one of the most decorated radio stations in the country and I was on the ground floor. I took a lot of my experience from hosting a radio show to make myself a better PR person. 

My all-time favorite John Force interview didn’t happen at an NHRA event but rather in 2009 when we were in Florida at the NASCAR season finale at Homestead doing a media tour with Robert Hight, after he won his first Funny Car world championship. We were in the pressroom waiting for our press conference to start, with some executives from Ford, and since we were early Force was off to the side looking for a cup of coffee. A small group of media members gathered around him and looking back it was an all-start media line-up. If my memory holds up the group included Holly Cain, Terry Blount, Nate Ryan and a German writer Wolfgang Monsehr, who is an institution in motorsports journalism. 

Wolfgang asked Force if he would ever consider racing in Europe and with zero hesitation Force said absolutely not. His emphatic response caught us all off guard and Wolfgang asked him why. Again Force was defiant and said “Because of the sharks!” At this point Force had everyone’s rapt attention. Wolfgang could not have been more confused when he let Force know that there were no sharks in Germany. Force responded that he knew that, but he wasn’t going to get on an airplane to fly to Europe or Germany, have it crash and then get eaten alive by sharks. He explained this in such a matter of fact tone that everyone was stunned and Wolfgang was furiously scribbling notes. Before anyone could even ask their own follow-up questions Force spotted a pot of coffee and walked off. I was left there to try and clarify if Force was serious or not. I had to tell the group that yes, Force was terrified of sharks. He grew up a surfer but as soon as he saw the movie JAWS he never again went into the ocean above his knees.

While that interview was a classic the best quote Force ever dropped on a journalist was his comment to esteemed motorsports journalist Michael Knight, following the 2013 NHRA Winternationals. Courtney Force had qualified No. 1 and dominated the event, winning the season opening race and grabbing the points lead. At the same time, the national media was going nuts over the fact that Danica Patrick was on the pole for the Daytona 500, and Force was more than miffed by the attention. At the next race, the Arizona Nationals, Force told Knight that he understood Danica getting the top spot was a big deal but he added, “It’s not like she delivered the baby Jesus.” I thought Michael was going to fall over. He looked down at this recorder to make sure he got that comment on tape. We all knew Force was on the record and the next day, when the quote appeared in the paper, it took on a life of its own. Force just rolled with it and Courtney Force handled the extra attention like a champ, complimenting Danica on her accomplishment but also pointing out the inconsistency of the media attention. She had been on the pole too, and then had won the race!

The Forces were always great interviews and they knew how to make any interviewer feel at ease. They also knew that they needed to give more than a basic answer. I try and tell all the drivers I work with to be story-tellers. You don’t have to be over the top like John Force but if you can tell a story with some insight or feeling, a reporter will always respond to that and be appreciative. 

Thanks everyone. Bob and I have a pretty neat concept in mind for an upcoming blog, so keep an eye out for that!

Hello blog family. Here we go again, with another insightful look at things we typically don’t get to see, from Elon Werner. It’s all about autographs, and how famous athletes get their signatures on stuff you can buy, or bid on, or stumble upon. Really neat stuff.

Speaking of autographs, I’ve surely collected plenty in my life, although I was never very good at keeping them. As a kid, growing up the son of a former Cardinal as my dad, and a mom who spent 1967 and 1968 working as an executive in the Cardinals’ front office (busting another glass ceiling along the way) I had ample opportunities to collect MLB autographs. After all, I was at almost every home game at Busch Stadium and basically had the run of the place.

Each summer, the Cardinals and Anheuser-Busch would host a huge fundraiser at Grant’s Farm, in St. Louis. For those unaware, Grant’s Farm has Ulysses S. Grant’s log cabin on its premises, and is a sprawling wildlife preserve right in the middle of south St. Louis. It is also the site of a major Busch family estate, but it’s open to the public. The fence around much of the place looks like wrought iron, but it is actually made of rifle barrels from the Civil War. And the ornate main gate, at the corner of Gravois Road and Grant Road, was featured in multiple Budweiser and Busch commercials during various holiday seasons, with the majestic Clydesdales pulling the A-B beer wagon through the gate. Across Grant Road from the visitor’s entrance is a huge Clydesdale ranch, for retired superstars and new ponies. Anyone can drive by and see them. That’s your St. Louis tourist tip for the day.

The fundraiser was called the “Cardinals Ball-B-Que” and the entire team would be there, in a relaxed setting at the estate, with great food and live music. The players seemed to really enjoy it, and the 11 or 12-year old version of me absolutely loved it. My mom would buy me a new “autograph book” every year and for a few hours I could roam around the party and collect signatures from Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Orlando Cepeda, Roger Maris, and every other Cardinal. I’d actually take the book home and try to copy their autographs, for some reason. It was a highlight of every summer.

Of course, the young me would somehow misplace the book within a month or two, and it would never be seen again. I was like that. In some ways, I’m still like that.

Fast-forward to my early 30’s, when I was working for my brother’s sports marketing firm, DelWilber+Associates, and there was another major autograph story to tell you about. I’m not sure I have these details right, but piecing it together another 30+ years later I’m taking a good guess. I imagine it had something to do with our management of IBM’s Major League Baseball sponsorship. I was heavily involved with that, flying around to various MLB cities to make sure the details of the multi-pronged sponsorship were being handled right by the teams.

At some point, we put together a deal that required us to have about 200 Louisville Sluggers autographed by Hank Aaron himself. We arranged to have the bats made, in his style, weight, and length with his autograph burned into the barrel like a typical game bat, and had them specially made without lacquer. That way, the ink would dry instantly and we wouldn’t have to worry about it smudging as Hank went from bat to bat.

We set up a meeting in the clubhouse at Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta, with the legend himself, and I certainly could’ve insisted that I be a part of that, but I had some meetings in different cities scheduled at the same time. I know, for sure, that a big reason I didn’t want to reschedule those meetings was the fact I was afraid that one of my baseball idols might be less than I hoped he was. He might be unfriendly. Or surly. Or even worse than that. So we sent the lowest guy on the company organization chart down to Atlanta, to babysit Hank while he signed all the bats.

I got one, and I’m sure it’s around here somewhere but we’ve moved multiple times in the last decade and I’m not sure where it is. The worst/best news was this: Our guy came back from Atlanta and said, “Mr. Aaron was fantastic. We talked baseball nonstop the whole time he was signing bats. At the end, he thanked me for being there and shook my hand. What a class act he was. What an honor it was for me.”

I felt great about that. I wish I would’ve gone.

There are two autographed sports jerseys, however, that I keep in a very safe place and consider priceless, to me. One is a signed Lui Passaglia football jersey. I imagine you just thought “Who is Lui Passaglia?”  Well, he was the kicker and punter for the BC Lions in the Canadian Football League for 25 years, and as such he scored more points than any other professional football player in history.

My dear friend Kim Campbell (who in the history of this blog has always been known as “Kim The Lawyer”) lives in Vancouver and has always been a huge fan of the BC Lions. Over the years, he’s gotten to know Lui, and he got this jersey for me. I wasn’t that familiar with Mr. Passaglia’s career, but I researched it and was amazed. So, the jersey is really cool and I cherish it, but the reason I dearly love it is because Kim The Lawyer got it for me and presented it to me. Unlike my old Cardinals autograph books, I’ll never lose it.

The other jersey in the photo is not “game used” of course. That would truly make it priceless, but it is a USA hockey jersey signed by goalie Jim Craig, from the “Miracle On Ice” team that won the Olympic gold medal at Lake Placid in 1980. I was fascinated by their accomplishment then, but it strikes me as really unique that I am even more fascinated by them today. We miss their coach, the late Herb Brooks, up here in Minnesota, and all the guys are getting older now, but I never tire of watching the movie “Miracle” and I still hold the team in the highest regard because of how they overcame every obstacle to win Gold. They shouldn’t have. They shouldn’t have even had a shot. They were playing way above their weight class as a bunch of kids. But they did it. I need a box of Kleenex near me every time I watch the movie or a documentary and hear Al Michaels say, “Do you believe in miracles? YES!”

Jim Craig “stood on his head” as they say in hockey parlance, and without him the medal never would’ve been won.

I got this jersey at a charity auction, and it hangs in a closet right next to Lui Passaglia’s jersey. They are treasured.

Now here’s Elon, telling tales of hoops and Funny Cars and the autographs that come with them.

See you next week!

Bob Wilber

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Last week I touched on the different versions of autographs John Force would scrawl out depending on the situation. Of course, after I fired off that blog I thought of some more great autograph interactions I have had with Force as well as other Hall of Famers outside of motorsports.

Prior to joining John Force Racing full-time, I was the Director of Communications for Beckett Media. Some of you card collectors out there are familiar with Beckett’s many magazines, ranging from the gold standard Beckett Baseball to Beckett Basketball, Beckett Football and Beckett Racing. All the magazines focused on the current value of trading cards and collectibles in the sports universe. They were the bible of trading card value and continue to this day to be the “go-to” publications on the subject. 

I was leading the communications department from 2006-2008 while I was also moonlighting on numerous weekends as Dave Densmore’s PR support for the JFR race team. It was a crazy time of work and travel. There were times during the summer months where I would work all week at Beckett, go straight to the airport after work on Friday to fly to a race, and then come back on a Sunday night red-eye or early Monday morning flight to just go straight into the office. Our building had a gym, so I could grab a shower, and I always kept a clean change of clothes in my office. 

As Director of Communications I was in charge of promoting the magazines as well as developing relationships with trading card companies like Topps and Upper Deck. They each had relationships with athletes and one of the ways we worked together was to promote and cover private autograph events. We would attend these events to write about the athlete’s interests in the trading card hobby and chronicle the actual signing event to help verify and legitimize the autographs.

Two of the highest profile events I attended included signings by Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant and Seattle SuperSonics rookie Kevin Durant. They were both very cool but also very different.

During Kevin Durant’s rookie season he signed an exclusive trading card autograph agreement with Upper Deck. I was offered the chance to fly to Seattle and cover his first major private signing event. I jumped at the chance and knew it would be a unique experience, since Upper Deck was very secretive about what kind of products they would have Durant sign as well as where the signing would take place. I arrived the morning of the event and went to the address they provided me, which turned out to be his agent’s office. When I walked into the main office I was greeted by rows and rows of Spalding basketballs, as well as boxes and boxes filled with trading cards and banners. There were two representatives from Upper Deck, who were coordinating the signing, and I found out we had about four hours with Durant.

The Upper Deck guys began spreading cards and banners out over every flat surface in the office. They had a very structured plan for the order they needed Durant to sign and it was choreographed to the minute. They also had specific pens he needed to sign certain cards with and there were a variety of messages he needed to write on the basketballs.  

Durant walked in and went right to work. He started in the back with a stack of posters and jerseys. The Upper Deck guys would pull each item away from Durant as soon as he signed so he never had to adjust as he was signing. This was one of the first large number signing events he had done so everyone was encouraging him to pace himself and get comfortable. After about an hour we moved into a conference room which was full of basketballs and trading cards. Once again, Durant got comfortable and the Upper Deck guys got to work. They were wearing white gloves as they handled all the cards to try and minimize any damage to the product. Durant spent some time throughout the process marveling at a piece of jersey or hologram on the high-end cards. Some of the cards he was signing would be 1/1 (or one of a kind) inserts for packs that would sell for upwards of $500. Collectors coveted those 1/1 cards in perfect condition because on the secondary market they could garner tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was quite a sight to see as Durant signed and the cards were stacked up. I started doing math in my head trying to estimate how many millions of dollars in potential value was in that conference room.

As the session wound down I got the chance to talk for an extended period of time with Durant. We had been chatting all day about general topics but we dove into hardcore collectible talk and what he thought about the whole autograph process. He thought it was wild people would pay so much for his autograph and he really dug the look of his trading card. Like every kid that dreamed of playing in the big leagues, getting your own trading card was a big deal. He was very accommodating and gave me some great answers. He thanked me for spending the day watching him sign his name. By the end of the day I noticed he was pretty worn out which I understood since he signed well over 400 or 500 items. 

The next superstar I was fortunate enough to spend some time with was Los Angeles Laker and Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant. We met at a Cleveland hotel in December of 2007 and this was another event organized by Upper Deck. I was able to be more of an active participant in this signing. After the Durant event, Beckett got a ton of great feedback from their readers about getting a look behind the scenes. Some of the collectors asked about what players signed on cards and how cool they thought it would be to submit suggestions to the player before they signed. I loved that idea and asked Upper Deck if that was a possibility. They also jumped on it since it would make the cards even more collectible and in turn more valuable. They got Kobe’s approval and we were all set for Cleveland. 

The way I had it set up was collectors could submit suggestions through the Beckett message board system.  I started a thread and for about 30 minutes people dropped in their suggestions. I would read them off to Kobe and he would give a thumb up or thumb down. This was before Twitter or Facebook or Instagram immediate contact and feedback so we were truly winging it. People loved being able to feel like they were interacting with Kobe and when we were done the Upper Deck people were thrilled as well. Some of the suggestions that were chosen were Kobe’s nicknames, Black Mamba and Assassin, and people also wanted him to sign some cards with “81 points” to commemorate his record-setting scoring performance from January, 2006.

Kobe went right to work signing cards and jerseys. He had twice as many items, it seemed, compared to Durant and there was a new piece of technology in play. Upper Deck had a camera pen, which recorded a video of Kobe signing cards. It was very cutting edge at the time and they used it again to verify it was really Kobe signing the cards. The camera made the pen about the size of a kindergartener’s oversized marker but it didn’t seem to slow down Kobe. 

Another element that was different about this signing was Kobe was adding his signature to some cards that were already signed by one or two other NBA stars. There was a whole stack of cards that LeBron James had signed, which Kobe was adding his autograph to, so a collector would get a very collectible and valuable card signed by the two biggest names in the NBA. He was also signing Team USA Olympic basketball jerseys. These looked especially cool and had precise signing instructions, since they were part of a set, so all the autographs had to be in the same spot.

I got a chance to both talk with and interview Kobe and he was very accommodating. He was a big fan of sports memorabilia and talked about things he liked to collect and how he made an effort at games, especially road games, to sign a few autographs for kids in the stands. He knew he could never get to everyone but he liked to give a few kids a thrill. The one thing I noticed about Kobe was he would mix up his signatures similar to John Force, There would be some cards with a full “Kobe Bryant” and some that were just “Kobe” and he added his jersey number to a few cards every now and then. I think he did that more to break up the monotony of signing for so long. 

It was cool to talk with those NBA superstars and get behind the scenes on their autograph signings. Both players signed for 3-4 hours and knocked out hundreds of signatures. They were impressive displays of penmanship but neither of those guys could hold a candle to the autograph prowess of John Force. 

Two events stand out in my memory. The first involved a mega-signing event with his daughter Courtney Force and fellow Funny Car driver Mike Neff. We were in Charlotte before one of their NHRA national events. The four of us were at the Lionel headquarters, which is just around the corner from zMax Dragway and Charlotte Motor Speedway, to sign a boatload of die-cast Funny Cars. We got a quick tour of their offices and then it was right to the warehouse. There were rows and rows of tables snaking through half of the shipping area and I would estimate 75 percent of the merchandise was John Force die-casts in every paint scheme and paint variant you could imagine. There were also a handful of tables for Courtney and Neff. Throughout the maze of tables, different colored Sharpie pens were positioned with instructions for signature locations and how many of a particular car needed to be signed with black, silver, gold, red or blue.

The trio of drivers jumped right into the process and of course Force started barking “suggestions” to his two young drivers. He was imploring them to make sure they signed their full name and to take their time. He wanted to make sure they knew that someone was going to pay a lot of money for these die-cast cars, and they should get their money’s worth. As he himself was signing he was talking with the folks from Lionel, asking about their families and who their favorite NASCAR drivers were. Force changed tables and continued razzing Neff about keeping up with his pace. He yelled how much he loved Courtney across the room. Neff and Courtney finished in just over an hour but Force still had hundreds of cars to go, so they retired to the conference room and Force just kept signing and wandering the aisles. After another two hours Force was done and he had signed almost 1,500 die-cast cars, I think, and the most impressive part of the experience was his last signature was just as legible and solid as his first. I went by a handful of tables just checking out his autographs and they were all perfect. The guys at Lionel were blown away, too. They said they hadn’t seen anything like that. Once again Force proved why he is the best when it comes to taking care of the fans even if they aren’t right in front of him.

On another occasion, again in Charlotte, we had an appearance BrandSource, one of our associate sponsors at the time. BrandSource sold appliances and their stores were like a labyrinth. They had washers and dryers, ovens and refrigerators as well as model kitchens all over the store. When we pulled up the line was out the door and we had to snake through all the fans to get to the signing table. All four drivers got set up and the line began to move. I noticed one fan with six or seven mini-helmets, and his wife or girlfriend also had her arms full of mini-helmets. Force was never a big stickler for the “only one item per person” rule, which is common in NASCAR and at other sports signing events. He signed multiple items and personalized them without any issue.

When this particular fan approached Force he laid out all the mini-helmets and asked Force to sign them across the visor. Force accommodated him and then when his partner walked up he again positioned the helmets just right and again asked Force to sign across the visor. He gathered up the helmets and went on his way. No big deal I thought, even though it bogged the line down a little to sign nearly a dozen items. I wandered around the store getting some photos of the crowd and also chatting people up to pass the time. As I approached the signing table again I was shocked to see the mini-helmet guy back in line with more mini-helmets. I quickly realized he was getting these helmets signed so he could turn around and sell them on eBay. Right after he got his second batch of helmets signed I suggested he call it a day and not get back in line since there were still a ton of people in line and we were closing in on our leave time.

Force overheard me and asked the guy if he had more helmets. The guy had no problem telling Force he had a van full of them and he would love for Force to sign them all. I just about blew a gasket but Force told me to calm down. He turned to the guy and told him on the way out of the store he would sign all the helmets the guy had but that he needed to take care of these people first. I told Force he was nuts and this guy was making money off of his name and he shouldn’t let himself be taken advantage of like that. Force looked at me and said he already made his money off those mini-helmets when that guy bought a van load of them, so he could at least help the guy out who was, as Force put it, “just trying to make a living.” I figured if Force didn’t care, why should I and on the way out I reminded Force about the van full of mini-helmets. He went over and signed for about another 20 minutes and then we went to dinner.  It was a class act move by Force to not embarrass the guy in front of a store full of people and I think he made another fan for life by helping the guy out.

Hello blog faithful. Here we go again with more great John Force stories courtesy of Elon Werner. I’ll admit, I had no idea Elon and Force had gone to Miami to represent Castrol during a Super Bowl. This is priceless stuff that makes you feel like you were there with them.

And I’ll also have to admit that I never rooted for Tom Brady. Being with the Patriots, I saw him as the quarterback for The Evil Empire, and before you get mad at me for that just realize that any franchise or company referred to as The Evil Empire must be extraordinarily successful. Other Evil Empires include Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Amazon, the New York Yankees, and whatever team LeBron James happens to be on. Nobody calls the Colorado Rockies, the Minnesota Wild, or the Los Angeles Clippers The Evil Empire. That’s how it works. I’m a Vikings fan and my team has never won a Super Bowl, nor have they even been in one since 1977, which was 25 years before we moved to Minnesota, when I was a junior at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. They are 0-4 in their appearances in the championship game.

This year, as much as I like and respect Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs, I just had to give it up for Brady. Maybe because he is with the Buccaneers now, but the fact is he signed with a mediocre team and immediately took them to the Super Bowl, and won it, at the age of 43. That’s pretty amazing.

Speaking of sports, the Twins start Spring Training in a couple weeks, but we’ll just have to see how that goes in this Covid environment. Our hockey team, the Minnesota Wild, currently have about half their squad in Covid protocols, and some of them are symptomatic. The NHL has postponed their games for a week and might do that for at least another week. Then what? They’ve been pounded. Our basketball team, the Timberwolves, are just plain bad and have a bunch of players hurt or in Covid protocols. On top of all that, we’ve been below zero for most of the last week. Baby, it’s cold outside.

So we got all that going for us up here.

Let’s just let Elon bestow some more classic John Force tales upon you. Enjoy, and give Elon that blog love by clicking on the “Like” button at the bottom.

Thanks Elon. You’re the best, my friend.

See you all next week!

Bob

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As I watched the hype build following Tom Brady’s seventh Super Bowl title, that hype created endless conversations about whether he is the greatest football player or athlete of all-time, and that got my blog-writing juices flowing. I think Brady is the most successful quarterback to play in the NFL, obviously with seven Super Bowl wins, but in addition to his on-field skills he has created an aura of success. He proved that this year when he took over a 7-9 Tampa Bay Buccaneers team and led them to Super Bowl victory. From reports throughout the season he showed how champions practice and prepare, and he expected his teammates to follow his lead. It did not happen overnight but by the back half of the season you could tell there was 100 percent buy-in and the team rolled through the play-offs.

I know another athlete who has that kind of aura and he brought his magic to the Super Bowl in Miami in 2007. John Force was introducing Castrol Edge motor oil as a new sponsor for his NHRA team that year and Castrol also had a big investment in the NFL. To get the season started Castrol built a full-size garage at one of the Super Bowl interactive zones and filled it with all sorts of racing memorabilia, as well as Force’s newly branded Castrol Edge Funny Car. We were invited to Miami for the weekend to do appearances at the booth and media interviews.

One of the major tie-ins was connecting Force with Jason Campbell, the Washington Football Team’s quarterback. Prior to one of the autograph signings we were scheduled to have Force talk with Campbell in the booth and it was going to be recorded for Castrol to use promotionally. I gave Force some background on Campbell and we had some talking points from Castrol to work into the conversation, too. Force and I arrived about 15 minutes early so we were hanging out, and of course Force started talking to fans and signing autographs and posing for photos. He quickly built up a nice gathering of fans around himself and he was content to just sign and talk, to kill time.

About 10 minutes later a huge mass of people approached the booth. There were three or four security guards, a couple of marketing/PR handlers, some of Campbell’s friends, a TV production crew, and of course Jason Campbell. It was almost comical how big Campbell’s entourage was compared to Forces, which consisted of just me. At that time Force had 14 NHRA World Championships and Campbell was looking to try and make the play-offs. They got settled in the booth and I went to go get Force.

I let Force know that there was someone there to meet him and he needed to break away from the fans. He gave me a hard time about leaving the fans, which was one of his favorite bits. He always made me or whoever was trying to pull him away look like the bad guy. He would push back about leaving his fans but eventually he would tell them he was sorry and he had to go to work, but he would be right back. We walked over to Campbell and Force immediately started talking a mile a minute. He didn’t even give me a chance to introduce him. Campbell asked about his race car and Force went into great detail about Castrol Edge and racing and being at the Super Bowl. Campbell mentioned that he played football and Force immediately started talking about his own football career which peaked in high school and was not nearly as successful as his racing career. The whole reason Force got into racing, he said, was because he liked to wear a helmet. He knew football was not going to be a long-term career but he could race and let the race car do the running for him.

Force and Campbell stood in the middle of the display talking for about 20 minutes and then Campbell had to leave for another engagement. A few fans came up and asked him for his autograph and he signed for maybe 3-4 people before letting his entourage engulf him in a protective bubble as he worked his way out of the venue. Force gladly went back to the group of fans he was chatting with earlier. About ten minutes later Force asked me when he was going to meet Washington’s quarterback. I kind of laughed and told him he had already met him. He immediately turned to me and asked me what I meant. I told him the guy with all the people around him and the TV cameras was the Washington quarterback and he had left the building. It was classic Force. He had naturally done everything he was supposed to do without realizing who he was doing it with. 

Later that afternoon, we came back for a scheduled autograph signing and the whole way to the display Force was worried there would be no one interested in his autograph and we were all going to be fired. I don’t know why he was worried. When we landed in Miami at 10:30 p.m. on Friday, as we were leaving the airport at least ten people stopped Force before he got to baggage claim and asked him for an autograph or shouted congratulations for winning the Funny Car championship the year before. The airport was almost empty but there were still Force fans around.

When we walked up to the booth there were already 20-30 people in line waiting for Force. They cheered when he walked up and he shook a few hands as he worked his way to the front of the line. This was a classic Force technique to get people excited and making noise to draw attention to his area and get more people in line. I can’t tell you how many Force fans were created by them just hearing a cheer and then their curiosity led them to an autograph line. They would get in line because they figured it was someone famous and by the time they finished getting their signed hero card they were a fan for life.

At this appearance I was off to the side of the line and a guy walked up and asked me who Force was. I told him he was a famous world championship drag racer and he should get his autograph. He said he wasn’t much of a racing fan but he had a friend who loved motorsports. I suggested he call his friend and get his friend’s opinion on Force. This is my recollection of that phone call.

Guy: “Hey, I am in Miami at the Super Bowl and there is a racer named John Force signing autographs. Is he a big de…”

Phone: “JOHN FORCE?!?!? You have to get his autograph! He is the best racer of all time!”

Guy: “OK. OK. I will get in line. Do you…”

Phone: “Get me an autograph too. I love John Force. Are his daughters there? Get their autographs too. He is the best.”

Guy: “I am getting in line. I don’t see any daughters but I will ask.”

I can recall the conversation so well because the guy’s friend was genuinely overcome with excitement and was yelling at his buddy through the phone. The guy got in line and about 15 minutes later he was in front of Force telling him this whole story about how his friend talked him into getting in line. Force told him to call his friend back and let him talk to him. The guy called his buddy and before he could say anything Force grabbed the phone and started right in with, “John Force here! I hear you’re a big fan. I want to thank you for telling your buddy to get in line. We’ll be in Gainesville in a couple months so you have to come see me. Here, talk to Elon, and give him your name and number.” Force handed me the phone and the guy at the other end thought he had died and gone to heaven. I gave him my cell phone number and told him to call me if and when he got to the Gatornationals, and I would be sure to connect him with Force.

Sure enough the Saturday of the Gatornationals my phone rang and it was a number I didn’t recognize. I answered and it was the guy who Force told, at the Super Bowl, to come by wanting to know if Force was for real. I told him of course Force would like to meet him. We connected about 20 minutes later and I took this guy and his girlfriend behind the ropes and into Force’s pit. They got photos, autographs, and Force took the Castrol hat right off his head, signed it, and gave it to the guy, thanking him for being a fan. I am sure that hat is in place of honor in that guy’s man cave.

The white Force Castrol hat is one of motorsports iconic collectibles in my opinion. It is the traditional trucker style ball cap with the point at the peak of the crown and it has the small rope across the bottom of the front. It is so much a part of Force’s look he made PEAK antifreeze and motor oil make a white hat when he switched to their brand. They were always blue and had never created a white hat. Force told them no one would recognize him if he wasn’t wearing a white hat. They made them just for him and Force was right. Fans came up to him all the time saying they saw him from a distance and they knew it was him because of the white hat. 

Force would give away hats all the time, right off his head. As soon as he gave one away, if I was around I would go up into his lounge and get a new hat. I would move the snaps to the appropriate spot and take him a replacement. There was a cadence to this maneuver. When I first started, as soon as Force gave a hat away I would hustle and get him a new one and bring it right to him. Next thing I knew he was giving that hat away and I was hustling back for another one. I realized I could control the amount of hats we were giving away by taking my time and hanging back until he asked me for a new hat. He told me if we would have kept going at my breakneck pace he would run out of hats at the first event. It was all about timing for Force, in everything he did.

Even autographs had a hierarchy with Force. When he had a huge crowd or he was doing a show and needed to interact with as many people as possible he would crank out autographs at a ridiculous pace. The signature would basically look like a capital “J” dash “F” with an “o” and straight line attached along with 9X or 14X or 16X depending on how many championships he had at the time. If he was signing in a normal setting a fan would get an almost recognizable John with “For-” dash and the number of championships. If he was signing an item for an auction or a VIP or had some one-on-one time you would get “John Force, 16X world champion” completely legible. If you got one of those signatures, that was the top of the pyramid. No matter what signature Force doled out he always added a hello, a thanks, or a pat on the back. He made a connection and for that reason he is hands down my motorsports GOAT. The Greatest Of All Time.

Hello again blog faithful. We have yet another  installment from Elon Werner and it’s great. I will admit that my blood pressure rose and my anxiety level increased a couple of times while reading the sort of stress John Force put him through, and this stuff happened regularly. I could not have done Elon’s job. Period.

Elon writes about the first 4-Wide exhibition during the race in Charlotte. I think that was 2009,  because it would’ve been my first year with Tim Wilkerson. My actor buddy Buck Hujabre happened to be in town and was there with us. Thanks to that, I could hand my Nikon camera to Buck and he took this great photo of the four Funny Cars lined up ready to go for that exhibition run. Cool shot. Thanks Buck.

I did not know, however, the depth of the conversations the four drivers and the NHRA officials had prior to, and after, that first toe-dip into the waters of racing four wide. Great detail and much hilarity are found below.

Enjoy the read and, again, let Elon feel the love by clicking on the “Like” button at the bottom.

See you next week!

Bob

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Last week’s blog about crew chiefs and the 4-Wide Nationals exhibition run reminded me of another memorable exhibition event I was lucky to witness up close and personal. Before I get to that I have to tell an additional story about the four-wide exhibition that didn’t make the cut last week.

In advance of the exhibition race, held after the semifinals of the actual real race, the NHRA held a meeting with the eight drivers who would be participating. Graham Light, NHRA vice president of racing operations, gathered all the drivers in a conference room in the zMAX Dragway tower to go over how the exhibition would be run. He talked about lane assignments and staging procedures and went into great detail on how each team should pull their race car up to the lanes. He also explained how the Christmas Tree lights would work and what the drivers should look for. It was quite an explanation about something that had never been done before, and at the end he asked if there were any questions. John Force immediately started asking Graham about all sorts of scenarios and “what ifs.”

Without missing a beat, Graham said he had planned on rehashing the whole explanation with Force after everyone had left as long as no one else had any questions.

Force then turned to Tim Wilkerson and asked him what kind of burnout he was going to do. Wilk said he was going to do his regular routine. Force just about jumped out of his chair at Wilk and he began ranting about how everyone in that room needed to put on a show for the fans and he was going to do an old-school burnout, and he might even try to dry-hop his Funny Car to turn it around at the finish line, and then do a burnout back to the starting line. He was yelling and pointing at every driver, challenging them to put on a show that legendary promoters like Bill Doner and Humpy Wheeler would be proud to host. He went on chiding and ranting for more than five minutes. I will never forget the look on Top Fuel racer Spencer Massey’s face. It was a combination of terror and confusion. He had no idea what to do with the information Force was commanding him to do, let alone did he have the power to just ignore what his crew chiefs told him. 

The one person who was listening was Del Worsham. The exhibition was finally run and immediately after the race the zMAX Dragway PR team brought all the drivers into the pressroom to talk about what had happened. Before anyone said a word Del took the microphone and told the media he had something to say. He recounted Force’s pre-exhibition rant and challenge to the group, and then he said Force had him so fired up that he did the longest burnout he had done in more than 15 years. He said when his Funny Car stopped he was quite proud of himself for what he thought was an epic display of showmanship. His joy was short-lived, he said, because as the clutch dust settled in his cockpit he looked out his windshield and saw that Force was 200 feet further down track. He said he couldn’t believe how far Force went and also how he was shocked at how fast Force flew past him in reverse as he rolled back to the starting line.

The room erupted in laughter when Force said he hadn’t had that much fun since he convinced his high school football team to storm into the cheerleader’s locker room after a big game when he was playing for Bell Gardens High School. Force also gave Del a huge compliment on his burnout and then he chastised Wilk for not stepping up his game. It was classic Force, always the showman.

Well before Neff took the win light at the 4-wide exhibition race he had already had the most spectacular burnout in the history of NASCAR on his resume’. In 2008, during his rookie season, Neff was sponsored by Old Spice. They were a great sponsor for a variety of reasons but the biggest was their relationship with NASCAR and their interest in enhancing the exposure they were getting on the NHRA tour with additional opportunities in the premier stock car series. One opportunity they presented was the chance for Neff to do a burnout before the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. That was a huge deal and one that we could not pass up even though there were some logistical issues we had to work through. 

One issue that presented itself as soon as we got to the track was where to do the burnout. The Old Spice marketing team was hoping to have Neff power by the packed grandstands on the race track. On Saturday, as we were looking at the feasibility of that feat, we quickly realized there was no way for Neff to keep his 11,000 horsepower Funny Car far enough away from the grandstands so people could see him and also not have him straddle the banked track and the flat lower apron. We quickly came to the conclusion that it would be impossible, but Force wasn’t listening and he suggested that he could not only do a burnout on the track but he could actually continue the burnout around turn one. I would have paid for the nitro to see if that could work but the Old Spice people wanted their sponsored driver to do the burnout, and that meant we needed a flat surface far enough away from the grandstands so the tens of thousands of fans in attendance could be amazed by the Old Spice Funny Car’s burnout powers.

The next best spot was pit road. It was flat, long and concrete which was perfect for drag racing and burnouts. It was decided Neff would do his burnout down pit road right before the cars came out to start the race. It would be the capper to a spectacular opening ceremony. We were all set and everyone was feeling confident we would put on a good show for Old Spice and positively represent the NHRA. 

Race day rolled around, we had Neff’s Funny Car unloaded and crew guys are scurrying around making sure everything was just right. There was a discussion going on about how much fuel the team needed to put in the fuel tank. Force made the executive decision to fill it up so there was no chance of Neff running lean and blowing up. This seemed like a prudent plan at the time. As we were waiting for our “get ready” signal, the opening ceremonies were unfolding and it was a spectacular sight. There were marching bands, and tanks, and pyrotechnics, and a variety of planes buzzing the grandstands. We got the signal to put Neff in the car and we knew that once we got him strapped in we’d have about a seven-minute window to execute the burnout.

The pit road stalls were filled with NASCAR crew guys, officials, and drivers all eager to see what this show would look like. There was some skepticism, though, about whether it would be a big enough deal to be impressive from the grandstands. The team fired up Neff’s Funny Car and he made a quick short hop but we immediately realized we had an issue, since there was no water box for him to roll through. A quick-thinking crewman grabbed a hose from behind the wall and sprayed a liberal amount of water right in front of the nose of the race car. Neff rolled through and hit the throttle with gusto. 

The reaction from the NASCAR faithful was priceless. As Neff’s Funny Car roared to life, half of the guys on the wall either fell over backwards or dove for cover like something had gone terribly wrong. Neff continued to power down pit road as smoke billowed out of the back of the Old Spice Funny Car, as if he was birthing the most beautiful white, fluffy, cumulous cloud imaginable. By Neff’s own account he lost track of where he was and the Funny Car tires almost hooked up to really take off before he lifted off the throttle. The roar of his Funny Car was replaced by a wall of sound coming from the grandstands as thousands of fans screamed, clapped and cheered, as if Neff had won the race. 

Once Neff stopped the race car, he hopped out of the roof hatch as NASCAR crew guys congratulated him and gave him high fives until his hand was sore. We rolled the Funny Car to the hauler and our job was done for the day.

Force was scheduled to fly back to California during the race so I was in charge of getting him back to his rental car after pre-race. As we were walking to the golf cart behind the pit stalls there was a decent crowd of VIPs, motorsports executives, and team personnel all milling about. One person who was approaching us literally stood head and shoulders above everyone else. The starting center for the Houston Rockets, Yao Ming, was in the pits. As we walked past all 7’ 4” of him, Yao looked down at Force, who was wearing his team uniform shirt looking quite official, and gave him what appeared to be a knowing head nod of appreciation. As we moved past Yao, Force turned to me and asked who that tall guy was and where did I think he was from. I told him that was Yao Ming and he was from China, but he played basketball for the Houston Rockets. Without missing a beat Force said, “I didn’t know people knew about me in China.”

Force and I hopped into a golf cart for the long and winding ride to the parking lot where his rental car was parked. We had to snake our way out of the infield garage area and then go through a tunnel before getting outside of the facility to cross a road to the VIP lot. It was a decent trip and as I pulled up to Force’s car I checked my watch and he had a good two and a half hours before his flight took off. Plenty of time to drive to the airport, return the rental car, go through security and get on his flight to California. We said our good-byes and I headed back to the track to enjoy the race.

By the time I got back on pit road things were wrapping up as far as the pre-race ceremonies. I was standing with Dean “Guido” Antonelli, one of our crew chiefs who had joined the trip to help with the burnout, next to one of the teams during the national anthem when he leaned over to me and said, “I thought you took Force to his rental car.” I told him I did and to quit jerking me around. He pointed to a car a couple rows in front of us and I will be damned if I didn’t see Force talking a mile a minute into Dale Earnhardt Jr’s ear. I could not believe my eyes. I quickly speed-walked through the teams and race cars and sidled up beside Force. I asked him what the heck he was doing and he told me he realized he had to tell Dale Jr. a story about his dad, Dale Sr., so he came back into the track. I asked him how he got back in and he said a state trooper gave him a ride and was waiting to give him a ride back to his rental car.

By then, drivers were climbing into their race cars and we were weaving through the teams. We were walking by the Jack Daniels team when one of the crew guys grabbed Force and asked him to give the team a pep talk. Force gathered the whole team around and told them they are going to kick ass and win this race. He let them know as long as they worked together and trusted each other they would be unstoppable. He wrapped up his impromptu pep talk by saying as long as they love each other there was no team that could beat them and they are going to win the Coca-Cola 600. He would bet his life on it. He told the guys to put their hands together and cheer “Win!” on the count of three. One of the crew guys said, “No. On the count of three say Force!” They all counted down, screamed “Force!” and threw their hands in the air. I had goosebumps because it was such a crazy moment, and as we were walking away Force turned to me and asked, “Who were those guys and why did they want a pep talk from me?” I couldn’t believe it. Force fired up those guys and had no idea who they were. It turned out, years later, Force would reunite with the driver of that Jack Daniels team, Clint Bowyer, when both were sponsored by PEAK Antifreeze and motor oil. 

I was constantly checking my watch knowing that every minute we wasted could be the minute that cost Force his flight home to California. We were just about off pit road when NASCAR team owner Jack Roush blew by us. Force immediately turned around and chased him down. They were standing and talking on pit road at one of the garage entrances. A FOX TV official came up and told me I had to get them off pit road right away. I explained there was no way I was interrupting my boss and Jack Roush’s conversation. He clicked on his headset radio and quickly told someone he needed 30 seconds for debris on pit road. He repeated the need to delay the broadcast and start of the race for 30 seconds for debris on pit road. The official turned to me and said I had 30 seconds to get them out of there or they were going to get run over. That’s the power of Force. He can delay the start of a national broadcast by talking shop with Jack Roush, while both of them are being categorized as debris.

By then I was in a full body sweat thinking there was no way I could get Force out of the track and to the airport in time. We found the state trooper sitting in a golf cart and Force told me to get his name and address so we could send him a sleeve of autographed hats for his efforts in driving Force around. I took down the information and watched as Force sped away. I looked at my watch and it was almost exactly an hour until Force’s plane was scheduled to take off. I knew there was no way he was making his flight.

I headed back through the garage area again and made my way to the grandstands and then up to the suite level. One of the perks of being part of the opening ceremonies was we were given passes to one of Bruton Smith’s prime suites. When I walked in I was greeted by Guido, who immediately told me I looked like crap, and he asked if I got Force to the airport in time. I told him what happened and let him know I didn’t think there was any way Force would make his flight.

Almost an hour later my phone rang and it was Force. I thought he was, for sure, calling me to tell me he missed his flight. Once again Force got all the breaks. He was sitting on his plane and they were about to take off. He thanked me for my help and double-checked that I was getting hats to the state trooper. He said that guy really came through for him and I needed to make sure we sent him two sleeves of autographed hats. 

I finally got to relax and watch the race, but the whole time I was wondering how in the world Force had made his flight. The next day I got the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say. It turned out that once the state trooper got Force back to his rental car he hopped into his cruiser and gave Force a police escort all the way to the airport. You can make up a lot of lost time when you are driving 100 mph down I-85. Once they got to the airport Force got out of his rental car at the terminal curb and tossed his keys to the trooper. He asked him to take his rental car back to Hertz for him. Force then strolled right through security to his plane, and since he was the last person on the flight he walked right on board and they closed the door behind him. Zero wasted effort and just another day on the road with the 16-time champ.

You can’t make this stuff up.

This might be my favorite blog penned, so far, by my esteemed colleague and good friend Elon Werner. It addresses a topic that only people who have held the positions we did, in the sport of NHRA Drag Racing, would understand completely. It’s the relationship between the PR person and the driver, and the crew chief, and the team owner. Such a thing varies from team to team because people are different and chemistry dictates who gets along and who doesn’t.

I was incredibly fortunate to work about 20 years for Del Worsham and Tim Wilkerson. You just can’t do better than that, as a PR rep. They’re both owners, drivers, and tuners, plus they’re down-to-earth humble people. I was very fortunate, and always felt like I was a valued part of the team with them.

I also had the good fortune to work with other crew chiefs when CSK Auto upped our budget so that we could run two Funny Cars instead of just one. The original crew chief on the blue CSK car was David Fletcher, and a nicer guy I don’t think I’ve ever met. He’s British, and still has much of his lovely accent, but he was open, respectful, inquisitive, and caring. What a great guy to work with.

In the original blue team trailer, David’s work station and computer was positioned in a stand-up area right next to the small flight of stairs that led to the lounge, where I worked. I’d have to squeeze behind him to get up there, and when they’d make a good run I’d say “You’re my hero, David.” When things didn’t go well, he’d ask me “Am I still your hero, Bob?” I’d always say, “You are, and you always will be, David.”

Elon mentions Bernie Fedderly, who was Austin Coil’s righthand man for John Force. I must mention that Bernie, as famous and legendary as he already was, really was the first big-name crew chief from another rival team who treated me like I was as important as any other person at the track. What a gem of a man. He’s retired now, but I’ll never forget his kindness and the fact he learned my name almost immediately and always had something nice to say.

Mark Oswald was another gem who always had something positive to say. I won’t forget the mutual team dinner we had in Indy after Del won both the US Nationals and the Skoal Showdown, while Larry Dixon won in Top Fuel. During the huge dinner with all of our teams filling the backroom at a Brownsburg steakhouse, even before I made my traditional speech to the gathering, Mark walked up to me and said “Bob, you are really good at what you do.” Words like that, from a crew chief, are priceless. Chris Cunningham and Marc Denner were, and still are, good friends.

Elon leads off with Rahn Tobler, and he’s always been another superstar in my book. Incredibly talented, but always kind to a nobody like me. I hope Rahn enjoys retirement!

I’ve been so lucky to know so many gracious and incredibly smart people who make Nitro cars go so fast. Their brains are off the charts.

In addition, Elon’s mention of “running the sheets” to the crew chiefs strikes home with me and just about any other PR rep who worked in the sports until a few years ago. A session or a round would end, and we’d all be captives in the Media Center until Race Control compiled the order and the incremental times, and then got them to the NHRA Media Relations staff, who would run them through a large Xerox copier. It seemed to take, quite literally, forever. And we all knew our crew chiefs and drivers were waiting for us, no doubt drumming their fingers on the desk wondering why the PR person was so slow bringing them to the pit.

Add in the stress of being at a huge venue, like Topeka or Charlotte, and the whole thing just got more and more stressful. Those memories are not fond, for me. There was a lot of pressure to get those sheets to the pit so that the tuners could make adjustments based on the incremental times, in the short amount of time they had to turn the car around. If the copier would jam, well…  As they say in New Jersey, “Fuggetaboutit.” And yes, there were a few times the NHRA rep would get the sheets and then engage in a conversation with someone else, forgetting to actually copy them. Meanwhile, we were all pacing in circles, fearing that we’d be fired for not getting those to the crew chief.

So here’s Elon, telling you what it’s like to be the PR rep when the pressure is on. If you enjoy, please click on that “Like” button at the bottom. Cheers, everyone!

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When I heard the news that legendary crew chief Rahn Tobler was retiring it was a bittersweet moment. I was incredibly happy he was leaving on his own terms but also sad I never made it to one of his legendary Friday night “crew chief lounge” wine sessions.

We did have a moment of sorts last year in St. Louis. I was beside him at the hotel counter as we checked in and his wife Ellen noticed I had a bag of snacks, which she said was right up Rahn’s alley. My Wal-Mart bag was stuffed with Almond Joys, Little Debbie Star Crunches and some other sugar rich treats. Rahn commented that I had an impressive selection of snacks. High praise coming from a guy who I assume spent hours upon hours cooped up in trailer lounges trying to maintain focus powered by coffee, chocolate or other assorted caffeine/sugar delivery devices. I join a massive group of fans and colleagues wishing nothing but the best for Rahn in the future.

Rahn’s departure opened up a section of my memory bank filled with tales of horror and comedy from my time dealing with assorted crew chiefs over my career. One thing people might not understand is that the relationship between the public relations staff and the sports team personnel, especially in motorsports, is very similar to the relationship between werewolves and vampires from the global best-selling Twilight series. We have an uneasy alliance that can turn bloody very easily.

I have been lucky to interact with some of the most legendary crew chiefs in the modern era. They are or will be Hall of Famers and dealing with them was a highlight of my career. The most iconic crew chief I ever worked with was the great Austin Coil, who tuned John Force from obscurity to the top of the drag racing pyramid for over three decades. When I came on board their successes were too numerous to count and their relationship was comparable to that of an old but very much still in love married couple. They knew how to push each other’s buttons but they also knew how to bring out the best in one another.

In 2009 during the NHRA Carolina Nationals at the famed zMax Dragway, the Bellagio of Drag Strips, the NHRA decided to host an exhibition four-wide race. The following season the series would have the first official four-wide national event, and to get people excited they wanted to give the fans a little taste of the action. It was decided that the participants would be plucked from the eight first-round losers in Top Fuel and Funny Car, with the exhibition contested after the semi-finals. The Funny Car foursome would be made up of John Force, who immediately volunteered after he lost, along with teammate Mike Neff, Del Worsham and Tim Wilkerson. 

After the first round Force was talking with Coil about how he needed to do a super long burn-out to get the fans hyped up for the exhibition race. Coil was telling him that was not possible when you consider how precisely they were managing fuel flow. Force reiterated he had to do a massive burn-out and Coil needed to figure out how to make that possible. Coil shot back at Force that he could do whatever he wanted since his name was on the side of the trailer but if he executed a lengthy burnout Coil could not guarantee there would be fuel left in the motor at the finish line. Voices were now well beyond casual conversation levels and Force once again said he needed to be able to do a long burn-out. Coil told Force he could do whatever he wanted to do but, no more fuel was going to be added to his Funny Car. I think there might have been an emphatic tooth pick point from Coil to further define his position. Force stormed out of the trailer screaming at Coil to make it happen and Coil simply swiveled in his chair and went back to work. 

When it was time for the exhibition run Force executed an old school burnout that went well past half-track. He then backed up so fast he was the first Funny Car back to the starting line. The crowd went nuts just as Force had hoped. When the Christmas Tree fired Force’s Funny Car leapt off the starting line and was charging for the exhibition race win. Just as he was approaching the finish line his motor blew up due to a lack of fuel and Mike Neff took a hole-shot win. When Force got back to the trailer he stormed in to confront Coil about what had happened. He was so mad he could barely speak and Coil just looked at him and calmly said, “I told you what was going to happen.” He spun around in his chair and went right back into his computer. It was one of the few times I had ever seen Force speechless because he was so furious. 

The following year I was tasked with, hands down, the most stressful job I ever had at John Force Racing. I am not kidding about how terrified I was for nearly an hour on Saturday afternoon during the final qualifying session of the Auto Club Finals. Force and Matt Hagan were locked in a tight championship battle for the Funny Car title. Coming into the race, Force trailed Hagan by 37 points and after three rounds of qualifying he was 41 points back. That was a problem since each round of racing on Sunday was worth 20 points, so Force was three rounds behind Hagan at that moment, by that one solitary point. I was told to get on the headset for the final qualifying session and keep the team, mainly Austin Coil, updated in real time what the point situation was. The JFR radio channels were like a community line for each team. Everyone on Force’s team could talk at one time including Force, who talked all the time. He talked so much that when Ashley Force was racing she made sure her team was on a completely different channel to avoid listening to her dad.

Before the final qualifying session I positioned myself on the right-hand side of the track with a clear view of the scoreboards. I had never been on the headsets before so Bernie Fedderly had to give me a quick rundown of how they worked. With each pair of Funny Cars I would note their elapsed times and update the team of the current bonus point situation. The quickest three race cars got 3-2-1 bonus points each session, and we needed a combination of points that would help us close the gap on Hagan to less than 40 points going into race day.

Force and Hagan were running beside each other and right before they ran Coil was all over me asking where they stood against Hagan. I told him we had to run quicker than him this session. Both cars took off and made excellent runs but Force was quicker and as I quickly jotted down ETs and compared to the qualifying sheet Force had gained three critical points and now only trailed Hagan by 38 points.

Over the radio I told Coil we were within two rounds but he wanted the number. He and Force were screaming asking for the specific point differential. I told them we were 38 points back but there were two more pairs of cars. We weren’t out of the woods yet but after those pairs ran and did not run quicker than Force we were all set. Again, more yelling over the headset and I confirmed the gap as 38 points and we just needed to go two more rounds than Hagan on Sunday for the championship. I handed my headphones back to Bernie and said I was never going to do that again. I was exhausted and drenched in sweat from the stress.

In addition to keeping up with points one of the other major tasks most PR people had to do to support the crew chiefs was the delivery of the qualifying sheets after each session. This has now been computerized in the last couple of years but prior to that improvement PR people would anxiously wait in the media center for the NHRA staff to copy run sheets that had all the incremental times for crew chiefs and drivers to review. It was sometimes a race against the clock to get the info to the crew chiefs in a timely fashion.

One time I was running sheets and I mean literally running to get sheets from one team to the next in our pit area, when I darted through the JFR Technology Center, which was two semi-trailers parked beside each other to create one big unit all the crew chiefs worked out of. The trailers had lower levels with work stations and upper levels for storage.

There was an elevator platform used to raise and lower everything, from engine blocks, to tires, to boxes. On this day the platform had been used but had not been raised completely to the roof. It was almost there but for someone who is almost 6’ 5” almost was not enough. I was hustling through the trailer to give Coil his sheets when my forehead collided with the edge of the platform and very much like a Looney Tunes cartoon my entire body kept running, eventually becoming parallel with the ground before gravity took over and I landed with a thud at Coil’s feet. I was seeing stars as I gathered myself, and Coil simply asked me to quit showing off and give him his sheets. He also handed me a dirty rag that, unbeknownst to me, had a fair amount of Brake Clean on it for my bleeding forehead. The burning sensation I experienced from the rag made me forget about my throbbing head injury. Later that day Coil did thank me for my efforts to get him his sheets as quickly as possible which I honestly took as high praise. 

I have two other epic crew chief stories. In 2009 Robert Hight was in a serious slump most of the summer. His crew chief Jimmy Prock was chasing one gremlin after another in the Auto Club Funny Car. One Saturday night my PR partner Dave Densmore and I were returning to the team hotel, and let’s just say we were bumping up against the team curfew. As we were walking through the lobby we heard a familiar voice and realized Jimmy was in the lobby talking tuning combinations to no one in particular. He was also chewing his collar like nobody’s business. The University of Nevada – Las Vegas college basketball head coach and Hall of Famer Jerry Tarkanian used to chew on a folded towel on the sidelines but Jimmy’s collar chewing was more of a private quirk.

That night he stopped us to ask us our opinion on what he should do with Robert’s Funny Car tune-up. Densmore and I looked at each other and just shrugged our shoulders. We would have had better luck trying to crack a safe with a stethoscope based on the level of fine tuning a crew chief needed. The fact he even asked us had us very concerned. Like all true geniuses Jimmy kept working the problem and eventually figured it out just in time for the greatest Countdown comeback in NHRA history, winning the Funny Car championship.

My last great crew chief story comes from one of the most impressive drivers and crew chiefs on the NHRA tour. I have so much respect for guys like Tim Wilkerson and Cruz Pedregon who drive, tune and own their whole operation. The amount of stress and focus you need to wear all three of those hats is unmatched in most modern sports. I would add Mike Neff to the list of driver/crew chief geniuses.

In 2011 Neff was driving and tuning his Funny Car as part of the JFR stable. At the U.S. Nationals that year he was having a terrible time in qualifying. At the end of each day I would swing by for quotes and he would simply tell me he had no idea what was going on or why his race car was doing what it was doing. He said he was completely lost and I should leave him alone. 

After three days of qualifying Neff was in the show as the No. 9 qualifier but he had zero confidence he was going to do anything on race day. On Monday morning I stopped him as he was pulling out to head to the staging lanes for the first round of eliminations. I asked him how he thought his day was going to go. He told me he had changed everything on the race car and it was either going to haul ass or it was going to blow up before it got past the Christmas Tree.  

His quickest run going into race day was a 4.118 second pass and in the first round he trailered teammate Robert Hight with a 4.086 second run. After that run Neff told me he thought he was on to something. On the next three runs Neff ran 4.062, 4.060 and in the final for the win over Bob Tasca III he ran another 4.068-second pass. After the first round there was only one other 4.06 pass the entire rest of the day. It was a piece of crew chief mastery. Neff won the U.S. Nationals the next year but he always told me the 2011 win was the best one because he wasn’t expecting it and he just caught lightning in a bottle at the biggest race of the year.

Watching those three crew chiefs win big races, win championships and also suffer devastating losses gave me a real appreciation for the intricacies of drag racing. A million things have to go right for a great run and only one thing has to go wrong to ruin a run. Crew chiefs have to keep their heads about them when everyone else is panicking. Guys like Coil, Prock and Neff showed me how to handle pressure and also how to manage adversity. They answered a lot of dumb PR guy questions but they also made sure I felt like I was part of the team. I can’t thank them enough and I look forward to seeing them continue to work their magic on the race track. 

Hello again everybody (use your best Harry Caray voice for that) and welcome back to another blog penned (typed) by my esteemed colleague and friend, Elon Werner.

This one is a quite different, but I bet it’s a subject almost everyone can relate to. I know I can, and I continue to relate to it just about every day. It’s clutter.

Since we were married, Barbara and I have upsized from our house on the ravine in Austin, Tex. to our McMansion on the pond in Woodbury. Both were phenomenal homes, but we were clearly proud that we had been successful enough to afford and enjoy that first Woodbury house in Marsh Creek. It was a wonderful home, and great for hosting family and friends during the holidays. But, it was WAY too much house for just the two of us and our cats. When the move to Spokane happened, we almost downsized so much I wouldn’t have had office space in the city condo we were considering, so I was out with a real estate agent looking at downtown Spokane offices. That was scary and exciting all at the same time. In the end, though, the tenant in the condo had a longterm lease and wouldn’t leave. We rescinded the contract.

We then found our home out on the golf course in Liberty Lake, which we rented from a terrific military family, and that was a move from 4,800 square feet to 3,600. Before the movers showed up in Woodbury, we had to do a full-on purge. We filled a 10-yard dumpster with stuff that had seemed important to keep but wasn’t. I haven’t missed any of it.

Four years later, when it was time to move back to Woodbury, we did it again. We had Barbara’s niece and her boyfriend fly out from Denver and let them “go shopping” in our house. They had just bought a new house, and they gleefully filled a U-Haul rental truck with furniture and fixtures and drove it back home. We were downsizing again.

Now, we live comfortably in a 2,800 square foot house with two levels. Plenty of room for us, places for guests to stay, and territory to roam for Boofus and Buster. It’s perfect, although I do miss the marsh out front, the pond in back, and Pond Cam.

But…  Our garage has always been a place we never addressed much. Stuff everywhere. Living in Minnesota, we do actually need to get both cars in there but it’s always been a tight squeeze. We haven’t done anything like the scope of what Elon describes below, but we’ve been pecking away at it since last summer. We’re getting there. Clutter is a demon. Give it a little space, and it will take over.

And Elon also writes about writing more, learning more about the art, and developing as a writer. To me, that’s clearly obvious. He has developed enormously since the first time he stepped in to write this blog just to help out his Minnesota buddy. He also writes about the day he’ll get his “pink slip” from me, but that’s strictly a matter of when I get the book done. Some weeks I’m prolific, other weeks not so much. We’re in the middle of a renovation of our master bath right now, so that’s been a perfect excuse for not writing much. So much noise! Plumbers, carpenters, the tile guy, and the contractor! It’s mayhem, I tell ya. So, no termination notice for Mr. Werner in the short-term, but once the book is done (I don’t know how many more chapters I have to write, because it will just be done when it’s over) I look forward to kicking Elon unceremoniously to the curb and taking this back over again.

Elon also writes about Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore location, and we’ve used the closest one to us a few times in the last couple months. For us, though, the closest location is about a 2-hour roundtrip up to St. Croix Falls in northern Wisconsin. The route, however, is mostly along the very scenic St. Croix River, which delineates the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin up there and all the way down to just south of us here in Woodbury, where the St. Croix flows into the Mississippi and Old Man River takes over border duty. Anyway, it’s a great concept and we’ve been happy to make the drive with various items we’ve “outgrown” here.

Until next time, enjoy a subject I know we all relate to. Organizing and getting rid of clutter. I hope I never need another 10-yard dumpster dropped off in my driveway.

Thanks for sticking with us, everyone. Here’s Elon!

Bob

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I know we are well into 2021 so many people may already be giving up on their New Year’s resolutions, but I am taking a different approach. I waited until mid-January to think about what I wanted to change. First, I am not a fan of resolutions. I am, however, a fan of goals. Goals can be more flexible than resolutions in my opinion. Luckily, Bob has given me the opportunity to tackle one of my goals even before 2021 started.

My first goal for the New Year is to write more. These blogs have been a big help and I hope you have enjoyed them. As Bob and all aspiring writers know the key to good writing is to write and to be almost religious about getting words onto paper (or your computer screen). This is the first blog that I am starting without a firm grasp of where I am going.

For Christmas I asked for a book about writing and even received a magazine subscription about writing. One of my favorite books about the subject is On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. It is an amazing look at how one of the most brilliant and prolific writers of my generation cranked out best-seller after best-seller. The key is to keep writing.  Once Bob gives me my Bob’s Blog pink slip I will look for another venue for my words and will always be appreciative of this chance to get a writing streak going.

Another big goal is to continue to downsize at the Werner homestead. For many years our garage has been a wreck and this Christmas season it reached a tipping point. The real reason for the garage make-over had to do with the Christmas break when we were invited to neighbor Kevin’s driveway/garage for an outdoor happy hour. Once we saw Kevin’s garage we were horrified at our current situation. His garage was spotless and completely organized. Every item was in its own spot. You could tell there was no half-ass “let’s just set this box here” system going on. “Everything was in its place and there was a place for everything,” is the saying, I believe. We have been in our current house for almost ten years and I don’t think we really ever gave too much attention to garage organization. We just put a bunch of shelves and hutches around the walls and started stacking stuff everywhere. Kevin has put a lot of thought into his garage and we took that as a challenge, so last weekend my wife Jenn and I decided enough was enough. 

The process actually started before last weekend as Jenn researched a variety of shelving options before finding the perfect five-shelf steel racks. Amazon to the rescue and last Thursday three huge boxes arrived for me to assemble. That was the first step in the Werner garage makeover. On Friday we began moving a variety of items to the curb that we hoped our neighbors would find interesting and come take away. Through the NextDoor app were able to post photos of the items and emphasize that they were free for the taking. Within hours the vast majority of items ranging from old shelves, to unwanted patio umbrellas, to folding chairs, were all gone and had found new homes. 

One item that was grabbed up by a neighbor, who is a high school senior, was an old four-shelf wood unit. She described the design as cool and I am sure through her repurposing skills we won’t recognize that piece the next time we see it. The shelves had been in my Jenn’s family for over 40 years and had made the move to Texas from Virginia. Jenn used the piece as a TV stand in her first apartment and we have used it in a number of rooms before relegating it to the garage. 

As the clean-out process proceeded we realized we had a lot of stuff we didn’t need. I made multiple trips to a local church’s mission store as well as to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. If you aren’t familiar with HfH ReStore you should check it out. We find treasures there all the time for little projects around the house. It is basically a building supply store of hand-me-downs. Everything there is donated and then priced to move. They have cabinets, rugs, building materials, tile, light fixtures, etc. If you are in a house that is older and need to find something to match, ReStore is the place to check out. They are particular about what they take and I love dropping stuff off because I know some good will come out of my donation. 

After multiple trips to get things out of our garage for good we began the process of repositioning what made the cut. Jenn made a diagram of where she thought everything should go and we began repositioning and moving items to their new locations. It was quick work but as we moved along we realized we had some opportunities to upgrade some of our storage options. Previously we had rakes, shovels, either hanging on various walls by nails or just leaning in a corner. We took inventory of what we had and on a trip to Lowe’s found a cool hanging rack system that kept everything together. It was a game changer. I also found a wall-mounted bike rack to get our two bikes off the ground and free up even more space. We were getting excited about the progress even though we were very much in the early stages.

One major issue was the overhead lighting in the garage. We had two crummy fluorescent lights that never worked very well and also didn’t light up the garage worth a darn when they did work. I am not an expert electrician but I have enough skill to hang a ceiling fan so I thought I could replace the fluorescent lights with some cool LED units. Jenn found a three panel LED light on Amazon that screwed into a light socket. We had just installed one in our attic so we knew it could be a big hit. It lit up the whole attic space so I thought we could get a couple more of those and solve our garage lighting issue. The first step was removing the long fluorescent lights. They were a bit of a pain since you had to work over your head and also some of the screws were stripped. I was able to get the first one down with minimal issues but the second one had to be pulled from the ceiling. I was able to hide the hole I made with the new light kit. The new LED lights make a huge difference and I was quite proud of my wiring skills.

One area we have never given any thought to was our tool collection. We have all sorts of hammers, tape measures, screw drivers, etc. but we never seem to know where anything is. We have a tool bag but stuff just gets dumped into it and sometimes it winds up in a drawer or on a counter somewhere for weeks on end. It seems like we spend as much time looking for a tool as we spend on the actual project we needed the tool for. We took inspiration again from Kevin’s garage and added a four by four piece of pegboard for tool organization. Again this became a Werner garage game changer. Jenn and I had the best time figuring out where and how to display our tools, saws, drills, screw drivers, etc. I don’t think we are going to draw outlines around each item so it goes back into exactly the same spot but the thrill of organizing and hanging those items was intoxicating. Once were we were done we took a few steps back and just admired our handy work. I think I now know how Michelangelo felt when he climbed off the scaffold and looked up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The view was breath-taking. This may be too much hyperbole but from where we came to where we are now is so cool.

Neighbors stopped by over the two days on Saturday and Sunday to admire our progress and also offer tips. One of them gave me a great suggestion for my extension ladder and after another quick trip to Lowe’s we were all set. Jenn thought I was hanging the ladder too high for her but I asked her when the last time she ever pulled the ladder down was. I like to think of high ladder placement as sort of job security. She can’t get rid of me because how would she ever get the ladder down.

By the end of the day on Sunday we were 90 percent done and the devil was now in the details. We had little bins and tubs of screws and nails and washers that now needed to be sorted. It seems like we never felt like we had screws or nails when we needed them so we would just go buy them when we had a project. Once we pulled everything out and corralled it we realized we had more screws and nails than we knew what to do with. Jenn has spent the last couple of nights creating an organizational system that I think will put Lowe’s to shame. I love it since now we know where everything is. 

Our next project will be our craft closet. I made the mistake of sticking my head inside a few weeks ago and I asked Jenn if a shelf had collapsed because there seemed to be a lot of stuff on the ground. I was quickly and sternly informed that no, a shelf had not collapsed there was just a bunch of stuff on the ground. We can fix that up in no time with a few more trips to Lowe’s.

As far as additional goals for 2021 beyond writing and organizing our house I am going to continue to try and be helpful and positive as I go about my daily life. I am not going to sweat the small stuff and I am going to assume if someone else is rude or appears to be inconsiderate, rather than lean into that negativity I am going to take a step back and not get caught up in the nonsense. I am also going to try and give more people the benefit of the doubt. Hope everyone’s New Year is off to a great start and thanks for reading.  

Hello again, everyone!

I am fully aware that I have gotten to do, and continue to do, some really cool things during my time on this planet. I’ve stood on numerous Major League fields, I’ve been on the 50-yard line at the Superdome in New Orleans, I’ve held a sideline parabolic microphone for the San Francisco 49ers radio team, and I’ve walked the streets of Havana, London, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Florence, Rome, and four of the Hawaiian islands. But I’ve never been involved with the NCAA Football National Championship.

Elon Werner has, and just did it again a few days ago. It was a very different experience this time around, with all the Covid protocols, but it’s still the biggest game in any college football season. And Elon is here today to give us an exclusive “behind the scenes” story of his time in Miami, at Hard Rock Stadium

Quick note: If you remember Joe Robbie Stadium, the home of the Dolphins for many years, as well as the Marlins, this is the same place. But man-oh-man did they ever transform it into something that looks like an entirely new stadium.

The biggest drawback to Joe Robbie Stadium (and it’s various other names) was the fact it had no roof at all. Every seat in the stadium was exposed to the elements, which in Miami can mean everything from scorching heat to pouring rain. Rather than build a new stadium, they renovated it with a partial roof that protects the fans. The playing surface is still exposed to Mother Nature, but the fans no longer have to melt or be swamped. It’s an engineering marvel.

I’ve been there once, when I accompanied Barbara to help her support her alma mater Penn State in the Orange Bowl. That was pre-renovation, but fortunately for us it was a night game and it didn’t rain. I don’t think I’d even recognize the place now.

Here’s Elon’s story. As always, let him feel the love by clicking on the “Like” button at the bottom if you enjoyed what he wrote.

Bob Wilber

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I just got home from the College Football Playoff national championship game held at the impressive Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida and I wanted to share some observations and thoughts. It was a great trip but felt bittersweet with everything going on in the world. Crowning a new college football champion was an endeavor that took a concerted effort by schools, conferences, the NCAA, television networks, bowl organizations, and the host committee, not to mention the sacrifices and dedication by the players.

I have worked five of the past six CFP national championship games and this game was the weirdest one of the bunch for obvious reasons. COVID loomed large over the entire event and its impact began even before I got to Miami. Everyone working in an official capacity had to get a negative COVID test before they could even leave to fly to the game. That was one of many advance precautions taken.

Every large public event had been canceled for this year’s game which meant no Playoff Fan Central, no concert series, no 5K and no Extra Yard for Teachers’ Summit. There were a number of virtual events created to replace many of these events and the CFP did a tremendous job of working with the local Miami area schools to promote the educational impact the game would leave behind for the community. We were also able to host a small group of state teachers of the year to highlight the program and celebrate their determination and successes.

On Friday afternoon, shortly after I arrived in Miami, I was back at the airport to coordinate photos of the Alabama Crimson Tide team arriving for the game. It was quite a production and a super-cool experience to be on the tarmac at a major international airport. We were getting minute by minute updates from the TSA reps on the ground with us, and they were very specific about where we could and couldn’t go. As the charter plane pulled up it was showered by three fire trucks which is a celebratory tradition in the aviation world. I had usually seen it done for championship winning teams upon their return to their home airports or for pilots who were retiring. I was able to let some of the media know that there was nothing wrong with the plane and there was no cause for panic.

Once the plane came to a stop and as the Alabama football team exited, led by head coach Nick Saban, you could tell they were on a business trip. There were minimal smiles and they all headed directly to their assigned buses. Some players were taking videos on their phones but for the most part they just wanted to get on the bus and get to the hotel. It was a loud and interesting new experience and a great way to get my weekend started.

My role changed, since I would not be riding herd over Playoff Fan Central. I would instead be in charge of the Beauty Shot platforms at Hard Rock Stadium. There were actually two Beauty Shot locations for this game which is unusual, but when you have South Beach as a visual element you want to take advantage of that location as well. The Beauty Shot is a location that has the stadium in the background and TV media outlets will set up for live shots for their newscasts, hence the moniker Beauty Shot.

This location is usually only busy on the morning of the national championship game, as reporters are hyping up the game with the “live from XYZ stadium where tonight’s game will be contested.” This year, without the satellite events, the Beauty Shot locations were hopping throughout the weekend. The stadium location got started at 4:30 a.m. and had media people filing stories until well after midnight following Alabama’s decisive win over Ohio State.

It was pretty much nonstop action, on those platforms.

We anticipated it being busy but we were surprised by how long the stations stayed at our location. We should have known they would spend more time on the platforms since they could not go “live” from the field prior to kick-off. Another COVID change was very limited on-field access for everyone. There was no live TV before the game, when usually there are 20-30 stations doing updates. Only 15 still photographers, down from a group of 40-50 shooters from newspapers, photo services and school representatives in the past. No non-essential people on the field at all. Without that access the TV stations did what they do, which is adapt, so they stayed up top at the Beauty Shot. It made for a long day but I knew that when I signed up for the gig. It is always funny to see people work in close quarters when they are doing live TV or taping segments. There is friendly ribbing when reporters stumble over their words and there is also sincere appreciation when a reporter wraps up a shot with a nice turn of phrase or witty salutation. All these media people are trying to be informative and entertaining usually under some pretty tough and stressful situations. 

My role was to make sure things went as smoothly as possible. I helped get them set up which involved helping carry equipment up three flights of stairs to get to the platform and then assisting them with set up or trouble-shooting. We don’t provide power so I am sometimes charged with finding a location for them to keep their batteries fresh or even help them swap out batteries. I also help with stats and/or items of interest. They usually have a handful of questions about other topics of importance, like what food is being served in the press box at half-time. This year it was hamburgers, hot dogs and key lime pie for dessert. Everything was packaged individually and there were a variety of outdoor dining locations to spread people out.

Prior to kick-off we spotted a person painted green from head to toe, riding a bike with a huge Michigan State flag. He was just riding around the parking lot. This was strange for a variety of reasons, most notably was the fact that Michigan State was not represented in the national championship game. He captured everyone’s attention so I was able to get them some intel on what was going on, which they appreciated. He was a guy named Johnny Spirit who attends sporting events all over the country and he loves Michigan State. That’s the deal. He patrolled the outside of the stadium for over an hour and then I never saw him again.

I was able to head into the stadium for some of the game. The state of Florida approved a capacity of 12,500 fans for the game and the majority of the seats in Hard Rock Stadium were covered to keep people from moving or congregating too close. Even with a dramatic reduction in fans, you could still hear the passion from the Alabama and Ohio State backers. Alabama had a audible advantage but the sounds of the game were a sense of normalcy. That was about the only thing that was normal. There were no lines anywhere. An hour before kick-off, when usually thousands of people would have been milling around outside the stadium, you could walk right up to any entrance. At half-time I went out onto the concourse and there were no lines for food or the bathrooms. There were people around but not nearly enough to inconvenience anyone. 

Fan creativity did show through in the wide variety of masks on display. Instead of the seven guys with A-L-A-B-A-M-A painted on their chests I saw a number of people walking in groups with R-O-L-L or T-I-D-E lettered on individual masks. I saw my share of O-H and I-O masks as well. There were Bear Bryant hounds tooth masks and masks covered in Buckeyes similar to the team’s helmets for standout players. Spirits were high even though you could tell the passion level was not at peak championship level. I think people were glad they were getting a championship game and knew that this was a season like no other.

The day after the game the host committee did a hand-off press conference to the host committee of the next year’s championship game. This is usually a physical handoff but this year we changed it up to fit the situation. We hosted a live press conference on South Beach as well as a Zoom press conference beamed back live to Indianapolis, site of the 2022 national championship game in Lucas Oil Stadium. We didn’t do a hand off but rather a Hail Mary bomb from Florida to Indiana. The folks from the Miami host committee thanked everyone for their help and much like the buckeye sticker of achievement each year the host committee ads their logo to the CFP traveling helmet. Following that ceremonial touch one of the leaders of the Miami committee threw a pass to the Indy host committee. This was an amazing feat of timing and technological coordination. It looked great on the Zoom press conference but to those in-person attendees on South Beach it just looked like a guy throwing a pass straight up into the air, which I had to chase down and catch.

It was an odd ending to an odd event. My hope for 2021 is we continue to move towards normalcy with the distribution of the COVID vaccine, continued mask wearing, and doing our best to minimize unnecessary social gatherings. I know many people might not think sporting events are necessary social gatherings but sports are a major fabric of our society. College football is a part of society that crosses generations and is filled with tradition and passion. Its historical impact on our country cannot be minimized. Presidents have played college football and looked back at those experiences as instrumental in molding them into great leaders. Watching college football on Saturday afternoons is a part of so many people’s DNA that starting and finishing this season’s college football schedule, even one that was full of uncertainty and change, was a huge deal. Congratulations to all the teams that played this year and I am already looking forward to a great event in Indy in 2022.

Thanks for reading!

   

Like much of the country, I was glued to the TV for hours yesterday, in stunned silence with disbelief rattling around in my head. At one point, as the DC curfew began to be enforced, I actually thought “There’s no way I’m posting a blog tomorrow.”

But then I kept watching, and I saw congress take back the chambers they work in, to do the job they had to constitutionally complete despite the mob rule that had defiled the people’s houses just hours before. And I realized it was a bit comforting because it was normalcy. I’m not much for the formality of parliamentary rules and procedures, but I’ve sat on a couple of boards of directors so I understand the need for them. It was normalcy.

These are not normal times, but we all crave normalcy. That’s what we said throughout 2020, blaming the numbers on the calendar instead of the world itself. It didn’t take 2021 a week to plunge into the most horrific abnormal visions I never thought I’d see. And we still crave normalcy. We have to, just to keep our sanity.

So here’s a fantastically written blog from Elon Werner yet again. This is our new normal. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what he’s been doing with this blog, just so his buddy (me) can concentrate on the normalcy of finishing his book.

Enjoy this. It’s got a lot of John Force in it, so “normalcy” is not really what one would call it, but just to read these stories is indeed normal.

And if it felt good for you to read it, click on that “Like” button at the bottom, just to let Elon and me both know that you appreciate it.

See ya next week!

Bob Wilber

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Last week I was very excited to see three-time Top Fuel world champion and all-around nice guy Larry Dixon share a letter he received from the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America. Dixon was notified he was being inducted into the Hall of Fame class of 2021 and I could not be happier for him. He is in the background of my very first winner’s circle photo. The photo was from Don “The Snake” Prudhomme’s last win as a driver and Dixon was one of his crew guys. Snake won the FallNationals in 1993 and Snake’s PR guy, the late Joe Sherk (another amazing person), encouraged me to hop in a group shot.  Seeing Dixon’s letter reminded me of two Hall of Fame inductions and one “legendary” experience I had with John Force.

After Force’s miraculous 2010 NHRA season, which culminated with his 15^th NHRA world championship, the Texas Motorsports Hall of Fame, of all places, reached out about inducting John into the Hall. The Hall of Fame displays were housed at Texas Motor Speedway and Force would join actual Texans Lee Shepherd, Kenny Bernstein and Eddie Hill as drag racing members. Force considered himself an honorary Texan, since he wore cowboy boots every day and had won a bunch of NHRA national events in the state, between his dominance at Houston Raceway Park and Texas Motorplex. Longtime motorsports journalist Terry Blount was leading the charge along with legendary DFW motorsports writer John Sturbin. Both of these award-winning writers bent the ear of Eddie Gossage about Force’s place in Texas motorsports lore and I doubt it took much convincing since Eddie wanted to sell tickets to the event at The Speedway Club and he knew Force would give a heck of a speech.

There is no doubt Force was a worthy inductee but as we arrived at the event he was having second thoughts about his place in a Texas Hall of Fame, since he was a diehard drag racer from SoCal. I did my best to remind him of his place in Texas motorsports history and once we got to The Speedway Club he was comfortable with the idea again. We found our table and then the worst part of the event began to unfold; the waiting. Force is not very patient. He doesn’t like to sit still. He doesn’t like to eat unfamiliar foods. I am not saying he has a lot in common with his very active grandsons but sometimes sitting with him at events like that is painful. Luckily, I had a plan. 

I knew he wouldn’t be interested in eating so during the dinner portion of the program I took Force around to all the media people in attendance and let Force tell stories. I had prepped a couple of writers in advance of my plan so they knew to eat fast because Force was coming by and they needed to have their recorders or notepads ready. It worked like a charm and we were able to get a ton of interviews done. The media loved the fact that Force came to them. They had no idea how grateful I was that they were the ones being so accommodating. After dinner the speeches started. I knew Force was going to be the last guy to talk so that meant more waiting. I was out of ideas after we walked through the silent auction area and Force bid on a number of items. The main item he wanted was a polished sheet-metal sign that was three feet wide by eight feet tall, with his Hall of Fame credentials and likeness etched from top to bottom. As we were walking back to the table Force turned to me and asked me if I had a Full Throttle energy drink. I just looked at him dumbfounded. He explained he needed a boost of energy and again asked if I had a Full Throttle for him to pound before his speech, to get his energy up. I said I didn’t have any drinks in my suit pockets but I would check with the bartender.

I struck out with the bartender and was doing math in my head about whether I had enough time to leave the ballroom drive across the highway to a convenience store buy a Full Throttle and make it back in time for Force to take the stage. I asked a Texas Motor Speedway staffer if I had enough time and he gave me a hard no. He did say that there was a breakroom a few floors down and he thought there were some energy drinks there. I thanked him and hopped on the elevator, exiting to a darkened floor a few levels down.

The main office was behind a glass wall with two doors. I could see there were lights on down the main hallway and I immediately started banging on the locked front doors. After what seemed like an eternity, a janitor poked his head out from an office and came to the front door. I explained my situation and after some serious name dropping he reluctantly let me in and showed me to the breakroom. I opened the fridge and there were no Full Throttles. As I was losing all hope I spotted a Red Bull mini-fridge in the corner. I raced over and opened the door only to be greeted by a loud clank as the handle hit the chain that was wrapped around the fridge. I know Red Bulls aren’t cheap but do they have to be kept under lock and key and chain?!?!

The good news was the chain was not tight and I was able to tip the fridge forward and pry open the door enough to shake out a Red Bull. Thank goodness those cans were skinny. The janitor was watching this whole scene and thinking he might report me, so I handed him a ten dollar bill and thanked him for his help. Back up in the ballroom I dropped off the Red Bull with the bartender and told her that a man was going to come up and ask for a ginger ale and she should pour the whole Red Bull into a tall glass and give it to him. Again, confusion and another ten dollars to the rescue.

Back at our table I whispered to John I had a drink for him and he needed to go to the bar to get it. There were a number of NHRA officials at our table and since our series sponsor was Full Throttle I didn’t think it would be a good idea for Force to drink a Red Bull right in front of them. Force kept asking me where his drink was and why he had to go to the bar to get it. We were whisper-bickering like an old married couple when I finally just told him what the deal was. He clued in and went to the bar for his drink. He powered it down and then gave one of the greatest Hall of Fame speeches ever. He thanked everyone there and he saw a Marine in his dress blue uniform who he brought him up on stage to thank him for his service. It was magical. 

At the end of the night Force found out he had been outbid on the metal sign and he tracked down the eventual winner. He talked the guy into selling him the sign and we high-tailed it out of there. That huge sign was housed in my office for six months until the FallNationals when I took it to the track so we could put it on the hauler to go back to the Indianapolis shop. 

Later that year two more amazing things happened. First, Force got a letter similar to Dixon’s except his letter was from the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in Birmingham, Alabama. There are a number of motorsports Halls of Fame and they are all very, very important for a variety of historical reasons but the International Motorsports Hall of Fame was the toughest to get into because of their voting process. It was very similar to the Baseball Hall of Fame where you needed a high percentage of “yes votes” from well over a hundred voters covering all sorts of motorsports. Drag Racing was at a disadvantage since there were fewer voters with a direct tie to our sport. Force’s name was appearing on the ballot for the first time so the fact he was voted in on his first run was quite impressive. His fellow inductees that year would be Kenny Bernstein and Richard Childress. Pretty good company if you ask me.

Before we got to Alabama the second amazing event unfolded. Force was selected to be honored at the 26^th annual Great Sports Legends Dinner at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The annual event held every September honored philanthropic heroes and sports legends and brought together celebrities and corporate leaders to support the fundraising efforts of Nick and Marc Buoniconti, who have tirelessly worked to find a cure for paralysis. It was big time. Bob Costas was the emcee and Force’s fellow legends included Olympian Nancy Kerrigan, golfer Ernie Els, NFL legend Harry Carson, and the special honored guests were Don Shula and Jerry Rice. There was a pre-dinner cocktail party and it was top of the line. Also, there was security everywhere. Remember that fact.

Force was super nervous about his speech and called me down to his room about two hours before the festivities so he could rehearse and get feedback from me. He had some great stories about growing up with polio and how he was afraid he might never walk, so he didn’t take anything for granted. He also talked about his rehab from his accident in 2007. All great, heartwarming and personal stories that I knew the crowd would love. I told him he was going to be awesome and I needed to go change into my tuxedo so we could get to the pre-party on time.

As we walked into the ballroom on the third floor, which was serving as the location for the cocktail party, we had to go through a number of security check points and that was just for the pre-party. We got into the room and it was a “who’s who” of sports and entertainment celebrities. Force chatted up a few people but shockingly to those who know the gregarious, fast-talking, race track version of John Force, when he is in that kind of setting he gets very shy. He doesn’t feel like he belongs, so I usually try to draw him out. I introduced him to Jerry Rice by telling Rice that Force was a record-setting football player in his youth before switching to drag racing. Rice was intrigued and then cracked up when he found out Force’s football record is for the most consecutive losses in California high school football history. They quickly started talking about what it takes to be a winner and a champion and I wish I had a recording of those two legends sharing how they find the passion. 

The party was winding down and most of the people had left to go to the main ballroom for dinner. As I was walking out I reached into my jacket to pull out my ticket and credentials to get into the main ballroom, and my pocket was empty. My heart dropped. I have no idea how I lost my tickets but they were nowhere to be found. There was no way I going to make it through all the levels of security with just my charm and good looks.

Luckily, I had a secret weapon at my disposal; Wayne Newton. Yes, Las Vegas legend Wayne Newton was still in the room. I had spoken to him briefly, earlier in the evening and I reintroduced myself as he was walking out of the room. I knew he was going to the main event so I figured as long as I was with him, and engaged in conversation, no one would stop me. Sure enough we waltzed through seven security check points (Yes, I counted) and as we approached the red carpet entrance I ducked under a red velvet rope to get into the main event. I had successfully used Wayne Newton as a human credential.

Once we got into the main room I sought out Bob Costas and asked him to introduce Force as a first-ballot Hall of Famer. I thought Force would get a kick out of it and Costas loved the idea. Force killed his speech even though he only used about 10 percent of what we went over in his hotel room. He is one of the best off-the-cuff speakers I have ever seen. He can read a room and know just how to connect with the crowd. He had people rolling with funny stories and then he gave a very moving request for donations that I know drove the total up tens of thousands of dollars.

At the end of the night, Dave Densmore and I hit the town looking for a slice of traditional New York style pizza, just to celebrate. We also marveled at the fact that a dirt-poor kid from Bell Gardens, California had just stolen the show at a high dollar charity dinner at the freaking Waldorf-Astoria hotel.  

Now let’s get to the good stuff. Force’s induction night in Alabama for the International Motorsports Hall of Fame is still talked about to this day by those in attendance. We drove down to Birmingham after the Southern Nationals in Atlanta if my memory is holding up. Once we got there we took a tour of the museum and they showed the inductees where their displays would be placed and there were some photo ops. Force was asking questions about the Hall of Fame ring and trophy as well as just chatting up the folks that ran the program. He was very appreciative and thanked them about ten times for giving him the chance to go into this Hall of Fame.

We got dressed at the hotel and the Hall of Fame had arranged for a limo to take Force, Kenny Bernstein, NHRA president Tom Compton, NHRA vice president Jerry Archambeault, NHRA legendary announcer Bob Frey, and myself to the event. On the way to the event Force was talking about who would get more ink if the limo crashed. Would it be him or Bernstein? It made Kenny very uncomfortable and I am not sure Tom or Jerry thought it was very funny either. Bob and I just kind of chuckled because we both knew if the limo crashed we would just be “and others.” Legendary drag racers John Force and Kenny Bernstein along with NHRA executives Tom Compton and Jerry Archambeult and others perished in a limousine accident.  

As we were getting settled at our table I excused myself because I had one task to take care of before dinner and the speeches. I had brought two Monster Energy drinks for Force to jump start his energy and I needed a place to stash them. I found a bartender and asked if he would hold onto the drinks for my boss. He said no problem so I felt like I was all set. Dinner went great and we were halfway through the speeches when I went to retrieve Force’s Monster Energy drinks. To my shock all the bars had been broken down and there is not a soul anywhere around. I searched under every table. No drinks. I had to go back to the table and report to Force that I had lost his drinks. To my surprise he said no problem and immediately grabbed his fork and started eating the icing off of all the desserts at the table. He fired back three cups of coffee and headed to the stage.

Once on stage Force thanked two people for getting him into the Hall of Fame, his Hall of Fame crew chief Austin Coil and his long-time public relations manager Dave Densmore. He told a great story about how Densmore got him more ink when he was terrible than anyone ever could have expected. He credited Coil with making him a Hall of Fame driver and Densmore with making him a Hall of Fame talker. During his speech Force got emotional and pledged to give Densmore the Hall of Fame trophy because he had been such a good friend throughout Force’s career. As soon as Force made the gesture Bruce Ramey, the Hall of Fame manager, and I locked eyes for a second and Bruce had a look of total panic. We both knew that there was only one trophy and it was headed to the display in the museum.

At the end of the speech Bruce told Force there was only one trophy but Force countered with “That can’t be” because he just had given that trophy away to Densmore and he couldn’t possibly ask for it back. Force asked Bruce where he could buy another one for the Hall of Fame display, as well as a third one for his shop in California. Eventually we got the trophy maker’s contact info and Force is now the only Hall of Famer with multiple trophies. There is one in Alabama and there is one in California and the last one is in Texas in Densmore’s office. 

In addition to giving away a trophy to Densmore, Force got Richard Childress and Rick Hendrick confused as he was congratulating Childress on all his accomplishments with Jeff Gordon. Force also tried to play match maker between Austin Dillon, Childress’ grandson, and either of his daughters Brittany or Courtney. The crowd was loving it and we were all convinced Force was only halfway kidding. After the event Tony Stewart who was at the event to accept his Driver of the Year Award came up to Force and said his speech was one of the funniest and most heartfelt he had ever experienced.

There is no doubt Larry Dixon is a Hall of Famer but in the pantheon of Hall of Famers there should be another level for guys like John Force, a sort of Hall of Fame of Hall of Famers. He is hands-down the most deserving, and I don’t think anyone would take issue with that fact. I am thankful I got to be a small part of adding to his career.

Hello all. Yes we have another Elon Werner installment on this day, but it’s also some holiday known as New Year’s Eve. Who knew?

Anyway, I really liked this blog because it answers the question I’ve typed as the headline. I know for a fact that not too many race fans know what any team’s PR rep really does. Heck, most crew guys don’t know. Some of the drivers probably don’t. Elon fully illustrates how he has always handled his challenging job expertly, but that brings up another point.

Not all PR people are cut from the same cloth. We all attack our jobs in our own way, playing to our strengths, which may or may not be a function of satisfying the team owner, driver, or client we are representing. You need a good fit. I’d be a terrible crew guy (trust me) and most of them wouldn’t cut it as a PR rep. You need that good fit, like comfortable sneakers or your favorite jeans.

Elon is a world-class PR and management person, and I’ve admired him as a terrific “sales pitch” guy on the media relations side of the job. That’s one of my weak spots. He loves the long game of chasing down writers or publications, building a rapport, and finally either convincing them to do a story or just wearing them down to where they can’t say no anymore. He’s the best in the business at that. No, seriously, he’s the best. No one is a close second.

He’s also a master organizer. I had to do a lot of that during the CSK and LRS years, but I had the distinct pleasure of working with Del Worsham and Tim Wilkerson. They both became great friends, allies, and collaborators. And so easy to work for.

I was always just more of a writer, but I’d step out of my comfort zone and go with the sales pitch technique from time to time. The 8-inch story I landed in USA Today, on Page 3 of Sports, when we expanded to two CSK Funny Cars in 2000 was the result of a solid two months of correspondence with writer Gary Graves. We still stay in touch now, and when he spoke to Del after the story Gary said, “Your PR guy is persistent. He did a great job with this.” That’s a compliment. But, I mostly concentrated on the relationship building and being the best creative writer I could be.

I’d guess that 90% of the features or mentions I landed were a product of the trust the writer or TV producer had in me, and the originality of the story I had sent them or told them about. I concentrated on getting to know all the right people, and writing things they liked and appreciated. And I always knew that, in motorsports, having a great relationship with the sponsor was as critical as any story. I was fortunate to work with some great marketing people, from the late Joe Spica at CSK, where I also had the pleasure of working nearly every day with Jim Schoenberger and Ron Chisler, to Dick Levi himself at Levi, Ray, & Shoup, where I also treasured my relationships with Shannon Heisler and many others.

As you will read below, Elon’s organizational and management approach could be a lot like herding kittens. He’s a tireless worker, who has put up with a lot during is career. I was a tireless writer, who liked to build my stable of friends and trusted colleagues during my career. This blog perfectly illustrates Elon’s adept handling of seemingly overwhelming details, and it’s about something completely different from his drag racing gig. It’s about college football. You didn’t know he did this, did you?

At races, did we all sit around and make each other laugh in the press room, while eating the free catering? Yes, that happened. Elon and I are both very fortunate to have shared that space with legends, stars, and really phenomenal people. We loved our time in the NHRA press room. But, when it was time to “do the job” we all got after it with purpose and skill. I guess the fact that both of us and so many of our colleagues have done this for a very long time means our work was valued and appreciated.

Happy New Year, everyone! It’s also the 23rd anniversary that Barbara Doyle and I have shared. I was wise. I figured I’d never forget the date if we were married on New Year’s Eve.

On this day in 1997, we stood on the edge of a gorgeous beach in Maui and said “I do” to each other. We are humbled and appreciative that people all over the world throw massive parties for us on this date (well, not this year) but we never understood why we had to wait until midnight to pop the bubbly and actually celebrate. After all, we got married around 7:00 pm. It’s a mystery.

Here’s Elon… Oh, and as always if you like what you’re about to read share the love with Elon by clicking on the “Like” button at the bottom.

 

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This weekend will be one of the busiest weekends in college football. Why am I bringing up the obvious to some diehard sports fans, you might ask? In addition to working with some of the biggest names and teams in motorsports, I have had the privilege to work with some of the best organizations in college football. 

Since the inception of the College Football Playoff (CFP) the company I work for, Tony Fay Public Relations, has worked with the organization to assist with media operations outside of the stadium. In years past the events surrounding the national championship game have had a Super Bowl feel, which is perfect when you think about what the CFP has become to college football. In addition to the game, CFP has hosted free big-name headliner concerts and fan interactive zones that fill up convention centers. They have coordinated 5K runs for charity and hosted specialty chef events celebrating the culinary history or “Tastes” of the host city. One of their biggest initiatives is the Extra Yard for Teachers program that celebrates teachers from across the country and their many accomplishments in the classroom. Each year state “teachers of the year” are hosted at the event and a “national teacher of the year” is named.

Working with the CFP national championship game is a PR highlight of my year. The first CFP national championship game was in Arlington, Texas, at AT&T Stadium, and I was put in charge of media operations at Playoff Fan Central, which was housed in the Dallas Convention Center. Playoff Fan Central is the free fan experience event that has interactive games and activities, sponsor booths, food, and even an indoor football field for youth clinics and the bands. Since that game, Playoff Fan Central has become my go-to event for the national championship weekend and I enjoy every minute of my time roaming the displays.

I have coordinated media opportunities for Playoff Fan Central for almost every CFP game. I have worked the games in Tampa, Atlanta, San Francisco and coming up Miami, and it has been a blast. My main job is to work with the media from the host city as well as the media covering the two teams in the national championship game, to make sure they get access to Playoff Fan Central and I also assist them with story ideas. I am always on the lookout for interesting fans or cool backstories and it helps pass the time as I chat up the folks enjoying the activities.

There are always multi-generational families of fans that come to the game to root on their alma mater or favorite team. In Atlanta I ran into a group that was five generations of Georgia Bulldog fans. The oldest was 86 and the youngest was less than a year old in a baby carriage. Everyone was decked out, head to toe in Bulldog gear and they couldn’t even add up how many Bulldog games that had attended together over the years. 

My other favorite interview subjects to track down are the “divided” families.  These are the family units or couples that are rooting for opposing teams. Also in Atlanta, there was a couple who was representing each side of the Alabama versus Georgia game. It was a husband and wife who had graduated from the respective schools and you could tell they were HUGE fans. I connected them with a local Atlanta TV station for an interview and they really went at it trading barbs about the opposing schools. It was great TV but the best part was after the interview was over, when they kept at it and it got a little heated. The TV reporter and I were off to the side just watching this meltdown while trying to contain our enjoyment. Eventually they yelled at each other that they needed to cool off and literally walked off in opposite directions. I have no idea how or if this relationship was reconciled.

The size of Playoff Fan Central also affords us the opportunity to host each school’s band inside for back-to-back sessions of music, cheerleaders and mascots. One of the best things college football has going for it is the bands. I have been lucky to be up close and personal with some of the best bands in the country. The bands from Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State and LSU rank at the top of the pyramid when it comes to bringing the noise and the pageantry. Clemson has one of the most talented baton corps and I have been amazed by the skill these young women display when they toss a spinning metal bar in the air while they spin and flip underneath it before catching it behind their backs. They even will add fire to the show, which takes it to the next level. 

Working Playoff Fan Central has turned into a PR marathon as the championship has gotten more popular and we have honestly done a better job of promoting it as an interesting and viable media location. I am usually on-site with a media person or group of stations starting at 4 a.m. for the local morning news shows and then lots of stations come back at 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. for their evening news. It can get pretty crazy when you have eight or ten different TV stations all in the same huge area, all trying to get the best segment produced. Some are doing live shots and some are taping segments. Technology is amazing, and now most TV stations send a reporter with a backpack that has the satellite hook-up capabilities, a camera and a tripod. They can go just about anywhere there is a Wi-Fi signal and do a live TV segment. 

There have even been occasions where I have had to step in and talk about what is going on or give information about the fan activities available. This is rare and I get a fair share of ribbing for this from my co-workers. I was spotted on local TV in Atlanta one morning by Mello Yello NHRA big wig Al Rondon who took the time to shoot me a text afterwards letting me know he had seen me working in my other world. Usually I try to be as helpful as possible assisting media members as they move from location to location, carrying tripods or equipment bags. It is a ton of fun but at the end of the day I am ready for some time off my feet. Comfortable shoes are a PR person’s best friend.

In Playoff Fan Central one of the most popular displays is the Extra Yard for Teachers area. It has a music-blaring school bus with windows that automatically go up and down and fans attempt to throw mini footballs through the open windows. There are three windows per team and fans can throw footballs into the van to earn points for their team. At the end of the weekend all the points for each team are converted to dollars that are donated to the local public school district. Here is the really fun fact about the bus and the contest. For the last three years the team that won the Extra Yard for Teachers bus contest has also won the national championship game.

The college football national championship game also hosts a media day for the two teams which is conducted on Saturday morning. This is a highly coordinated event that is tracked to the minute by the CFP staff. Each team is available for one hour to the national and local media, and the event is held on the floor of an arena in the host city. Fans can come in for free and sit in the stands to watch the various interviews on the JumboTron. They can listen through free multi-channeled headsets that are distributed as they enter the arena. There is a countdown clock running as soon as the teams get positioned in their various stations. The top level players and coaches get their own interview booths we call “hot dog stands” and the media gathers around in huge scrums to shout questions at them.

In Tampa I happened to wind up standing beside Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban as his team was lined up to enter the arena. Normally, I would not have engaged Coach Saban in conversation but I knew we would be waiting for a few minutes so I took my chance to ask him if he thought his players enjoyed these kinds of activities. He gave me a great answer about how he thought it was good for the student-athletes and the schools but he marveled at how the production levels have improved over the years. I told him he was going to be amazed by the intro he was about to see since I knew it had a laser show, big PA intros, and gladiator-style music elements to get the fans in the stands fired up. As I walked off he thanked me for the heads up and I wished him good luck. 

A few minutes later I was walking by his interview area and he was recounting the story of his interaction with one of the CFP staff members. He was telling the media how this guy gave him the heads up on the impressive team introduction he was about to see. He said at the time he honestly didn’t believe there would be a laser show but sure enough it was over the top. I had a good chuckle knowing that guy he was talking about was me.

I have also been involved this season with the re-launch of Bowl Season. You might have seen the logo on the fields at bowl games usually around the 20-yard line. We also assisted in the creation of some short videos that have aired on ESPN during a handful of games. Bowl Season is the collective coalition of all the bowl games played in the traditional college football postseason. Basically, we work to highlight the distinctiveness of each of the bowl games along with their histories and traditions as part of one unifying message. Our goal is to help build Bowl Season into a recognizable brand like March Madness is for college basketball.  

The biggest event we coordinated was getting the logo featured on an electronic billboard in Time Square in New York City when we relaunched the brand. This was a brainstorming idea that came together pretty quickly and turned out great. We were able to have the logo and motion graphic on the ABC/ESPN screen for 10 minutes on a Monday morning. We had a videographer and photographer on the scene to capture images with Nick Carparelli, the new Bowl Season executive director. You think 10 minutes is a long time but once that logo hits the screen the minutes scream by as you are moving from position to position. We had mapped out a few shots in advance so the process went pretty smoothly and we got a ton of great content.

This year the national championship game will be different since there will understandably not be any supporting events with mass gatherings like concerts or Playoff Fan Central. I am glad the bowl games and the national championship game are moving forward though. The kids playing college football have sacrificed a ton over the course of their young lives so getting a few more games is important to them. For 98% of college football players these bowl games will be the last time they slip on the pads and get to play a game many of them have loved since they were eight years old. I also think it is good that games have been moved around so family can safely attend games and socially distance. This pandemic sucks but seeing college football move forward has provided millions of sports fans with a semblance of normalcy that I think it pretty important. I know I have enjoyed watching them and will look forward to a busy weekend on the couch.

A note from the author:

It’s Christmas Eve. In our Minnesota home it’s definitely a Christmas like no other, but we’re getting through it. Just a few presents, no real tree, but we did put up a few lights outside and decorate the living room.

I told Elon he could have Christmas week off as guest-blogger (or Designated Hitter, as Alan Reinhart has now dubbed him) but the competitive DH (who hits clean-up around here) said “No Way.” Here’s his latest installment, with more John Force scooter stories. At the end of the blog, I’ll post my one-and-only first hand Force scooter tale.

Enjoy, everyone. And have a very Merry Christmas, or any other holiday you observe, including Festivus!

Bob Wilber

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It is that time of year when thoughts turn to a jolly older gentleman riding on his sleigh delivering treats and presents to all the good little boys and girls around the world. Santa has a long history but the constant image of Santa on his shiny sleigh zipping around brings a smile to everyone’s face. Thinking of Santa zig-zagging through neighborhoods reminded me of another jolly older gentleman who cruises around the country delivering joy to men, women, boys and girls. You really can’t think of John Force without seeing him either climbing out of the top of his 11,000 horsepower Funny Car or riding somewhere on his scooter. Force and his scooter have become the stuff of legend. 

Force’s scooter was such a big deal I actually started a Twitter account for it in September of 2014. You can see the tweets by searching @Forces_Scooter and it still has 408 followers. I loved running that account, which I did on my own, and as it received some attention it even made it on the ESPN broadcast. I didn’t tell anyone I was the person behind the account and it was great to listen in as people tried to figure out who was coming up with the content. I was quite proud of some of the tweets, as well as some of the people that followed the account. As a PR guy you are always looking for angles and Force’s scooter was low hanging fruit. He rode it everywhere and we took advantage of this two-wheeled opportunity.

I remember one race we had ESPN check the odometer on Friday morning and then we tracked his mileage over the course of the weekend. By the end of the race Force had driven/ridden over 100 miles. I was blown away. He never left the track property and was just basically going from the pits to the starting line to the finish line and back. He really racked up the miles “cruising” the staging lanes.

He was like a shark on the scooter. If he wasn’t moving he was dying. I could be standing in the staging lanes talking with a crew guy, and Force would pull up and call me over. Something was on his mind and he just had to have an answer. After a quick chat he would zip off. 

The worst was when I needed him at a specific location at a specific time. There were times when things might be running a little behind and he would get antsy. If I didn’t keep an eye on him he would jump on his scooter to “go check on something” and the next thing I knew he was gone. I have a lot of gray hairs because he would disappear only to reappear just in the nick of time for a press conference or sponsor event. He had a weird internal clock that alerted him when he knew he was going to be late but not too late. Again, the man knew how to make an entrance.

Even though, as Force says, he has “been on fire from here to Australia” there were times when the scooter was more of a detriment to his health than his race car. One of the most infamous scooter “incidents” happened at Maple Grove Raceway. The details are a little sketchy but Connie Worsham, Del Worsham’s wonderful better half, thought she witnessed the death of Force on the return road. Force was on his scooter high-tailing it to the finish line when he thought of something he needed back at the starting line. Without looking he just made a U-turn.

As he was executing this maneuver the tow vehicle Connie was riding in was also rolling to the top end. Force was clipped by the passenger side mirror and immediately went down. Connie was convinced he was dead, but in true Force fashion he hopped back up, gave her a wave, and went on his way. He truly is like a cat with nine lives.

I have seen Force lay his scooter down in the gravel shoulders beside the staging lanes of Brainerd International Raceway more times than I can count. He has nearly been clothes-lined by tow ropes in the staging lanes hundreds of times. Near misses with golf carts, passenger cars, and NHRA equipment are common occurrences. Luckily, he is always in his fire suit so he has an added layer of protection.

Like the astronauts who have walked on the moon, or members of a secret society, the small group of people who have ridden on a scooter with Force all have stories to tell and may or may not have nightmares. I have ridden with him many times and there is nothing more terrifying and fun. I would be lying if I didn’t enjoy every minute of my quick trips with Force. There is some cache to being the person on the scooter with him. It raises your profile and you also get some bemused looks from your colleagues. 

The most nervous I have been with Force on the scooter is when er we were pulling out of the pits or headed from an autograph appearance and we are weaving through a crowd of people while they were all offering words of encouragement to Force, and at the same time he was drinking a cup of coffee (two sugars, one cream), signing autographs and driving. How does someone do that you ask? Well some t-shirts and hats, in addition to a John Force signature, might have their fair share of coffee stains. Also who wouldn’t want to return from a race to tell their friends the reason they have a slight limp is because 16-time Funny Car champ John Force rolled over their toes.

You make a great entrance when you roll up to a signing or driver intros on the back of John Force’s scooter. It isn’t like walking in with the Beatles but it is pretty close. I will confess I have signed a few autographs as the guy who was on the scooter with Force. This is seriously how I signed hero cards by the way, To (insert name), I’m the guy on Force’s scooter. Best Wishes, Elon Werner.

When I first started working for Force around 2007 my kids came to the race in Houston. A fan gave Robert Hight a bunch of 8×10 color photos he had taken the previous race. Robert kept a few of his race car for his personal collection. There were some other random shots, as well as one of him riding on the back of Force’s scooter. He gave that photo to my son Nick, then 7 years old, who promptly got Force to sign it and he returned to Robert to get his signature. Robert signed the photo, “Nick, Don’t ever ride with Force. – Robert Hight.” Nick still has that photo and it is a good cautionary tale.

One of the craziest Force scooter ride stories involves Associated Press writer John Marshall who covers Arizona sports. I pitched him a “day in the life” story on Force in 2016, when we would be racing at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park for the Arizona Nationals. John came out and, at the time, AP was really encouraging their reporters to also grab video highlights to accompany their stories. Marshall asked if that would be a problem and I said we would love it. I off-handedly mentioned he should get some footage from the back of Force’s scooter. He kind of laughed at the idea and said he would take me up on that if Force offered.

I gave Force a heads up about what Marshall was looking for and on Sunday morning he asked him to hop on the scooter and ride up for driver intros. The writer took the chance and not only rode up for driver intros he followed Force the whole time and actually videoed Force walking out during the introductions to a massive crowd. It was great stuff and after he got back to the pits he was on the adrenaline high I would assume it’s the same as what you get the first time you jump out of an airplane. He was talking a mile a minute and said the experience was a professional highlight. You can see John Marshall’s video piece here complete with the walkout during driver intros and the return trip on the scooter.

Force’s scooter was such a big deal we gave one away as part of a Castrol promotion during the 25th anniversary program in 2010. I remember being in the meeting when we were brainstorming different promotions we could do to highlight the relationship. I suggested giving away Force’s scooter to a fan. Everyone loved the idea but it had to go through legal first. I was really getting excited about how we could hype this deal and after a couple weeks we got the go-ahead. We decided to give the scooter away at the U.S. Nationals, so the winner would get a scooter Force rode for 17 races.

Force was notoriously hard on scooters. He crashed them a couple times every year and they would fall over all the time in the staging lanes or top end. By the end of the season they looked pretty rough. Throughout the 2010 season we reminded Force that his scooter was going to presented to a fan at Indy so if he could try and keep it in one piece that would be great. When we got to Indy there were numerous battle scars on the scooter and we had to replace a side mirror but overall it was an awesome collectible.  We decided that if the winner didn’t want this beat-up scooter we would get them a brand new one that looked just like it. The woman who won the scooter was a huge Force fan and she was able to attend her first NHRA event in person thanks to Castrol and this scooter promotion. We made her the offer of used scooter or new scooter and she was 1000% interested in the John Force beat up scooter. Bobby Bennett did a great job of telling more about this story on his site CompetitonPlus.com. Read about winner Susan Porter of Cumberland Furnace, Tennessee here.

The reality is Force used to the scooter to maximize his time at the races. He wants to be everywhere for everyone. After his 2007 crash the scooter obviously made it easier for him to get around. He gets asked to do more interviews than any other driver and also has more sponsor commitments, so getting from point A to point B is critical to the operation. If someone asked me to list the top things I miss about working with John the scooter rides would be right at the top of the list. It was a chance to chat him up or hear what was on his mind. It was also the chance to, just for a second, see what it was like to be on the receiving end of the well-deserved adulation of one of the fiercest competitors in sports. 

Merry Christmas, everyone!

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Editor’s Note (and story)

So here’s my Force’s Scooter story. I don’t recall if this was when I was with Del Worsham or Tim Wilkerson, but I think it was right at the beginning of my time with Wilk, maybe my second or third year with him, and we had some new crew guys I hardly knew at all, other than my first introduction to them.

We were testing in Phoenix before the season started, and if you have ever been to the track there you probably have seen the difficult route the pro teams had to negotiate, back then, to get from the pits to the always crowded staging lanes. There are multiple pedestrian crossings, and a very tight sharp right turn hemmed in by Armco barriers, and then the lanes, which can easily be backed-up to that point. It can be gridlock.

Our car was only a few back in line from the chance to make a test run when I was sent back to the pit to get something the team had forgotten. I ran (jogged) back there.

I grabbed whatever I was sent to get and was beginning to jog back up to near the tower, when a scooter pulled up next to me and Force said, in his raspy voice, “Want a ride?”

I’d been in the sport for a lot of years by then, and Force knew me by sight. He was always friendly, but I guarantee he didn’t know my name. He didn’t know half his crew guys’ names! I said I’d love a ride and hopped on.

Now picture this. As the driver, Force’s knees and legs are protected by the front cowling. His feet are on the floorboard. If you sit on the back, you’re right over the rear tire, and if you put you feet on the pegs your knees have no option other than sticking almost straight out. That was fine until we turned the corner onto the staging lanes.

To Force, if there’s anything close to enough room for the scooter to shoot any gap, no matter how many millions of dollars worth of race cars are within inches, he wouldn’t hesitate. I’m sure he never thought of his 6-foot-1 rider on the back. The first two Top Fuel cars we sped between missed my knees by about a hundredth of an inch. When we zig-zagged between two Funny Cars, I figured I had no choice but to take my feet off the pegs and try to straighten my legs as much as possible. I still got nicked by the rear wheel-well on one of the cars.

Basically, I closed my eyes and hoped for the best. I felt a few other scrapes and maybe some other close calls, and then we skidded to a halt. We were right next to Wilk’s car and the whole crew was standing there. Staring at us.

When I hopped off, said thanks, and patted Force on the shoulder, every one of them looked like they’d seen Elvis. “Force gave you ride? Did you have to ask him? What the hell…”

The PR guy not too many crew guys knew yet was already moved up the respect ladder about eight rungs. Elon is right. If you ride with Force, you’re somebody. You just have to hope you survive.

I lived to tell about it.

And hey… As always, show Elon the love and appreciation for what he’s doing for me here but clicking on the “Like” button at the bottom. His musings have allowed me to ramp up the book writing enormously. I’m cranking, and couldn’t be doing that without him.

Merry Christmas to all.

-Bob

Hey gang! Get in, put on your seatbelts, and get ready for a John Force blog, which actually starts out with Werner family Santa photos. Elon is back once again (Alan Reinhart says I have to stop calling him my “pinch hitter” because he’s playing in every game and hitting over .500 at this point.) He will, however, remain my guest blogger until I get closer to the finish line with the new book. I’m basically done with Chapter 30 now, but honestly don’t feel like I’m in control of it. The two characters in my head are truly writing the story now. I just type. It’s the weirdest thing.

Elon also mentions riding on the back of Force’s scooter, and that he will have tales of those dangerous adventures in a future blog. I, too, have a  Force scooter tale, and I’ll be sure to relay that in my introduction whenever that particular blog happens. I’m lucky I survived with both legs intact.

So, enjoy another blog by my friend and esteemed colleague Elon Werner. The visuals, both in terms of photos and mental images, are priceless.  And, as always, let Elon know how much you appreciate how he has stepped in to be my “guest blogger” (you’re welcome Alan) while I focus on the new book. You can do that easily, by clicking on the “Like” button at the bottom.

Bob Wilber

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With Christmas right around the corner, the Werners are planning to keep one of our few family traditions on track in this crazy world we live in. Every year, the kids have gotten their photo with Santa. Daughter Abby had a couple of years on her own, after she was born, but since the arrival of son Nick we have never missed a year of Santa photos. It was a highlight moment for sure. All the photos are framed and placed on our mantle by wife Jenn. It is a highlight for me to watch her put out the photos and get a little teary eyed. It truly is Christmas time with the Santa photos are arranged just right. 

This year we are trying to find a Santa location that is socially distanced without being too weird looking. Our go-to location, where we have taken photos for the last five or six years, is open

but we aren’t sure about their set-up. We love going to “Santa on the Hill” (the location is Cedar Hill, Texas) because the same women have been running it for years and they love to see our kiddos. Abby and Nick are by far the oldest customers on most occasions and they rarely have crying fits or pee on Santa. We also love catching up with Santa too.

I am sure we will work something out but as I was thinking about taking Santa photos it got me thinking of many of the photo events I have been a part of over my career. I am guessing that many of Bob’s faithful readers have a general understanding of a lot of the behind-the-scenes work and planning that goes into many of our sporting events, but staged photos take it to a whole new level. If there is a significant milestone coming up, you want to capture it in the perfect setting with the perfect lighting and perfect props. Also big smiles are key. “Smiles everyone, smiles!”

I have been a photo stand-in for John Force on too many occasions to count. I would volunteer to sit, stand or lean wherever a photographer needed the real John Force to be, so they could get the lighting just right or see if their mental vision translated to real imagery. It was one of those duties that PR people get roped into just to make sure it is easier on the drivers, and it also gives you a sneak peek at what the finished product will look like.

The first photo event that jumps to the front of my mind is the photo I coordinated to commemorate John Force winning his 1,000^th round of racing in 2008. You might remember from a previous blog that Force had a shot at 1,000 during the Atlanta race that year, but was stopped at 999 round wins by his daughter Ashley. The next race was in St. Louis and he just needed one round win. I had devised a plan in coordination with Phil Burgess, editor of National Dragster, and the NHRA marketing department to get a photo at the top end, of Force with some Goodyear tires displayed in a particular fashion to signify the No. 1,000. We actually caught a break by not getting 1,000 in Atlanta because while I had a plan I had not yet reviewed the plan with Force.

In St. Louis, I was able to secure the four tires I needed, get them to the top end, and also talk with the Safety Safari team about the best spot to stop Force’s car that was A) A natural spot to direct him to, and B) Kind of out of the way at the top end. NHRA had agreed to hold up the show for photos of the big event right after his run so we could get everything just right. On Saturday night, after qualifying, I rode with John to the top end on the back of his ever-present scooter (we will talk about what riding a scooter with John Force is like in a later blog) and I walked him through the plan for the photo. I showed him where he was going to be directed to stop and I had even painted a huge square as sort of a landing zone for him to stop his Funny Car. I also tried to convince him I wasn’t jinxing him by just having a plan for the photo.

Sunday morning arrived and Force was lined up beside long-time rival Ron Capps. Not exactly a lay-up for your 1,000^th round win, but Force had qualified a little better than Capps so he at least had lane choice. In a classic Force hyper-competitive move, knowing history was on the line, he had a great reaction time and won on a hole-shot to get round win 1,000. I was at the top end beside my carefully placed photo zone with a big gaggle of photographers positioned to get the perfect shot of Force emerging from his Funny Car, and that’s when things start falling apart. Force came off the track hot, he overshot the landing area by about 60 feet and also locked up his clutch so there was no chance to move his race car. On top of that NHRA ran one more pair of Funny Cars after Force, which included our rookie driver Mike Neff, who was winless on the season. He picked up his first round win right after Force grabbed No. 1,000 so Force went running/hobbling over to Neff’s car. Force was still recovering from the 2007 crash so he was not what you would call a track star. Force was hugging Neff and congratulating him on his first round win, and all the while I am trying to pull him back over to his race car for this photo I have been planning for months. I am not kidding. I was physically grabbing Force by his fire suit yelling at him to get away from Neff and go to his race car. By the time I got Force away from Neff, the photographers had all moved to the new location and I was able to get the tires in place.

We even had a special sign but there is always one detail that gets overlooked. I didn’t have a sign guy, so Ben Reiling, Coca-Cola VP of Marketing, stepped in to hold the sign and get no visible credit for being in this historic photo. I was also captured in the photo trying to get out of the way. You can see all these little elements in the photo: Neff’s Funny Car in the background, some guy (Ben Reiling) holding a sign and another partial guy (me) on the right. It was a crazy ten minutes but every time I see this photo I smile.

The other photo event that jumps out in my memory is the John Force photo shoot for the ESPN The Magazine “Body Issue.” Many years ago ESPN was tired of giving up the high or low ground, depending on your perspective, to Sports Illustrated for producing the annual swim suit issue. ESPN upped the ante by coming up with the idea of highlighting the athletic form by taking photos of athletes completely nude, with them performing athletic feats or holding their equipment to hide their private parts. It was all very tasteful and artsy and it was a HUGE hit. It was the most popular ESPN magazine every year and got a lot of additional media attention.

There was an annual section highlighting athletes with the bodies that you wanted plus assorted athletes in unique poses. In 2011, I pitched ESPN on the idea of doing a photo shoot with Force, highlighting the body that you don’t want. By this time he had healed from his 2007 crash and was coming off the 2010 season in which he had just won another Funny Car world championship. His body was visibly a wreck. Scars and callouses lined his arms, hands and legs. It was not a pretty sight but it was also visually striking. ESPN loved the idea, so then all I had to do was get Force and all the sponsors to agree. Luckily, Force had saved everything from the crash so we were able to use his fire suit and one of his gloves to show the exterior damage for additional sponsor “exposure.” 

I had a long talk with Force, during which I laid out my idea and showed him examples from the magazine of what other athletes had done. He was fine with letting them take photos of his legs and hands but when I said they also want a full body shot I had to get creative. I told him he could hold his helmet strategically in front of himself for the photo and it would be a really cool shot. I let him know that his sponsors were OK with the idea and it not only would be an amazing tribute to the safety of the sport, but also of his determination to come back from the 2007 crash. He agreed and we had to sign a ton of paperwork and pick a date for the photo shoot.

We decided to use the shop in Yorba Linda, California because we had an area that could be closed off and provide us some privacy. I will say this for ESPN: They took this very seriously and ensured that all the athletes were completely comfortable. They could not have been more professional. 

On the day of the shoot I flew out to the shop to make sure everything went smoothly. The photo crew showed up right on time. I got them squared away and they began setting up their lights and equipment. The make-up people also arrived and I got them set up in a side office. Things were moving right on time and I just had to wrangle up Force. This is when things went sideways.

I went into Force’s office and he was wearing Hermes taupe boxer briefs. That was all he was wearing. He asks me how I thought they would look in the photo shoot. I told him it didn’t matter, because he wouldn’t be wearing that underwear in the photoshoot. He won’t be wearing any underwear at all. He looked at me like I was crazy and he asked me what I meant. I told him they were going to taking photos of him naked and that he agreed to this months before. He immediately started arguing with me, saying I never told him he wouldn’t have any clothes on for these naked photos. That is the quote, “You never told me I wouldn’t have any clothes on for these naked photos!” 

He followed that statement up by asking me if I was trying to bankrupt him and cost him all his sponsors. I told him that all his sponsors approved and had to sign agreements. He started calling sponsors apologizing and saying he didn’t know what I was getting him into. This went on for quite a while, and it got so heated I said I would go downstairs and tell the photographers he had changed his mind and they could go home. I also said if that happened we would most likely never get coverage in the magazine again and it could impact our TV coverage during the races on ESPN. I might have embellished a little on that front but there was no way I was going to call off this photo shoot. Once Force heard it could cost him media coverage he changed his tune. It took a little more convincing but I let him know how professional this would be and I assured him the ESPN photographer would make him look like a Greek god. He grabbed a robe and we went downstairs.  

Once we got on the set it took about an hour for Force to be comfortable in this very weird environment. The photographer and his assistant had a couple of ideas for some posed photos and they would stage the photo to get the lighting right. Then they would have Force come in to the shot with his robe on to again see how it looked with lighting, and they would then have Force hand the robe to his assistant for the actual photos. The assistant who took the robe from Force is the guy typing this blog.

ESPN did about five different shots including some with the race car. Force got comfortable enough that at one point he was suggesting photos that were, let’s just say, more provocative than ESPN was looking for. After about four hours of shooting we wrapped up and went up the street to the TGIFriday’s for dinner. I don’t think the ESPN photographers went with us but to be honest my brain was a little fried from that much personal time with Force. It was well worth it when the magazine came out and Force was the only athlete with a two page layout made even better by some great editorial from Ryan McGee.

Photos are forever and they should always bring a memory to the front of your consciousness. My kids Santa photos always do that and so do many photos of Force, with or without the Hermes boxer briefs. 

Hello again, boys and berries. I’m taking a few minutes to edit and post another fine effort by the one-and-only Elon Werner, and this one will have you entertained in multiple ways. There are cookie stories, book recommendations, and some classic John Force tales. Enjoy! Now I have to finish this chapter I’m halfway through for my new book.

Bob Wilber

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I am getting in the holiday spirit and beginning to pull plans together for CookiePalooza, Werner style. Historically, my family has hosted an annual Christmas party for our neighbors and family friends in the middle of December. We started hosting this shindig the first Christmas after we moved to our current house, as a way to get to know the neighbors. It started out relatively small but each year more people get added to the guest list and it now includes neighbors, family friends, racing people, and a few of the kids’ friends.  It is a come-and-go afternoon event and I lay out a nice spread of cookies, dips, and balls. (Insert your Saturday Night Live joke here.)

Last year we skipped the party because a few weeks earlier my wife organized an awesome 50th birthday party for yours truly that the great Bob Wilber and his lovely wife Barb very kindly attended, all the way from Minnesota. We felt that two big parties just weeks apart was a bit much. In hindsight we should have had the Christmas party, but who could have predicted 2020. Am I right?

I do all the baking because I love to work in the kitchen. I have a weekly baking schedule that culminates in an early morning bake off to finish the broccoli balls and sausage balls, so everything is fresh and ready to go for the mid-afternoon event. This year, with no party to host, I am still going to do the baking but instead I will be making cookie platters for my neighbors the week before Christmas.

In between baking and delivery, my wife and I will make a two-day whirlwind trip to Mizzou to move daughter Abby out of her dorm for good. She will be enjoying her spring semester in Washington DC as an intern for Growing Hope Globally, as part of her degree program in Strategic Communications and Political Science. Growing Hope Globally links the grassroots energy and commitment of rural communities in the U.S. with the capability and desire of smallholder farmers in developing countries, to grow lasting solutions to hunger. It is a great organization run by Max Finberg one of my CBIII friends.

The plan next week is to bake in the evening Monday through Thursday. Then head up to Missouri on Friday, move Abby out Saturday morning and drive home to finish up some baking late Saturday. I will pick it up again on Sunday morning with the plan to deliver cookies in the afternoon.

Here is breakdown of the cookies I will be baking. Some cookies get added to the list each year and some rotate off. There are must-haves and neighborhood favorites. This is the line-up for this year’s CookiePalooza:

Chocolate Cherry Dips (vanilla wafers filled with cream cheese and cherries dipped in chocolate)

Angeletti (an Italian cookie that is basically a mix between a shortbread and a sugar cookie)

Peanut butter cookie with Hersey’s Kisses (traditional favorite)

Fudge Crinkles

Triple Chocolate Cookies (semi-sweet chocolate, white chocolate and bittersweet chocolate)

White Chocolate Dipped Peanut Butter Cookies (we love our peanut butter cookies)

Thick and Chewy White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

Egg Nog Snickerdoodles (the best Christmas cookie I have found)

Gingerbread Cookies

Raspberry Walnut Crumble Bars 

Pecan Pie Bars

In addition to baking I have been getting my holiday shopping knocked out, one visit to Amazon.com at a time. I used to hate online shopping because I loved going into stores and feeling what I was buying. Now I enjoy the online hunt to find a good deal and I’ll also try a smaller retailer. It is really cool since now I find myself looking for a customized item or specialty trinket. While I feel like I have a good handle on my shopping, I know there could be some people out there waiting until the last minute. For you procrastinators I have some holiday gift suggestions. In no particular order, here are three excellent books that I can highly recommend.

The legendary Don Prudhomme put his life story on paper and let me tell you if you thought you knew the story of The Snake you don’t have a clue. The incredibly talented Elana Scherr from Hot Rod, RoadKill, Car & Driver and @challengeher on Instagram fame (she’s a must-follow in my opinion) spent almost a year with Snake listening to him tell his life story and probing for additional details. I actually think Elana should write a book about the process of writing the Don Prudhomme book.

I was lucky enough to get an inside peek during the process of the writing of Don Prudhomme: My Life Beyond the 1320 and some of the stories and the situations where Elana heard the tales are tremendous. The book reads as if Prudhomme is telling you the story himself. His childhood was very tough and his rise to drag racing legend was anything but easy. He tells stories of the early days with TV Tommy Ivo and goes very deep into his relationship with Tom “Mongoose” McEwen, both personally and professionally. The fact they brought Mattel Hot Wheels into the sport of drag racing and made the sport mainstream is a career achievement alone. He talks about his career as a driver and a team owner with Larry Dixon and Ron Capps.  The book is a true unvarnished look at a legendary life and Snake doesn’t hold anything back. You can order an autographed copy here. 

The next book I will have to recommend on faith. Drag Racing’s Warren “The Professor” Johnson: The Cars, People, & Wins Behind His Pro Stock Success hasn’t come out yet but I know it will be fascinating. My (and Bob’s) great friend Kelly Wade spent the better part of 2020 working on Warren’s story. He is a Pro Stock legend and while many people gloss over the Pro Stock category when they are looking at drag racing results no one can argue that the class is one of the most technically sophisticated in the sport. Whether you are talking about the magicians that tune the 500 cubic inch, 200 mph door slammers or the men and women who must have nearly psychic reaction times and ninja-like shifting skills to get win lights, the class is one of the toughest in drag racing. Warren Johnson was one of the best of the best and Kelly had unfettered access to not just Warren but also a lifetime of scrapbooks and historical information thanks to Warren’s wife Arlene, who fastidiously kept just about every scrap of paper from time slips to newspaper articles to National Dragster magazines.

Warren was known as “The Professor” and he earned that title as the driver who continually took his competitors to school. He is the all-time winner in the class with 97 Pro Stock NHRA victories, and he did it all with smarts and a very determined attitude. To some he came across as gruff and dismissive but that was his laser focus and perfectionist attitude. If you took the time to engage him in conversation you were guaranteed to come away with a better understanding of Pro Stock, or drag racing, or Warren’s thoughts on any topic. Kelly is a writer’s writer and story-teller without equal. I know she will make Warren’s story interesting and informative. You will be a better person and racing fan for buying this book and taking the time to read it. You can place your advance order here.

Editor’s Note: I pre-ordered Kelly Wade’s book about Warren Johnson the hour it went live on the internet. I’m a Funny Car type of guy, but I know the greatness of Warren Johnson and I know the equal greatness of Kelly Wade as a writer. Buy this book. -BW

My last recommendation is not a motorsports book but it is penned by one of my all-time favorite writers who also “dabbles” in motorsports. Ryan McGee is a nationally known ESPN columnist and on-air personality covering college football and motorsports. He does a lot of NASCAR but any chance he gets to write a drag racing piece is he all over it. He has done some of the best writing on John Force, Ashley Force, and Antron Brown, to name just a few of the NHRA stars he has brought to the pages of the sadly now defunct ESPN: The Magazine.

He is also a New York Times best-selling author thanks to some work he did with a driver you may know named Dale Earnhardt Jr. a few years ago. His latest book Sidelines and Bloodlines: A Father, His Sons, and Our Life in College Football is a tribute to his father Jerry McGee a long-time and legendary college football referee. From the very first page you are brought into a world of amazing stories, crazy characters that are real people, and behind the scenes situations that are both funny and heartwarming. Ryan worked on the book with his father and his brother Sam and the love these three men have for each other leaps from the pages. You can tell Jerry loved his sons, Ryan and Sam loved their dad, and they all loved college football. You can but Ryan’s book here.

Those are my three recommendations and since you have made it this far I will throw in some funny Christmas stories involving the great John Force. Every year, when I worked with John Force Racing, as the season wound down we began internally talking about what we would send as the JFR Christmas gift to the media members that had covered the team and sport of drag racing that year. Usually we sent die-cast cars autographed by Force or an autographed photo from a big win or the championship winner’s circle.

One year we sent John Force helmet shaped coffee makers. They looked just like his Castrol GTX helmet, but when you lifted the visor the coffee pot pulled out. There was a flap on the back to add water. It was a very cool piece.

We sent them out to a lot of media that year and a few months later, as the next season was starting, I was talking with a writer and I asked him how he was enjoying his JFR coffee maker. He said he didn’t get a coffee maker and my heart immediately sank. This was one of my top three media contacts and I was horrified to think we had left him off the list or his gift had been lost in the mail. I immediately went full panic mode, apologizing and stumbling all over myself. After about five minutes of me babbling he said he hadn’t gotten a coffee maker but he had received this great racing helmet. I let him know that the great helmet was actually the coffee maker. He was blown away. The cord was tucked underneath and he was so thrilled to get a JFR helmet he immediately pulled it out of the box and it went straight to the shelf in his office. Crisis averted and he had a great laugh about that.

Prior to me joining the JFR team I worked at the Texas Motorplex as the PR director and eventually the general manager of the facility. One year, before Christmas, I received a copy of Force’s book I Saw Elvis at 1000 Feet. I immediately flipped through it and when I was done it was placed on the memorabilia shelf in my office.

A couple days later, I was talking with the Dallas Morning News motorsports writer Mark Zeske and he brought up the Force book. We were talking about how cool the book was and also how nice it was that JFR sent out gifts like that. Mark was especially blown away by the lengthy note John wrote to him on the fly page and he asked me what Force had written on mine. I honestly had flipped right into the book and hadn’t looked at the first page. I opened my copy up and sure enough Force had added an incredibly nice personalized note. He was and still is a class act.

Thanks for reading and I hope everyone continues to stay safe and has a festive holiday season.

Editor’s Note Number Two: Take my advice and buy those books Elon recommended. All three sound spectacular. And now, in yet another moment of shameless self-promotion, I will remind you that my book “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” makes a heck of a gift for any person on your list who is a baseball, soccer, drag racing, or life-in-general fan. It’s still available on Amazon and I checked today to see what the shipping info is. For the print version, they say it will be delivered before Christmas. For the Kindle version (which is only $9.99) you’ll have it instantly. Support your local blog writers!  -Bob Wilber

Another pinch-hitting effort from my esteemed former colleague Elon Werner, and it’s a classic. I’ve been waiting for his first deep dive into the world of John Force Racing, and here it is. And I know this is but a drop in the bucket when it comes to such JFR stories.

Great blog. Please let Elon know you liked it by clicking on the “Like” button at the bottom of the blog.

Thanks, everyone!

Bob

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It was a historic weekend for college football, as Sarah Fuller became the first female to play in a Power-5 NCAA football game, last Saturday, when Vanderbilt was defeated by the University of Missouri. Due to a Covid outbreak on the special teams unit, she was called upon to kick for the Commodores. She was the women’s soccer goalie at Vandy, and out-kicked all the other applicants for the job.

I was tuned in to the game to support the Mizzou Tigers and didn’t realize I would also get to see a little history as a bonus. It was a Mizzou rout but I was hoping for the Commodores to make a deep push into Tiger territory to give Fuller a shot at a field goal or at least a PAT. I was ultimately left with the satisfaction of seeing her kick-off to start the second half. It was a cool moment for sure and I hope it leads to more opportunities for females across the sports landscape.

I have been fortunate to work in the NHRA sports universe for almost three decades. It is a place where there has never been a need for a diversity program or Title IX. Men and women compete at the highest levels of the sport all the time, in every category, and have been stomping on the loud pedal (shout out to Clay Millican) against each other since the 1960s.

In the mid-2000s I was lucky, thanks to a recommendation by Dave Densmore, to join the PR team at John Force Racing. At the time John Force’s three daughters were cutting their teeth in the sportsman ranks with Ashley Force racing Top Alcohol Dragster and Brittany and Courtney racing Super Comp. The first of the Force daughters to make the jump to the pro ranks was Ashley and she took the unusual path of racing a Nitro Funny Car starting in the 2007 season. I say unusual because prior to Ashley’s move there had been only about a dozen woman to consistently race in a class that was known for forcing drivers to “man handle” their short wheel-based, front engine race cars down the track. The list of female Funny Car competitors has some recognizable as well as little-known names, including the likes of Shirley Muldowney, Melanie Troxel, Vicky Fanning, Rodalyn Knox, Paula Martin, Paula Murphy and more. 

Ashley was not just taking on a tough class but she was also stepping into an arena her father had dominated for well over a decade. The comparisons were inevitable and also incredibly unfair. John Force was brash and outspoken while Ashley Force was mild-mannered, not quite shy, but definitely reserved in her personality. She was friendly and out-going, great with the fans but she wasn’t going to invite a total stranger to tour her lounge in the transporter just because they had traveled 500 miles to see her race. That was more her dad’s style. As soon as she strapped into her Castrol GTX Funny Car, fans and many in the media immediately expected her to make history as the first female to win a Funny Car national event and championship. They brought up the usual expectations of great team, great crew chiefs, a massive budget and of course she was John Force’s kid. That fact alone should give her at least 1-2 round wins every race day, some people scoffed. 

Ashley’s rookie season was solid when you consider how tumultuous it was. In March she suffered the unimaginable loss of teammate Eric Medlen in a testing accident following the Gatornationals, and six months later John Force survived the most harrowing crash of his career in Dallas. He is still racing with us thanks to safety improvements the team made following Medlen’s tragic death. She raced to three semifinals and was the first woman to reach a Funny Car final, losing a close race to Tony Pedregon at the second Las Vegas National event. That was the first piece of history I saw with Ashley but it would be far from the last.

The first female Force daughter went on to stamp her name forever in the record books with an amazing win in 2008 at the Southern Nationals in Atlanta. It was a wild weekend and solidified my unique relationship with Ashley. There are a couple things you need to know about the Atlanta race. At the time the JFR chef, an amazing culinary artist named Jonny Roscher, was at every national event where he prepared special meals for the team. For the Southern Nationals Jonny rolled out a ton of southern favorites including the best fried chicken I have ever eaten. It was so good it was better the next day cold.

Atlanta is always a busy race since Coca-Cola, the series sponsor at the time, has their world headquarters just down the road, so there are extra meet & greets or fan events for a lot of the teams. I didn’t get a chance to get chicken on Friday, so on Saturday morning Jonny offered me a piece with the caveat I couldn’t eat it in the pits because then all the crew guys would want some. I told him no problem, I was headed out to an ESPN media event with Ashley and her fiancé Danny Hood. They were going to film a Newlywed-style game show segment with some other couples that were drivers on the tour. I grabbed a piece of chicken, wrapped it in a napkin, and tucked it into my pocket.

As I was leading Ashley and Danny to the set I begin to slow down and eventually I pointed out the stage. I fell behind them as we approached the set up and I thought I was out of Ashley’s field of vision when I pulled out my piece of chicken. I miscalculated how wide her peripheral vision was and as I was taking my first bite Ashley exclaimed, “Did you just pull a piece of chicken out of your pants?!” I was busted and that became a running joke between us for years. The driver and PR person relationship is a strange dichotomy.

Fast forward to race day and it was one of the worst days at the track. It rained off and on and we all thought there was no way we would complete the race. The JFR team was looking for some history as John Force was chasing his historic 1,000th round win. He was sitting at 996 headed into race day. As the day progressed John kept winning rounds and Ashley kept winning rounds. Through many starts and stops the final was set with John squaring off against Ashley. There was so much on the line for both of them with Ashley getting the win and becoming the first female Funny Car winner. A lot of people have questioned the legitimacy of her win considering she was racing her father but I can tell you with 100 percent certainty John wanted to win that race. 

He was racing in his 500th career NHRA event that weekend and was in a position to win his 1,000th round win if he had grabbed one more win light. Wrap your head around the symmetry of that stat. You get your 1,000th round win at your 500th race. That would be a 500-race streak of on average a semifinal finish. That is beyond unheard of. John Force loves his history and his stats so there is no way he was going to miss that chance and in fact I think he was so focused on beating Ashley that is why he lost. Too much aggression was the problem, not a generous spirit.

Ironically, on that Sunday morning I was a part of a meeting with the JFR marketing and PR team where we discusses making a plan to handle Ashley’s first win. She had been running well to start the season and we all knew that win was around the corner we just didn’t realize that corner was about nine hours away from our meeting time. 

Winner’s circles are always chaotic but we took it to a new level the night Ashley won. We were trying to get her on the phone with reporters in Los Angeles as well a number of other national publications. It was very late on the East Coast so there were deadline issues and as the post-race action progressed Ashley was doing photos for the NHRA, or a sponsor, or I was stepping in to hand her a cell phone with a reporter on the other end of the line asking her what the win meant. Ashley likes structure and schedules and this was the exact opposite of that. At one point I lost my temper with an NHRA marketing rep who wanted to shoot more staged photos while I was trying to get Ashley to talk with an ESPN writer. I told him his “photos can wait but the media can’t” in no uncertain terms on a night of this historic significance. I later went back and apologized for my outburst.

After all the winner’s circle pomp and circumstance I took Ashley into the pressroom for some more interviews with the media at the race. The Atlanta Dragway press room is very small and there was a good media turnout for this race. Ashley was basically surrounded by media with her back to the wall of the room. I thought this would make a cool photo so I raised my digital camera above my head to get an overhead shot of sorts. As I was stretching out I stuck my hand right between the blades of the high speed ceiling fan. There was a loud thump and a painful yelp from me but the only person who actually saw this calamity was Ashley, since everyone’s focus was on her and she was the lone person looking at the media gaggle. She did her best to not laugh and she was holding it together pretty well. When I could tell she was about to lose it I wrapped up the questions. As we were leaving the pressroom she asked me how I was doing. I assumed she meant how I was doing with regards to dealing with the frantic pace of the post-race. I told her I was sorry everything was so scattered and chaotic. She replied, “Not that. How is your hand? It looked like that fan hit it pretty hard.” We both cracked up for about five minutes thinking about the absurdity of that situation. 

Two years later I was right in the thick of more history as Ashley was competing against her JFR teammate Robert Hight for the 2009 Funny Car world championship. They were neck and neck heading into the second Las Vegas national event.  In a cruel twist of fate Ashley had a poor effort in qualifying and faced Hight in the first round. She came up on the wrong side of that match-up and Hight went on to win the race, essentially locking up his first Funny Car championship. Ashley’s runner-up finish for the championship is still the highest finish for a female in the class.

Following in Ashley’s footsteps Courtney Force took the Funny Car class by storm in 2012. She immediately etched her name in the record books when she won the Seattle national event and shared the winner’s circle stage with Pro Stock winner Erica Enders. It marked the first time two women had won pro categories at the same NHRA national event. Two years later Courtney earned the landmark 100th victory for females in the NHRA Camping World Series (then the Mello Yello Series).

In one of my last seasons with the team it was Brittany Force coming on the scene in Top Fuel which was a new adventure for JFR. We were Funny Car people and Brittany’s career in Top Fuel got off to a rocky start. At the Winternationals Brittany and I were talking in the pits on Sunday morning when we both realized we were late for driver introductions. We were so used to the Funny Car timing we just weren’t paying attention. We hustled up to the starting line only to be met with all her fellow Top Fuel competitors heading back to the pits. We took some good natured rookie ribbing as we sheepishly turned around and waited to hear from the NHRA marketing department for missing driver intros. They were understanding and a bit bemused that they had to come and “remind” us of the schedule. We never missed another Sunday morning pre-race ceremony.

The 2016 season was highlighted by two notable historical moments. Early in the season both Courtney and Brittany were off to strong starts and as they left the Houston national event they were both in the point lead in their respective classes of Funny Car and Top Fuel. It was the first time two females led the point standings simultaneously in the top Nitro categories. A few weeks later Brittany became the first female to win a Four-Wide National event when she took the win at zMAX Dragway in Charlotte. 

That trio of Force women took full advantage of the opportunities provided to them but they always remembered the women that had opened so many doors. I was constantly impressed with their understanding and deference to the woman who didn’t have the easiest path to pursue their dreams. Being the first is never the easiest in a lot of instances but for women like Sarah Fuller or the Forces, they understand the significance and impact of their efforts. They are just opening more doors for players or drivers coming up behind them and that is a pretty cool position.

Hello all. I’m posting this a day early because Thanksgiving really should be a time for giving thanks, despite the challenges of 2020. You don’t need to be reading blogs, scouring Facebook, or picking through Twitter or Instagram on Thanksgiving. Give it a rest.

I once again thank my friend Elon Werner for stepping up to do this. He’s allowed me to put “the pedal to the metal” on my new book and I’m cranking out chapters I really love at a critical time in the plot. And my editor Greg Halling likes them as well. When I share a chapter with Greg and the response is, “Great pace, great vivid detail, and really well done. Hardly touched a thing” that’s like hitting a grand slam in the 9th to come from three runs down to win a huge game. (Blogger’s note: I did that once, with two strikes on me. I’ll never forget it.)

Elon’s take on Thanksgiving is perfect, and his thoughts about this 2020 holiday are spot on.

All this leads me to say “Wear your mask – Wash your hands – Limit contact – If you think you’re being safe, be safer.” Seriously. The circle of Covid is closing in on us here. We’ve gone from knowing some people who almost died from it, to having close immediate relatives suffer from it, to having parents of dear friends pass away, and just minutes ago we learned one of Barbara’s cousins is on a ventilator. This is no joke. It’s not infringing on your “liberty” to be careful around others. Get real. Be freaking safe! As you can tell, the large number of inconsiderate selfish people absolutely infuriates me. Not to mention an egregious lack of governmental leadership. It’s heartbreaking and maddening. This is America. Why are we the worst country on the planet in terms of our response to this pandemic? I’m going to live in a bubble. If not a bubble, Kauai or New Zealand maybe. Not sure New Zealand wants any of us, though.

BREAKING NEWS: We are all in this together. It’s not all about you. Get it? It’s pretty simple.

There are still many things to be thankful for. Many that would have been considered small and inconsequential in the old form of the “big picture” but they are there and we should reflect on that.

Enjoy the day. But, for crying out loud, BE CAREFUL.

Thank you. That’s my rant. Here’s Elon.

Have a great Thanksgiving.

Bob

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Thanksgiving is one of my favorite times of the year. It is a time for family and friends, cooking up a storm, and reflecting on all the good things that have impacted my life in the previous 365 days. This year the holiday will be different for me as well as just about everyone across the country. 2020 has been frustrating, scary, stressful and unpredictable, but I am still so very thankful. On a day like today I encourage everyone to take a few minutes and just think about the little things that have blessed us this year. 

I won’t have a house full of relatives but if the weather holds up I will be able to celebrate and feed a few local family members in my backyard, on tables socially distanced. The plan is for my mom to have her own table, my in-laws will have a table, and my family will have a table, all at least 10 feet apart. The temperature should be a comfortable 75 degrees and we will all help ourselves to a buffet that will begin with a nice selection of hand sanitizers before you proceed to the sides, turkey, rolls and eventually pies.

I take my Thanksgiving meal preparations seriously. The cooking strategy and planning began over the weekend with a detailed schedule coming into focus on Monday afternoon. On Tuesday I baked the cornbread for my homemade cornbread dressing. I also made my apple pie filling from scratch with Granny Smith apples. The family-favorite three cheese artichoke dip was also baked and immediately enjoyed as a precursor to the delectables on the horizon. I roll out a pretty good spread on Thursday so there is no real reason for appetizers on the big day.

Wednesday is for preparing all the sides and making the desserts. I’ll start with the traditional green bean casserole with extra fried onions. I make a sweet potato casserole with walnuts and a secret amount of butter and brown sugar. I cook on the assumption that if the guests don’t know how much sweet goodness is in their sides they can enjoy seconds or thirds guilt free throughout the day. My cornbread casserole is a creation that I have been perfecting for about four years, to get the key amount of moisture in the consistency. It starts with the homemade cornbread and hinges on the right amount of chicken broth. I want it to have a very thick soup jiggle when it goes into the pan so as it bakes it keeps the moistness but also holds its shape. I want an almost bread pudding feel.

I will be baking two different kinds of pies, apple and pecan. I love pumpkin pie but it is not a huge favorite of the family. I have an amazing pecan pie filling recipe that makes three pies worth so I share with the neighbors. Each one of my apple pies has about 4.5 lbs. of pre-peeled and cored apples in them before they go in the oven. I also liberally cover the tops with egg wash and sugar to give them a delicious crust. 

All these sides and the pecan pies will be relocated to neighbor Dale’s garage refrigerator until Thursday morning. We are rolling with our original kitchen fridge from our first house that has about 17 feet of interior space versus the 20+ feet of a newer model. Fridge space is critical and I appreciate Dale letting us store our treats overnight.

When it comes to cooking the turkey I have been all over the map trying to come up with the perfect technique. I have done the overnight brine. I have mixed it up with various stuffing items from apples to oranges to lemons to onions along with seasoning like fresh rosemary, thyme, sage and salt/pepper. Last year I tried the inverted turkey where you start out breasts down and then after 60-90 minutes you flip your bird. I do not recommend this, since my bird broke in half mid-flip. It tasted fine when it was all said and done but it was a less than Rockwellian presentation at the table. This year I am going with apples, oranges, fresh garlic, rosemary, thyme and some sage on the inside of the bird with a very liberal smearing of butter and minced garlic on the outside. I plan on reapplying the butter and garlic spread just over the halfway point. We got a 20 lb. turkey because I love leftovers and I want to be able give my parents a decent selection of take aways as well.

Speaking of 20 lb. turkeys, one story that didn’t make the Germany blog last week was how I celebrated Thanksgiving with my host family in 1986. It was an awkward conversation in early November when, without thinking it through, I asked my host parents who they were inviting over for Thanksgiving and what they were serving. As the words were coming out of my mouth I realized Germans weren’t really big on Thanksgiving since, well… they were in Germany and Thanksgiving wasn’t a thing. In one of the truly greatest “building bridges internationally” moments my host family decided to let me plan Thanksgiving. First they asked me what was served and I let them know the hallmarks were turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, and apple pie. My host parents got all the ingredients and the big shocker was the size of the turkey they brought home from the market. It was barely eight pounds. I was less than overwhelmed, and when my host father asked what the issue was I explained that in my family we usually had a turkey that was at least 15-18 pounds. This was the height of American gluttony and ridiculousness I realized, and we made a delicious bird that year. The meal was a real treat and made a great impression on my host family about some American traditions.

Back to 2020 and our upcoming day of celebration. I have a minute by minute cooking schedule on Thursday that I reverse engineer from a planned eating time of 1:45 p.m. in the afternoon, not too early and not too late. Luckily, we have a double oven which I call The Winston since I paid for it by overseeing the media operations on Draft Day for No. 1 NFL draft pick Jameis Winston in 2015. I always wanted a double oven and thanks to that opportunity I was able to not just purchase one but also get it installed. I had been thinking about it for a while and when I was asked to submit a bid on the gig I threw out that number. It was a great day and one of my busiest days as a PR professional. I am constantly reminded of how cool the event was every time I use the oven.

The Winston will get a full workout on Thursday and I will get a great amount of satisfaction as I scratch off every item on my list. The planning is more than half of the fun for me and I love seeing if I can hit the estimated time number. The goal of having everything cooked, warm and ready at the same time is a lofty one.

Seeing my mom and my in-laws on Thursday will be a big deal when you consider we have had limited contact since March. We are going to be very careful and take extra precautions. The whole family has been self-quarantining and we are fastidious mask wearers when we are out and about. I also wish I had purchased stock in one of the many companies that produce hand sanitizer. All this is to say, Thanksgiving will hopefully taste the same even though it might not feel the same.

In addition to my family I am so thankful to Bob for giving me the chance to fill in for him on this blog. I have admired his dedication to the craft of consistently writing for many years now. We have talked about writing projects we are both interested in but Bob has taken the leap and actually done his projects. One book down and a second one is on the way. I offered to fill in for him not even thinking what that would entail and I am so thankful he gave me the shot. I am enjoying the feeling of the looming deadline, the creative process of coming up with ideas and also the challenge of filling some pretty big writing shoes.

Thanks to all of you for taking the time to read these musings. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving. Stay safe and enjoy the time with whomever you are stuck with.

You think you know a guy. I’ve known Elon Werner for a long time, and we’ve shared stories covering an endless variety of subjects, when both of us can basically enthrall each other with the things we’ve done, the people we’ve known, and the places we’ve been.

Then he comes along and springs this “pinch hit” blog on me. If I ever knew he’d spent a teenage year in Germany, and all around Europe, I guess I didn’t know the scope of it.

This story is amazing, but beyond the sheer breadth of it there is the background. This is the sort of thing that molds a young person. A lot of what I know about Elon today, is explained in this blog.

I’m a pseudo-adventurous sort. I’ve been to Cuba (when Americans were technically not allowed to do that) and to the heartland of Mexico, Italy, France, Belgium, Holland, England (too many times to count) and Scotland. And then there are all the cruises and islands I’ve visited, including a trip into and out of the Panama Canal. But all of that was mostly structured or planned.

This story will blow your mind.

As for my new book, I’m still cranking. Fired off another chapter yesterday and will be starting a new one here in just a few hours. I’m getting to some really critical points in the story, and some really emotional moments as well. Not just for the characters, but for me. The old line is “Write what you know” so when I get to moments when either of my fictional guys are at a crossroads, or attaining a dream they’ve had since childhood, it gets to me. I hope it gets to you, too, when it’s done.

Back to work for me. Enjoy this incredible tale from Mr. Werner.

Thanks Elon! I appreciate you stepping up to this challenge.

Bob

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Teenager in a Strange Land

In 1986 I did something that changed my life forever. I applied for and was selected as a Congress-Bundestag Scholarship recipient, which offered me the chance to study and live in West Germany during my junior year of high school. Fifty high school rising juniors and seniors were selected from across the country through a rigorous interview process, to represent the United States in this international exchange program. This was before The Wall came down in Berlin and the idea was to swap 50 students from each country to help them better understand global issues and diplomacy. There was no internet so international affairs and communications were still a slow process. We were not being groomed as spies, but the goal was to hopefully give all 100 students a better understanding of another culture.

It was an amazing success. First, I am closer to my 49 fellow CBIII scholars (our year was the third year of the program, so we were referred to as CBIII, and that’s pronounced CB-Three) than I am with any of my high school or college classmates or friends. There is something about being 16-17 years old and experiencing something so intense and personal that you have a hyper-deep relationship. Any one of my CBIII friends can call or email with just about any request and I would move heaven and earth to try and make it happen.

I was not fluent in German before I landed in Frankfurt in the fall of ’86. The group of us had spent a month at a language school prior to heading overseas but we spent more time goofing off like we were at an extended summer camp, rather than at an intense language academy.

We spent a couple days in Frankfurt and then we all hopped on trains to head to our various host families spread out over Germany. One by one, we all disembarked with hugs and tears shared one last time. I will never forget the feeling of realizing I was totally alone in a foreign country as the train pulled away from the platform and every single person I knew was rolling further and further away from me.

I met my host family on the platform eventually. They were about 30 minutes late and again, pre-cellphones, I just hung out hoping someone I had never met before, and only had one 4×6 photo of, would show up. The Geyers were a great family. I had two younger siblings Jens (12) and Silka (10) to get to know, which was a big change for me as an only child. We fell into a quick routine of bathroom sharing and bickering over nonsense issues.

The biggest crisis was my inability to speak German very well and their refusal to speak English to me. This was both a blessing and a curse. I picked up the language fairly quickly and found out that you could finally really consider yourself fluent when you dreamed in German and someone you know didn’t speak German was fluent in your dreams. I woke up with a start one night four months into my stay when one of my East Texas neighbors was speaking auf Deutsch in my dream.

High school in Germany was challenging. First of all, most of my teachers had no idea I was an American. Unlike in the United States when an exchange student shows up and becomes basically the most popular kid in school, German high schools just drop you in a bunch of classes and set you free. Secondly, my German was still getting up to speed so most of my instructors just thought I was dumb, confused, or maybe spaced out. After about two or three weeks they caught up to speed and began giving me some latitude on my lessons.

The reason it took a while is the eleventh grade in Germany is when you begin a revised schedule that includes Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes and Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday classes. Yes, you read that correctly. High school classes on Saturday. This was a much more collegiate type schedule which I actually really enjoyed versus the usual same 6-7 classes every-day-at-the-same-time sort of schedule I was used to in Texas. I didn’t mind school on Saturday since all classes were wrapped up by noon.

I was living in Duisburg, West Germany which was on the Rhine River and very industrial. It reminded me a lot of Pittsburgh with tons of steel mills and factories. It was constantly overcast and dreary. I was also in Germany during the coldest winter in 500 years. For a kid from Texas, the constant cold was brutal and made for some great stories, as I explained how in Texas it was over 100 degrees for two months of the year and rarely got below freezing. In Duisburg there was a stretch where I don’t think it got above 5 degrees Fahrenheit for two months. I quickly acclimated to the wearing of layers as well as the importance of scarves, gloves and stocking caps.

One thing that really jumped out to me about living in Europe was how they viewed distances and traveling. If a trip was going to take over three hours one-way, whether by car or train, it was not a day trip. You spent the night or didn’t make the trip. I quickly debunked that idea by traveling all the time. Cologne and Dusseldorf were quick train rides to the south and I loved to just go check out the museums or the Cologne Cathedral. It was eye opening to see so much history so close together. I encouraged my German friends to come along and eventually they relented after I convinced them the world wouldn’t end if you spent five hours on a train in one day.

Traveling by train was and still is my favorite mode of transportation. In the year I lived in Germany I took train rides all over the country and visited France, Spain and Italy all by train. On one infamous trip to the south of France I took the train to Paris, then spent the day roaming the streets and museums. Remember I was sixteen at the time without a cell phone and I had no set plans on where I was sleeping.

At the end of a long and fun day in Paris I had a ticket on the high speed train from the north of France directly to the Southern coast, or so I thought. I quickly fell asleep in my car when a few hours later I was roused from slumber by a ticket-taker asking to see my billet. Quick side note: I don’t speak any French. The gentleman was very persistent with his urgent request for my billet! He finally shook a piece of paper in my face, shouted billet once more, and I realized he was checking tickets. Upon inspection of my ticket he immediately shook his head at me and said “Montpellier, non! Marseilles, oui!” He repeated this phrase three or four times pointing at me when he said Montpellier. After a comical Abbot and Costello “Who’s on First” routine I realized the train was stopping shortly and half of the train was going to Marseille France and the other half was going to Montpellier. I was on the wrong section. I moved cars and made it to my destination without issue.

I slept in youth hostels mostly on my travels and occasionally I would sleep in train stations. I hitchhiked from the southern Germany to Frankfurt once. Different times. Youth hostels were the best because they were super cheap, usually pretty clean and they were filled with young adults from all over the world. Once, in Munich, I was in a hostel and had a conversation with a young French woman, an Italian young lady, and a guy from Canada. The guy from Canada knew French and the French woman knew Italian so there was a lot of translating and waiting for the punch lines during the conversation.

I wrote a ton of letters to my fellow CBIII friends in Germany as well as my parents and family back in the states. Thankfully I saved all the letters I received back and my family saved all the letters I wrote them. I think that is when my love of writing really began. I know it is when my love affair with getting physical mail really took off. There is something about reading a handwritten letter that included drawings or maps or doodles that just makes the experience that much richer. I dropped a letter to someone in the mail almost every day.  Writing letters helped pass the time and allowed me to share the experiences with others. Some of my CBIII pals were lucky like me, and had a pretty good set up with their host families. A couple kids were placed with families that owned farms and they were immediately added to the workforce. It was truly a whole new experience for them.

As a group, the CBIII crew got together on two organized trips during our year abroad. We spent a long weekend in Bonn, the capital of West Germany. It feels like we met some very important diplomats and politicians but mostly I just remember reconnecting with my American friends and telling stories until the wee hours of the morning.

The other group trip was to West Berlin and that was an eye-opening experience. At the time, The Wall was still separating West Berlin from East Berlin, and West Berlin was a democratic island. The train ride there quickly showed off the stark differences between western civilization and Eastern Europe.

Once we got to West Berlin we took a number of guided tours including a trip to Checkpoint Charlie. We also took a day trip into East Berlin, which you could only visit during the day, no overnight visits, and we were told we were limited on where we could go. It was literally a whole new world. You could tell immediately how limited East Berlin was when it came to books, food and general supplies. They tried to put on a good face but you could see past the veneer pretty quickly.

A small group of friends and I took a street train to the furthest point away from the city center and just explored the area. Everyone was super nice and wanted to know all about America. We talked about how plentiful so many things were that we took for granted. At the end of the day we had one last meal and we left almost all of our American money with the owner of the restaurant. The food had been delicious and we gave him maybe $15 apiece in ones and fives. He started crying and thanked us for our generosity. We later found out that the money we gave him would possibly cover his families’ expenses for two or three months.

The beauty of the year I lived abroad is how it shaped how I grew up and matured once I got back home. I was truly a completely different person. When I left I was confident but not one to jump in the middle of a situation. I would have considered myself a caring person but I came back much more compassionate and aware of how other people might look like me, but have a completely different backstory.

As I said earlier I stay in touch with my CBIII friends much more than anyone else I grew up with or went to school with. We are an eclectic group of what I would consider over-achievers. They represent a host of entrepreneurs, business leaders, teachers, and a few farmers, but I think I am the only one that gravitated to a career in sports.  It makes for fun times at the reunions, which we have had a handful of times, when I can talk about how my years in Germany set up for success with the Dallas Mavericks or NHRA Drag Racing.

Having the confidence to roll into unpredictable situations that are high stress as an adult doesn’t really hold a candle to being alone as a sixteen year old on a train station platform wondering if anyone is going to come pick you up in a foreign country.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Hello all!

I’ve cranked out three chapters in about 10 days, on my new book, and just submitted another one today. Having my friend and colleague Elon Werner jump in to share stories as a “pinch hitter” on the blog has been fantastic, and today’s installment is his best yet. Witty and heartfelt stories. Definitely a great read.

Muchas gracias to my compadre and amigo!

BW

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My Life in Sports

For as long as I can remember I have loved sports. I was never a very good athlete but I loved to play. Growing up I was a tall, lanky uncoordinated kid. I grew up in Texarkana, on the Texas side of town. If you’re not familiar with Texarkana, it’s a pretty unique place. It literally straddles the border between Texas and Arkansas, so what state you live in depends on what side of the main road you live on. Walk across the street to go from the hardware store to the drug store, and you’re crossing a state line.

My first sports team was The Green Machine youth soccer team in Texarkana, Texas. I remember us as a Bad News Bears type of a motley crew of kids that could never rise to the professionalism and skill of the Toros, the dominant team in our league. They had great looking uniforms and lots of skill players. By skill players I mean kids that could consistently pass the ball to one another and keep it inbounds. 

I don’t remember too many Tuesday and Thursday practices when we had a full squad. The Saturday morning games were also a little dicey. I can remember many anxious moments waiting for the fifth or sixth teammate to show up so we could field an undermanned team instead of forfeiting. I was probably eight or nine when this was all going on. I finally got my first growth spurt during my third year in the league and that was a game changer for The Green Machine. I was a good head taller than most of the kids by then so I became a corner kick specialist. I wasn’t the kicker but rather I would post up in the middle of the scrum and head the ball into the goal. It was glorious! 

From soccer I made the transition to little league baseball on a team sponsored by Conoco, one of the local gas stations, and we were the Roadrunners. Again I was not your typical size for a good baseball player. I was almost 6 feet tall and maybe 130-140 lbs. Lots of knees and elbows. I was consistently relegated to right field where I could, like a doctor, do no harm. There were many innings where I entertained myself by kicking the tops off of dandelions and stirring up fire ant hills. My biggest drawback to being a good baseball player was my inability to see the baseball. For a couple years the school nurse had been sending notes to my parents suggesting I get my eyes checked. As an only child I was a big time reader and massive consumer of Saturday morning cartoons. My parents would dutifully ask me if I could see OK when they received the nurse’s note and I would say of course I can see. I didn’t tell them that I was sitting two feet from the TV, or holding my books just off the tip of my nose, and was moved to the front row of all my classes to keep my life in focus.

At the plate I was a disaster. Image trying to hit a baseball by the sound it made. Opposing pitchers were not bringing high heat with audible velocity so most times I was swinging when the ball hit the catcher’s mitt. Have I mentioned I was tall, skinny and uncoordinated. I looked like a human pretzel-making factory after every big swing. The tipping point to the acceleration of my improvement came when a fly ball bounced off my forehead in the outfield. I could see the ball coming at me, then I lost it, so I moved my glove over and the next thing I saw was my dad, my coach and one of the umpires standing over me as I was experiencing the biggest headache of my life. There are unconfirmed reports the ball bounced three feet high off my forehead.

The next day I was getting my eyes checked and low and behold I was blind as a bat from beyond two feet. As I was leaving the ophthalmologist’s office with glasses and marveling at the beauty of seeing individual leaves on trees and how cool it was to be able to read street signs from the car, my parents were shaking their heads in amazement and parental embarrassment.

At the next game as a Roadrunner I collected two or three hits including a triple. It is amazing what you can do at the plate when you can see the ball leave the pitcher’s hand. I also got moved to first base where I was actually pretty good because I had huge range for a 12 year-old.

I only played one more year of little league before junior high came calling. It was pretty fun to be able to collect a few hits and catch the occasional fly ball. I think of all the sports I played baseball was by far the most fun. Even little league dugouts are a place where you have a tight sense of camaraderie and fellowship that an “only child” never really experienced. At home there was no one to bust my chops for goofing up or share a secret with or give a high-five to. Dugouts are a special place for sure and anyone that has experienced a full season or even just a handful of games riding the pine knows exactly what I am talking about.

Junior high brought a whole new set of problems or opportunities to my athletic career. I was a Pine Street Panther and proud of it. This was my chance to finally experience every young man in Texas’ birthright. I could try out for the football team! Everyone I knew played football. We played pick-up games in open fields, parking lots and on the streets. I had my Rec-Specs and I was ready to mix it up. Unfortunately my body again betrayed my potential. I was even taller now checking in at six foot three at about 160 lbs at that point and a stiff breeze could blow me over. I made it through two practices playing tight end. In my final practice I was running a drag route and just as I was about to make my first official catch I was, I believe the term they use today is, BLOWN UP by a linebacker. All the air left my body and I was left on the ground writhing and gasping like a goldfish flopping beside his tank. Shortly after that the basketball coach informed me I could check out his practices at 6 a.m. in the morning and my chances of getting completely abused would diminish greatly.

Basketball changed my life. Not because I was a great player but because of my teammates and my coaches. I was the lone white player on the team for many seasons throughout junior high and high school. It was an eye opening experience for a kid who had been cruising along around people and families that looked just like mine for the most part. My parents did a great job of having a wide circle of personal and professional friends of different colors and faiths but I was always on the perimeter in many social settings. I would come in and say hello and then scamper to my room to read or entertain myself. Being the only white kid made an impact that has lasted a lifetime. It took a while for me to fit into the team and there were some bumps along the way. Eventually we all got comfortable with each other and it was a ton of fun to have an even bigger social circle of friends. I didn’t care about color of skin thanks, again, to my parents but I was aware there were some double standards in play and I chose to lift my teammates up and ignore side-eye stares. My attitude was we were a team and a unit and that was what mattered on and off the court. I got a look at an education on racism and micro-aggressions early on in my life and while I have not been perfect I hope that I have been much more supportive and empathetic to people of color throughout my life.

On the court I continued my career as a sub-par player with a lot of heart. I never missed a scheduled practice and showed up at all the additional work out sessions. The sad fact was I just didn’t have a lot of athletic ability. I loved to play though. I think I scored double digits a couple of times in garbage time but everything about the preparation just spoke to me. In a move that would never fly today we practiced in different shoes than we played in. We were a Converse team so we practiced in old-school Chuck Taylor canvas high tops, but in the games we had sweet white and orange Converse Cons leather high tops.

My senior year we got new warm ups and they had the snaps up the outside of the legs.  We had all been watching NBA and college stars grab the front of their pants and yank them off in dramatic fashion. We could not wait to emulate that “cool factor” behavior. Before every game our coach threatened us with multiple post-practice suicide drills if we executed the “rip off” or “pop off” as he called it. After three games of everyone running suicide drills after practice because no one could resist the opportunity to look cool, our coach relented. 

The only time I received a technical foul was also one of my more embarrassing moments in high school athletics. We were the Texas High Tigers (because we were on the Texas side of Texarkana) and before every game we ran out of the locker room to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” To this day when I hear that song and I am transported back to my high school gym. Before the refs came out of their locker room teams could dunk during their warm-up drills.

Once the refs were on the court, no dunking was allowed. I was able to execute the running one hand dunk with about 60 percent proficiency. In this particular game against our cross-town rival Arkansas High, I had just taken off from my spot and as I left the ground I saw the refs were just entering the gym. Instead of aborting my dunk I actually swung my left hand up and executed a two-handed dunk. In my astonishment I held onto the rim and since this was a new experience I got a bonus physics lesson out of this moment as my legs continued to swing underneath me. I eventually let go of the rim and I landed flat on my back right in front of the refs. All you heard in the gym was a thud, a gasp from the crowd and the blare of the referee whistle as I was T’d up before the game event started. My peak athletic achievement nearly knocked me unconscious and cost me 10 suicide drills the next day.

I got my only high school letter my senior year for basketball so in the spring I got a letterman’s jacket. I wore that jacket almost every day whether it was 70 or 100 degrees. I still have it in my closest and show it off every now and then. My son was a four year letterman on the swim team and I could not be more proud. My daughter also lettered in journalism for three years, which is a thing now and very cool in my opinion. I look back at all those Saturday soccer games or Tuesday/Thursday baseball games and especially the Tuesday and Friday basketball games with so many fond memories. There were no select leagues or travel teams for me. Just getting out there and trying to play was enough fun for me. Those games and experiences molded me in ways I don’t think I really realized until I started writing this blog as a “pinch hitter” for Bob. They taught me persistence, tolerance, sportsmanship and most of all they taught me to work with people that I didn’t usually engage or have the same interests with. Sports did a lot of me and I am forever thankful for those opportunities.

Welcome back to another Thursday Blog Day. Once again, we have the honor of posting a blog written by one of the best PR reps who ever worked in the sport of NHRA Drag Racing. Elon Werner is back with us again, and he dives “head first” into many of his recollections with John Force and the JFR team.

Absolutely, positively, without a doubt, worth your time to read this.

Thanks Elon! And for the official record, just like many people assume my last name is spelled “Wilbur” thanks to the Wright Brothers and that old TV show “Mr. Ed” it is worth mentioning that Elon’s first name is pronounced EE-lin not e-LON. I’m a giver. I care about little stuff like that.

Enjoy!

Bob

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Just a few days ago NHRA celebrated its championship weekend at the Dodge NHRA Finals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Due to the ongoing pandemic the vibe during the race, and especially afterwards, was subdued and almost bittersweet. The roar of the crowd when Steve Torrence, then Erica Enders, Matt Smith, and finally Matt Hagan clinched their championships was less than overwhelming. It wasn’t due to lack of enthusiasm or massive disinterest. Like a lot of 2020 it was a resigned realization that this year was different. At the end of the day everyone was just hoping for a feeling of normalcy that could be safely achieved and celebrated. 

I was lucky to be able to talk with all four champions shortly after they returned to their pits following their top end celebrations. I was grabbing quotes for Competitionplus.com publisher Bobby Bennett and his team of writers. Bobby asked me to pitch in with quote gathering as the season wound down and I tried my best to get real emotion, reflection and insightful stories from all the race winners as they chased down their championship dreams. Few could understand the Covid pandemic more than Bobby, who suffered mightily from it before recovering. It was a sort of “full circle” to help him with interviews after he had gone through pure agony to survive.

On Sunday, asking Torrence, Enders, Smith, and Hagan about what this championship meant to them was one of the highlights of the season for me. How often are you in a position to talk with an athlete or entertainer who has scaled the mountain of success and achievement and is just beginning to understand what they just accomplished? All four racers were open and honest. I encourage you to check out the stories on each of them Competionplus.com has posted by now.

Here’s a link to my story about Matt Smith:

http://competitionplus.com/drag-racing/news/pro-stock-motorcycle%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98david%E2%80%99-team-brings-its-%E2%80%98big-rock%E2%80%99-to-las-vegas-wins-big

I was fortunate to witness a handful of championships from the inside during my time with John Force Racing. I can close my eyes and take myself right back to Pomona or, in one instance, Las Vegas and feel the rush of adrenaline when the championship win light came on. I can also remember the gut ache throughout the morning leading up to race day. There was a nervous energy around the team and everyone had a sense of focus that I wish every sports fan could get a real glimpse of from their favorite team or athlete.

My first championship experience was 2006 when John Force took the title back after Gary Scelzi ended the John Force Racing streak of twelve consecutive Funny Car championships the season before. Force was on a mission that season and he held off a furious charge by Ron Capps over the last four races of the season. I was only a contract PR person that season working a handful of races in support of drag racing PR guru Dave “Densy” Densmore. My original deal with Force was to support Densy from home, writing press releases and coordinating media, but I attended the Gatornationals that year to be introduced to Courtney and Brittany Force, who were just getting their racing careers started in Super Comp and were also involved in the wildly popular Driving Force television show on A&E.

The next race was Houston, an easy drive from Dallas where I live, so I made the quick trip. During that race I realized I could fly in to a handful of races on Friday night and fly home either Sunday on a red-eye or early Monday morning and then go back to my full time job as Communications Director for Beckett Media, the publishing house that brought together trading card collectors around the world to Beckett Baseball, Beckett Football, Beckett Basketball, etc.

That season I think I attended 10 races all while working a full-time job with a wife and two kids (not yet in kindergarten) at home. Heading into the Finals at Pomona my wife suggested (strongly) that I rework my deal with Force if I wanted to continue chasing him all over the country. To make a long race-day story short, Force won the championship and Densy and I went into immediate championship media promotion mode. Stories were written and sent out. Phone interviews were lined up for later that night and into the coming week. All the while winner’s circle photos were being taken with the team and sponsors. Force had managed to win the championship and the Auto Club Finals race in Pomona to close out the season.

At one point I was dashing through the winner’s circle when Force yells out, “Ian! Come get a picture with me. Ian, get over here, we’re world champs!” If you follow drag racing you probably know Force is terrible with names. That whole first season I was Ian, not Elon. I went over and stood by Force and he handed me the POWERade NHRA world championship trophy. It was heady stuff as confetti is flying around and Force had his trademark Cheshire Cat grin from ear to ear. He leaned over and asked if I was coming back next year and I immediately blurted out “Hell yes!” I just committed myself to the same deal for 2007. The renegotiation was over before it even began. You never forget your first championship and I always remember that day because it was so surreal and also very hard for me to explain to my wife what exactly had happened. 

My next experience celebrating a world championship with Force was one of the greatest sports days of my life. Outside of all the important family dates and events I have, it was really the greatest day of my life. Leading up to the 2010 season I had experienced some of the saddest and scariest moments of my life. We lost Eric Medlen in 2007. Force nearly died six months later in his crash at Texas Motorplex. JFR redesigned the Funny Car, Force was trying every day to get himself healthy and through it all Robert Hight collected his first world championship in 2009.

He entered the Countdown in the 10^th position and went on a tear that no one has been able to duplicate racing from tenth to first for the championship. That day was amazing since he had the championship all but locked up heading into Pomona. After he won the championship we were walking to the press room and Robert turned to me and said he would do every single media request the next season. He was so proud to be world champion that he said he would not ever turn down a media interview and I don’t think he did the whole next season. 

Getting back to 2010, Force had been dominating all season leading the points from the Winternationals to Reading with the exception of a two race gap in June when Robert moved around him. Hagan was hot on his tail and in Reading a ten cent part on Force’s car broke in the first round against Dale Creasy Jr., and he lost the points lead to Hagan. Force was trailing by two rounds going into the Auto Club Finals. No driver had ever come back from that kind of deficit on the final day of the season. On Sunday morning Force hosted Henry Ford III in our pits and in front of the entire organization he guaranteed he was going to win the championship. He essentially told Ford that if he didn’t win, Ford Racing could fire him. The energy in the pit that day was beyond electric. There was a look in the eye of all of Force’s crew guys that was a laser-focus I had never seen before.

Rolling up for first round Hagan was racing Bob Tasca III a few pairs in front of Force. It was a great race with Tasca getting the win and opening the door for Force to get around Hagan. Force took out his long-time friend Gary Densham and then beat Bob Bode in the second round for the championship. I will never forget Force jumping out of the parade truck in front of the grandstands and hobble-running along the fence line as fans high-fived him and hugged him. It was an amazing comeback story considering right after the 2007 crash doctors told him a good goal would be to try and get in physical shape to walk with a cane. Now three years later he just won his 15^th Funny Car championship and he went on to win the race as well. 

At the end of the day, long after all the press interviews, Densy and I realized Force left the big check in the press room so we took it home for him. As we were walking by the ESPN compound the crew was breaking down all their equipment and we let them take pictures with the big check. Everyone was happy to see Force back on top. We wound up at the bar at the Double Tree hotel in Pomona and as we were celebrating and calling everyone in our phones to tell them the good news about Force, the bartender asked us why we were so happy. We told her our boss just won half a million dollars and a world championship. I also let her know we had the check in the car. She didn’t believe us so I told her I would go get it if she comped our drinks for the night. She said “Deal” and that is how a wedding party from Ontario that was staying at the hotel got their bridesmaid photos with John Force’s NHRA championship check for $500,000.

The last championship I was a part of with John was 2013 and he surprised everyone by wrapping it up in Las Vegas. Again it was a Hagan versus Force battle all season and coming in Las Vegas the penultimate (I love that word) event of the season Force had a commanding lead but we knew Hagan was going to go for broke. On Sunday morning Hagan lost first round and as I checked my point projections I realized if Force won the race that day he would clinch his 16^th Funny Car championship. I confirmed my math with NHRA officials and we agreed a Force win meant a Vegas championship celebration.

Force kept winning and headed into the final he was paired up with his daughter Courtney. This was as tough a match-up for Force as any he faced all season. He is the most competitive person I know and he can get, as he calls it, the “Eye of the Tiger” against anyone except his kids. He loves them so much he can’t demonize them or get to that mental place where you have to destroy your opponent on the playing field. In one of his finest driving jobs he left on Courtney and beat her on a hole shot to win the race and the championship. Thanksgiving was tough that year but it was an awesome display of a competitor digging deep to get the win. The hug I got as he was walking up to the winner’s circle stage was almost rib crushingly strong. He had proved 2010 wasn’t a fluke and he also proved that no matter who and no matter what stood in his way he was still up for the championship fight.

The two weeks later, at the banquet, Force gave an awesome speech about perseverance and teamwork. He then promptly forgot the real $500,000 check and the trophy on the stage. I got to carry both around the rest of the night.

Those four championships will stay with me forever. They were all unique in their own way. I missed being on the team in 2017 when Robert and Brittany doubled up as world champs in Funny Car and Top Fuel. It was strange to watch the race from Texas sitting in my neighbor’s pool. I got a lot of questions about why I didn’t fly out just for that race. It would have been cool to be there for sure but the real joy of the championship isn’t always on Championship Sunday. It is realized from the experience of the Winternationals in February through the season’s ups and downs. It is more gratifying when you think you have things going your way and then they might start slipping and you reign them back in. Being around a competitor like Force, and even Robert, where they can lock in and tune out all the noise is a very cool thing to see from the inside. I am thankful that I was a part of a championship team and I congratulate the 2020 champions. No matter how long the season was and no matter who was racing you beat them all and you earned the big trophy and bragging rights.

It’s a year we’ll never forget.

Hello all! I’m really deep in the process of getting this new book finished, with a publishing deadline staring me in the face, so I was in a quandary about how to maintain this blog while still trying to write two or three chapters a week.

And then I saw a social media comment from my friend, and former PR colleague, Elon Werner in which he mentioned “pinch hitting” for me if I needed a guest blogger. I couldn’t think of another person who could do this any better.

So here’s the deal. For the next few weeks, while I’m trying to crank out a few more critical chapters, my friend Elon is going to step to the plate and swing for the fences. He’s smart, he’s hilarious, and our paths to our eventual places in this world are uncannily similar. We both had master plans about our lives and careers when we were in college. We both ended up doing absolutely nothing even remotely close to those plans.

His stories are rich, and very familiar. He’s one in a million in terms of my favorite people. Just like me, he’s done stuff he never contemplated. And he has the memories of spending many years as the PR rep, handler, wrangler, and kitten rustler for John Force and his entire team. Our conversations back then always had my head spinning. I had the honor of working for Del Worsham and Tim Wilkerson, two of the easiest guys in the sport to represent. He had the honor of trying to wrestle a tornado for all those years.

Plus, he has a fascination for all the credentials he’s ever worn in his PR career. I have every one of mine, as well. We’re kindred souls.

And, his story about being interviewed by Billy Meyer to work at the Texas Motorplex is an exact duplicate of how I found my way into the sport of NHRA Drag Racing. Bill Kentling, at Heartland Park, decided to hire a marketing guy and teach him about racing, rather than hire a racing guy who might be able to manage and market the venue. That was me. A life-altering moment.

Elon will be here for a few weeks. I hope you enjoy his ramblings and I thank him immensely for doing this. Enjoy!!!

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I would like to thank Bob for letting me take the ball for a few innings when it comes to writing this blog. I know this is a huge responsibility and I hope this doesn’t turn into a Kevin Cash situation. I will do my best to entertain and inform.

Bob is an excellent set-up man but I thought I would spend this first blog introducing myself and offering a preview of things to come. Like Bob’s career trajectory, my route to my current position as vice president of sports publicity at Tony Fay Public Relations is not what you would call traditional or conventional, or even predictable.

I have a degree in Business Administration from Austin College. No, not Stephen F. Austin or Austin Community College. Austin College is a small liberal arts college in Sherman, Texas, chartered in November 1849, and it remains the oldest institution of higher education in Texas to be operating under its original charter. How official does that sound?

I enrolled in college with the idea of becoming the next Dr. Hawkeye Pierce from the sitcom M*A*S*H and Austin College had an excellent reputation of cranking out graduates who could have their pick of medical schools. Unfortunately, eight years of science classes, labs, and studying did not seem like a good idea once I got into the flow of my freshman year, which was more consumed by basketball games, parties and general socializing. I made the most out of my experience at a school of only 1,300 students. I ran for student body president with zero experience in student government, I joined the track team with zero experience throwing the javelin, I made the cheerleading squad on a dare. I met my future wife and generally sucked all the fun out of four years of a liberal arts education.

The absolute best thing that happened to me in college, besides meeting my wife, was ruining my shoulder in a nasty fraternity beach football game that effectively ended my walk-on basketball career as a Fighting Kangaroo. I was devastated but the athletic director who happened to also be my academic mentor suggested I join the student staff of the sports information department. This act of kindness changed the course of my life. Austin College was so small they did not have a full-time sports information director so a couple of students ran the office for all the sports, for a small stipend.

It was great. I was still part of not just the basketball team but also the football team, baseball team, women’s softball, track & field, swimming and soccer. I was an enthusiastic writer and promoter of the teams and some of our standout athletes, with the local Sherman media, and even got some stories in the Dallas Fort Worth media. I stepped in as the PA guy on games when needed and set up the press box every Saturday before the football games, lugging a hand-crank mimeograph machine up the stands while it poured purple ink down the front of my pants.

I had found my calling as a story teller and also a numbers/stats nerd. I kept the stats books for football, basketball and baseball and I also produced the media guides for all the sports as well as press release creation. I had no formal journalism or public relations training at the time and even now my grammar might not be perfect but I always hope my passion comes through in my releases.

As graduation closed in on me I realized I needed a job and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay in sports PR or try the sports journalism route. Through an alumni connection I was given an informational interview with the Dallas Mavericks on November 7, 1991. Any NBA fans or LA Laker fans remember the significance of that date?  I was just getting through the “Hi, how are you doing?” portion of my first sports job interview when the phone rang and Kevin “Sully” Sullivan, the Mavs PR director, picked up the receiver. I watched as the blood drained from of his face and he simply said “Unbelievable!” He hung up the phone and told me Magic Johnson was about to hold a press conference and announce he was HIV positive. In 1991 that diagnosis was considered a death sentence and Sully knew it would send shock waves through the NBA and the global sports community. He asked me if I knew how to use a computer and if I could get right to work. The next three hours were a blur of researching Magic’s stats versus the Mavericks over his career and also helping answer the phones, which by then were ringing off the hook. Before I knew it I was standing outside Reunion Arena wondering if I had even had a job interview. The next day one of the stat boxes I had compiled on Magic versus the Mavericks was on the front page of the Dallas Morning News beside a Magic Johnson story. I thought that was about the coolest thing ever.

Two weeks later Sully called me and asked if I could come to the New York Knicks game against the Mavericks. I wasn’t sure if this was a continuation of my job interview or just a ticket to a game as a thank you for not screwing up on the Magic deal. I dressed for success just in case, arriving at the arena in pressed khakis, a starched white dress shirt and tie, the standard PR guy uniform for the 1990s. When I went to the Will Call window I wasn’t handed a ticket but rather a media credential for the game with a note to come down to the lower level of the arena.

I had no idea what I was doing. I had been to maybe two NBA games ever and was in the nose bleed section both games. Now I had an official credential which, I found out, let me go just about anywhere on the court as well as the locker rooms. I was tasked with handing out stat sheets at the end of each quarter and just before the end of the game I was told I would need to get post-game quotes from the visiting coach and two players. I had to ask someone where the visiting locker room was and when I arrived there was a group of maybe ten writers waiting outside of the locker room for Knicks coach Pat Riley. I was nervous but excited and as soon as Riley exited the locker room he walked right into the middle of the scrum. No one said anything for what I thought was an eternity. I knew I had to talk with two other players so I just asked him about the game. He gave me an immediate death stare but then gave a succinct recap of their win and who he thought played well. I had been keeping some stats in the game and asked a specific question about a run the Knicks made in the third quarter to take a lot of the wind out of the Mavericks’ sails. Again, death stare from Riley and a couple of the writers were giving me serious side-eye but, once again, he gave me a great answer. I clicked off my mini-cassette tape recorder and went into the locker room. I got my two players and went about transcribing my interviews. We used typewriters back then and there were about six people all typing at the same time. I can still remember that sweet symphony of key strokes ricocheting off the concrete walls of the auxiliary press room.

At the end of the night I found out that the reason Riley was giving me a death stare and the rest of the media guys were giving me sideways glances was Riley had an established post-game routine. He would come out and formulate his thoughts then give the media a quick recap followed by maybe one or two follow-up questions. I had no idea about this routine and just jumped right in. I am thankful he answered my questions and didn’t make me look like an idiot. Over a decade later I was able to talk with him again after the Miami Heat won the NBA title in 2006 over the Mavericks. On the second go-round I was familiar with his routine but I did get two additional questions in.

That same championship season I was a part of one of the funniest post-game press conference moments with Dirk Nowitzki. After Game 1, Dirk was talking with the media and I was able to get the last question of the presser. The events leading up to that question are part of Dirk Nowitzki lore. See for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrQzRBcrCts

After the Knicks game I came back to work a few more games for the Mavericks that season before joining the staff as a full-time intern for the 1992-93 season. During my tenure with the Mavs I learned from two of the best sports media services people in the business; Sully and Tony Fay. That experience with the Mavs gave me the foundation of skills I would take with me into the world of motorsports.

As my time with the Mavericks was coming to a close a mutual friend heard there was a race track in Ennis, Texas that was looking for a PR director. She passed my name to the vice president of sales at the Texas Motorplex and also gave me his name. I reached out to him and was offered an interview a few weeks later. Again, the cliché holds up since it is not what you know but who you know. Louise’s kindness in terms of that referral provided me the opportunity to have a shot at a new adventure.

When I met with Billy Meyer, the owner of the Texas Motorplex, I did not know he was a former Funny Car driver and champion. I didn’t know that the Texas Motorplex was the biggest and best drag strip in the country. All I knew about drag racing was what I was able to find in one Sports Illustrated article on Kenny Bernstein and Don Prudhomme, and I vaguely remember the silky smooth tones of ABC Wide World of Sports’ Keith Jackson talking about Big Daddy and Shirley Muldowney at the U.S, Nationals when I was a kid. Billy took one look at me and decided on the spot he had been hiring drag racing people and trying to teach them PR, but maybe he would hire a PR person and teach them drag racing. It was a match made in heaven and over the next ten years we did some amazing things at the Motorplex.

Those years were also my first introduction to Bob, Del Worsham, Dave Densmore, John Force and many, many more drag racing characters. My sports odyssey would extend from the Motorplex to Super Bowls, NBA All-Star games, to the inside of John Force Racing, to a quick stint with Heritage Auctions, and now back to NHRA drag racing. There are some interesting side hustles too, like running NFL No. 1 draft pick Jameis Winston’s draft day event from Birmingham, Alabama, to working the inaugural College Football Playoff game in Arlington, to some press events with Emmitt Smith, Troy Aikman and my all-time sports hero Mean Joe Greene, leading up to Super Bowl XLV.

I will share some of the amazing stories from the road, in the pits and driver lounges, as well as personal reflections on sports, family and relationships. What I love about Bob’s blog is I get an understanding of how his life and experiences may not be exactly like mine but there are many similarities. I hope to carry on that legacy of intimacy and hilarity.

See you next week!

This time of year has always been pretty melancholy for me. Fall is beautiful, especially up here in Minnesota. The leaves are ablaze and falling to the ground with every gust of wind. The temps have cooled, and can be downright chilly on some days. The sky is clear, and is more royal blue than any color palate can offer.

But…

Fall can only lead to winter. As a kid, I feared autumn. I knew what was coming. Growing up in St. Louis, however, is quite different than living in Minnesota. Winter in St. Louis, when I was a kid, was typically four or five months of gray days, with some sleet and snow mixed in. It was depressing, for a kid who loved to be outside playing sports. Here, it’s much colder and much snowier, but everyone knows what to expect and deals with it. Many Minnesotans will tell you they enjoy summer, but they live through it and fall just to get back to winter. They ice fish. They snowmobile. They ski. I typically just hunker down, but I deal with it too. I’d rather have -2 degrees and sunny, with bright white snow on the ground, than yet another miserable day at 31 with freezing rain.

So, welcome back to the blog! It’s been a bit of a slog the last few weeks, as we go through a redesign and update. Any of you who work in this field, or have people who work for you, understand how technical and challenging it is to make things like this happen. There are glitches, things go missing, things are different, and it’s never easy. Especially for a blogger like me who likes his comfort zone. You need to be comfortable with your platform to allow your brain to disengage from the technology and just focus on the words. But, we’re back. I hope. As late as yesterday I was getting copied on emails that addressed more issues with the new look and the new tech. Fingers crossed.

There are still some things missing or different, but let’s just move forward. And that means we start fresh today!

It’s a good melancholy day for more memories…

On this day, in 1985, I was at Busch Stadium in downtown St. Louis thanks to the largesse of the Toronto Blue Jays. I had left my scouting position with the Jays a year and a half earlier, but when the Cardinals made the playoffs I got a call from GM (and future Hall of Famer) Pat Gillick to ask me if I wanted any tickets for the Cardinals home games versus the Dodgers. I was working for Converse at the time, and had a busy travel schedule, but I was free (or could make myself free) on October 15. It was a day game. I’ve often written about Pat Gillick, both here and in my book “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” to mention how gracious, supportive, and kind he was to me when I was a scout for the team. I was young (the youngest scout in MLB) and although I’d been to a million games with my dad when he was scouting, only some of the techniques and knowledge had soaked in. I had a lot to learn, but I did my best. The Blue Jays were in the playoffs as well, playing the Royals, so the very fact that Pat would reach out to me, an ex-employee, when he was clearly swamped with playoff details, tells you all you need to know about him.

I went down to Busch, by myself, on that incredible sunny fall day. The weather was perfect. The excitement was high. Pennant fever was in the air. There’s nothing like that!

It was a best-of-seven series, and the Dodgers had won the first two out in LA. The Cardinals came back to win the first two of the three games in St. Louis. This was Game 5. Whoever won would go back to Dodger Stadium with an edge.

It was tied, 2-2, in the 9th. In the bottom of the inning, the great Cardinal Ozzie Smith came to the plate. The Wizard of Oz himself. He would be facing hard-throwing right-hander Tom Niedenfuer when he came to the plate. As a switch hitter, that made the diminutive Ozzie bat left-handed. As he took his place in the batter’s box, I didn’t know the following detail: In more than 2,900 at-bats as a left-handed hitter, Ozzie had never hit a home run. Never. Not one. I learned later that the television crew, covering the game nationally, put a graphic up that pointed that detail out. As Bob Costas later said in a recent Jack Buck documentary, “That might have been the most prescient graphic ever put on the screen.”

Niedenfuer wound up and delivered. I can still hear the crack of the bat. A long fly to right. The right-fielder went back but it was well over his head. Home run, just above the right field wall. A walk-off winner for the Redbirds. The entire stadium was delirious, and “Crazy” beyond belief. I quote the word “Crazy” on purpose. The great Jack Buck made yet another of his epic and perfect calls of such a moment, on KMOX radio in St. Louis.

“Smith corks one into right down the line! It may go… GO CRAZY folks, GO CRAZY! It’s a home run, and the Cardinals have won the game, by the score of three to two… on a home run… By the Wizard!”

It was such a gorgeous day. It was such an improbable (impossible?) outcome. I drove home with the sunroof open on my car, taking as many scenic backroads as I could, rather than just flying down the freeways. I drove through Forest Park, past Washington University, out through Clayton, into Ladue, through Creve Coeur, and out to Maryland Heights, then to my house in distant St. Peters. The leaves were just like they are here right now. The scenery was stunning. St. Louis can be such a beautiful place if you know where to look. I never stopped smiling or reliving the moment the whole way. I’m still reliving it. It was a beautiful day.

As much as Ozzie’s moment was historic, it bears mention that Jack Buck always made a very difficult job seem easy. In the great moments, the ones when everyone went bonkers, he somehow managed to keep his focus and not just utter the outcome, but also come up with quotes for the ages. When Kirk Gibson stunned the world with a game-winning home run against the A’s in the World Series, pinch hitting on basically one leg, Buck didn’t just call it on the national radio broadcast, he added “I can’t believe, what I just saw” with perfect timing and emphasis. Totally unplanned. Totally perfect.

When Kirby Puckett homered to keep the Twins alive in the World Series against the Braves, in 1991, with a dramatic 11th inning homer in Game 6 at the Metrodome, it was “And we’ll see you, tomorrow night!” Perfect.

Those are great memories, and the Ozzie home run is appropriate on this date, 35 years later.

And a side note: Ozzie hit that homer off Tom Niedenfuer, a hulking hard-thrower. In 1980, as a rookie regional scout for the Blue Jays, I was assigned to cover the huge (mammoth) NBC tournament in Wichita, a gathering of great amateur summer teams from around the country. It was a marathon of an assignment, but I had my Blue Jays scouting buddy Tim Wilken there with me. In one game, a team from the Alaska League (one of the best collegiate summer leagues in the country) was playing and Niedenfuer came in to pitch. After the game, I dashed back to the hotel (no cell phones then) and called Pat Gillick directly, to tell him what I’d just seen. I said, “Pat, he can pitch in the big leagues tomorrow.” Pat said he’d check with the regional scout who covered him in college, at Washington State. He called me back and said “Our guy out there didn’t rate him very highly, but you think he can pitch, huh?” I said I did. The radar gun and my eyes were impressed. Maybe our guy out there saw him on a cold wet day in the Pacific Northwest. In Wichita, it was 100 degrees. He was firing. Pat believed in me enough to give me a dollar figure I could offer. It was generous for a kid who was effectively a free-agent just looking to get signed. The Dodgers out-bid me by double. But, what meant a lot to me was the fact the GM of the Blue Jays believed in his young rookie scout enough to take my word for it and give me a chance.

Moving on… We’re also living through some very sad times in terms of baseball right now. One after another, some of the all-time greats are leaving this mortal planet. Tom Seaver, Al Kaline, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, and Whitey Ford. All gone. And now the latest loss, of Joe Morgan.

I’ve seen and heard a lot of people who “blame” all this on the year 2020, which has no doubt been awful, but the year isn’t to blame. The passing of time is to blame.

With that in mind, it occurred to me that what we’re really seeing is a look back in time. These legends were all part of an era in the game of baseball that was incredibly special, that being the 1960s and the early 70s. There were so many great players, many of them the best of all time. It’s now 2020. We’re all only here on this planet for a while, and the plethora of great players from that era are at the end of their lives. I had the honor to know both Gibby and Lou, thanks to my Cardinals’ connections. Gracious men. Fierce competitors. Great players.

As a kid, I attended too many games at old Busch Stadium (aka Sportsman’s Park) with my dad, to count. Then, in Busch Stadium II, my mom worked for the Cardinals in 1967 and 1968, and we had four season tickets right behind home plate. I saw so many games, and so much greatness, but I probably didn’t appreciate it at the time.

On any given afternoon or night, it might be Gibson versus Koufax, or Drysdale, or Jenkins, or Seaver, or Marichal. Amazing. It could be Lou Brock stealing base number 105 to break Maury Wills’ stolen base record, sliding in feet-first like he always did. What a way to grow up. If ballparks had DNA, I’d have a good dose of both the old St. Louis parks in me.

And then the final bit of sadness, and this one is music related. Eddie Van Halen passed away just earlier this month.

To be honest, I was never really a fan of the band Van Halen when they were becoming popular. Don’t judge. Music taste is personal, just like your taste in food. I just didn’t appreciate what they were doing at a time when I was really deeply into serious music. Genesis, Yes, King Crimson, Kansas and, a bit later, Rush. I thought Van Halen was too much of a drunken party band, and a lot of that had to do with singer David Lee Roth, who I genuinely considered a lousy vocalist and basically a buffoon. The songs weren’t serious, they were sophomoric. But I knew Eddie Van Halen could play.

It wasn’t until later in life that I finally understood that. I think when Sammy Hagar replaced Roth it allowed me to get more into what the band was doing, and that meant watching Eddie play in ways he actually invented or adapted to his own amazing style. He changed the way truly great players could attack the guitar. He changed music.

But what I found out I loved about him was his personality on stage. While many talented guitarists are so serious about their playing they tend to make grimacing faces when hitting those technical notes, Eddie Van Halen relished playing the guitar, especially at the moments when he was doing mind-bending finger gymnastics on the fret board. He played with joy. Pure joy. He ran around the stage like a kid, jumping and twirling. He was almost always smiling on stage, even laughing, because he loved it so much. I didn’t know how sad I would be when he left us. I knew it the minute I heard the news. I’ve been soaking up videos every day since. Rest in peace, Eddie Van Halen. You changed music.

And here’s a little tidbit I just learned due to his passing. When Michael Jackson was reaching his zenith, one of the great songs that pushed him even higher was “Beat It.” It’s a fabulously constructed song, and on MTV the video was in constant rotation.

There’s an epic guitar solo in the middle of that song. It’s Eddie Van Halen playing that solo. Once I heard that bit of trivia I had to give it a listen again. Amazing stuff. Now, listening to it with the advantage of the passing of all this time, I can hear it and say “Of course that’s Eddie Van Halen. That’s his sound, popping the strings on the frets.”

We’ve lost a lot of greatness this year. We’ve lost a lot of Americans. We’ve lost friends and loved ones. We’ve lost jobs, and restaurants, and movie theaters, and live sports. We’ve lost a lot of joy, but we’ve persevered and we need to keep doing that. This demon virus isn’t going away any time soon.

We could use a fresh Eddie Van Halen solo right about now. We need the joy and boyish energy.

It’s good to be back here. I hope you enjoy the new look of the site and I urge you to take a look around at the whole thing. My brother Del does great work with this charity, and I know he faces big challenges to keep it going.

I’ll see you next week. Take care, be safe, and wear your mask!

And if you like the words here, or even just the look of it, please click on the “Like” button below. I always appreciate that!

Bob Wilber, at your service and missing so many great ones.

PS: Well, I just posted this and see that the photos won’t enlarge when you click on them. I thought we had that sorted out weeks ago. I’ll work on it and hope to get that fixed. Sorry!