Author: bwilber

Hello everyone! This might be a bit of a short one on this Thursday Blog Day because it’s been quite a condensed week. I went to the Route 66 Nationals in Joliet over the weekend, then spent Monday through Wednesday dutifully writing Chapter 24 of “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts.” Today, in just an hour or so, I’m headed to the airport to pick up former college teammate and roommate Lance McCord. It’s a good thing I fired the new chapter off to my editor Greg Halling already, because the only “work” left for me this week will entail fine food, a few glasses of wine, and the company of good friends. Plus a ballgame.

My first reunion, however, was at the race. When I went to Gainesville for a day, back in March, the tour was only on its third race of the year, so it wasn’t like anyone in the pits or the Media Center had even had time to notice I wasn’t around. This past weekend, the Joliet race marked the 13th race of the season, which is now in its sixth month. It had been a while.

I flew down on Friday, getting to my hotel in Bolingbrook just in time to open my laptop and fire up NHRA All-Access to watch the second qualifying session.  That allowed me to watch Wilk scream down the track in his Levi, Ray & Shoup Mustang to a 3.894 at a huge 330 mph. Much merriment was had by me.

On Saturday morning, I didn’t have to beat the sunrise to get to the track because the Joliet race has a unique qualifying schedule that starts in the late afternoon on both Friday and Saturday. I had breakfast and relaxed for a while, then headed down I-55 toward the track around 11:00 a.m. feeling like I was most certainly late. It’s weird going to the races but not in any official capacity. I have to remind myself that I can do whatever I want and go whenever I want.

When I got on Route 53 to head south to the track, I was surrounded by Funny Car teams in their tow vehicles, so I guessed I was right on time. I’m smart like that. I stopped at Credentials (another weird thing) and then parked my car on the grass lot right behind the pro pits. The lot was packed, so my bright brain also summarized that while I was on time in terms of when the pro sessions were, I was quite tardy in comparison to all the fans and officials who filled the lot. That was okay. A crowded parking lot is a good thing.

My first stop was the LRS pit area, since it was the first thing I came to when I walked through the gate. With Joliet being “just up the road” from Springfield, the Team Wilk transporter gets a primo spot on the end of the aisle. It’s a beacon for Wilk Warriors, and that’s what I am these days. A self-employed writer and a Wilk Warrior.

It was, as I knew it would be, wonderful to see everyone. Krista Wilkerson gives the greatest hugs in the history of the world. I dashed around and saw everyone as fast as I could, including all the crew guys, Tim himself, and a bevy of good friends from Springfield.

I had heard that Christopher Knight (aka Peter Brady from “The Brady Bunch”) was coming to the event, and on Friday he sent me an email to confirm that. Plus, world-class drummer Gregg Potter and Cathy Rich, the daughter of legendary drummer Buddy Rich, were also scheduled to make an appearance, so there was lots to look forward to in terms of special guests.

The best part of arriving at the track is the emotional feeling of it. For a week before I went, I felt just like I did before Gainesville. A bit apprehensive, a little unsure, and a bit worried. What would it feel like? Would everyone forget who I was? Would I feel like an uncomfortable outsider?

I had nothing to worry about. Quite literally, as soon as I walked in the pit and saw everyone, and especially when I was sharing that heartfelt hug with my best racing friend Krista, it was as if I had never left. Absolutely like I’d never left. It’s a wonderful thing.

I cruised up to the Media Center soon thereafter, but with it being still quite early in terms of pro qualifying many of my former peers (who are still great friends) weren’t at their posts. When I got back to the pit, Christopher was there with his fiancé Cara and her father. More handshakes and hugs.

Chris Knight is a really good guy. Considering his “child star” background, it’s just amazing how grounded and outgoing he is. And he carries no baggage about the show. People recognize him all the time and call him Peter, and he just smiles and chats and poses for photos. And here’s another thing… He is REALLY smart. He’s a sponge when it comes to technology, which is why he is captivated by Funny Cars and Top Fuelers. He’s drawn to the immensity of the power and the difficulty of getting it to the track without spinning those big round rubber things, and he’s constantly asking very detailed and very technical questions. Many of his thoughts and questions are completely and utterly over my head, but he listens to my “big picture” answers and appreciates whatever new knowledge he can glean.

Also, when you’re trying to take a photo with your buddy Krista, he’s not above the most epic photo-bomb in recent history. Who doesn’t want to have a selfie photo-bombed by Peter Brady?

When I went back to the Media Center a bit later, all of my former colleagues were there, in position, working away. It was phenomenal to see them all again. Todd Myers, who hasn’t been on the tour for a couple of years, made a comeback to sit in for Rob Geiger, who was on vacation, so I got to see that good buddy as well.  And Brandon Mudd, who has dealt with a few hospital stays and some heart repairs, was there too, in support of TJ Zizzo’s team. It was fantastic to see both of those guys.

From Kelly Topolinski to Sadie Floyd, from Elon Werner to Cody Poor, from Allison McCormick to Nicole Clark, and from John Byczek to Terry Blount, along with everyone else in the room, it was terrific to be back. It felt like home, but it was even better because I didn’t have to work.

And the additionally great news is that I won’t have to wait four months and 10 more races to do it again. It seems impossible, but the Western Swing starts next week and I’ll be heading to Sonoma for the middle leg of that trifecta. Can’t wait.

Here in the land of being a writer, Chapter 24 was a great one to write and it pushed me in a couple of ways. I didn’t want to let my condensed schedule get in the way of writing, so I diligently wrote as much as I could each day. No slacking for me. And, as much as I recalled a million great details about the time-period I’m writing about, I still needed some research materials. This chapter is big, because it’s about the nearly two years I spent as general manager of the Kansas City Attack indoor soccer team. It was a great experience, and I can still vividly remember all sorts of feelings and experiences, but I’d be lying if I said I remembered specific game dates, scores, and attendance figures.

Fortunately, after I left the Attack I clearly had a premonition that I’d someday write all about it, because I kept copies of the game program and Media Guide. Those two publications were my lifeline for three days of detailed writing.

The Attacker magazine was, I humbly believe, the best game program in the league. Everything about it was big league, thanks to a fantastic graphic artist we hired, by the name of Carl Fowler. Carl and I spent many long days and nights huddled behind his computer at his office, perfecting the layout of each page. What he created was terrific.

And the Media Guide, produced by my Attack PR Director Tyler Cundith, had more details and information than I ever could need. It was a wealth of data, and since I’m trying to drill down and provide a lot more detail than “there were a lot of people there” in these chapters, it was great to flip the pages and see that we had 8,610 fans in attendance at Kemper Arena, on October 29, 1994, when we lost a heartbreaker to the St. Louis Ambush, 10-9.

I also recall that our team owner didn’t fully understand how publications like The Attacker were funded. Just like newspapers, the actual sale of the magazine to the public is only a small part of the income generated. It was the advertising within the magazine that brought in the money. We only charged $2 for it at the gate, because I wanted to get as many copies as possible into the hands of our fans. Our sponsors and advertisers wanted exposure!

When I was sitting in a budget meeting with the ownership group, about halfway through my first season, the primary owner said, “It costs us close to three dollars to print this, right?” I affirmed that such a cost was close. It was, specifically, more like $2.75 per copy. He then said, “And we sell it for two dollars?” Again, I nodded. Then he said, “Well gosh, I sure hope we don’t sell too many of these things. We lose money on every one we sell!” I did calmly explain to him how it worked, but I gave him credit for being funny.

Within the magazine, I saw a story about our mascot, Fuzzy The Attack Cat, and that brought back a flood of memories. Prior to the season, as Tyler and I were working hard to come up with all the content, we struggled to write the bio about our big cat. At one point, I just said, “Let me take a run at this” and no more than 15 minutes later I had it. Rather than retype it, I’ll just leave it here. And you can enlarge it to read all about Fuzzy by simply clicking on it. What a great mascot he was.

Having this opportunity, to write this book, has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. I knew, going in, that I’d had an incredible upbringing and spectacular experiences in my baseball and business careers, but to put it all into words, chapter after chapter, made it all so much more vivid and made me so much more grateful. And I still have the Whit Bazemore, Del Worsham, and Tim Wilkerson eras to go. That’s a lot of material, and I won’t cut any corners, but after 24 chapters of childhood, baseball, family, school, and other experiences, it’s a rush to know I’m finally to the NHRA payoff at the end. If I could, I’d sit here nonstop for two weeks and just finish it.

Who knows, maybe I’ll do that. Okay, not nonstop, but I have a feeling that once our reunion weekend is over I’ll have an overwhelming desire to crank it up to a new writing level. And that will be cool.

Lance is in the air right now, and the other two former SIUE Cougars, Bob “Radar” Ricker and James “Oscar” Noffke are driving up. They’re currently just south of the Twin Cities in Albert Lea, Minn.

Tonight and tomorrow night, we’ll stay at the sumptuous Grand Hotel in downtown Minneapolis. Dinner at world-famous Manny’s Steakhouse is on the docket tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll hang out in downtown for a while and then head over to Target Field for the Twins game against Cleveland. Even after Manny’s tonight, I’m still assuming the hot dogs will taste great.

On Saturday, we’ll have a leisurely breakfast and then head east to Woodbury, so I can show the guys around our new home. Then, off to downtown St. Paul to meet Woodbury friends for a drink at The Bulldog, in Lowertown, before dinner at Kincaid’s. We’ll then stay at the St. Paul Hotel, and Barbara will be coming along for that.

If last year’s fantastic trip to Cooperstown and Washington D.C. is any indicator, we’re going to have a great time.

Now, time to go pick up Monsieur McCord at MSP. See you next week, with tales of fun and mayhem.

Bob Wilber, at your service and wondering if a job as an Uber driver is in my future. Probably not.

For some unknown reason, I’ve had a slight flood of wonderful emails arrive on my laptop as of late. Mostly it’s longtime readers checking in to say they’re still out there and still reading, and some of them have brought back a fantastic series of wonderful memories, dating all the way back to the first days of the CSK blog on NHRA.com, so I figured it was time to wax poetic about all the marvelous things that have happened here over the last 11 years. Plus, it was time to dig out some old photos from blogs gone by. Photos are always important.

Back then, in August of 2005, this whole “blog thing” was new to everyone, and I was charged with the impossible twin tasks of writing it for a whole month while also writing it about my job and my life, in the first person. I was relatively certain there was no way to succeed.

Very early on, when the blog was just days or weeks old, I did my best to spread it out and keep the team involved with it, but it didn’t take long before the rest of the guys ran out of steam (or possibly interest.) So, I was on my own and I needed stories to tell. That’s why tales of travel, in the air and at the team hotel, were naturals for the blog. If the goal was to show readers what it’s like to be the Team Manager and PR rep for a Funny Car organization on the NHRA tour, travel had to be a big part of it, whether it was tales from airports or the view out of my hotel room window.

Another thing that happened early on was Pond Cam. I miss Pond Cam. I had shown some photos of our house and neighborhood in the opening weeks of the blog, and I noticed a sharp increase in email when I did so. So many people lived in the sunbelt, or in places where the weather didn’t change much, and they were fascinated by Minnesota, where all four seasons are vividly different. So, I took a photo of our back pond from our living room. And, Pond Cam was born.

It was a huge hit, and I made the commitment to shoot the same scene regularly so that folks in Texas or Florida or Arizona could watch the seasons change without actually having to put on a heavy coat and woolen mittens. It was fun, it was kind of whimsical, and it was very Minnesota. Watching the ice form, the snow fall, and all of the seasons come and go was something a lot of people enjoyed, and it was made better by the fact we lived in such a gorgeous area, with water out back and in front.

I think I liked it the most in the early spring, when the snow would finally start to melt and the ice would first turn to mush before leaving altogether. Watching spring “happen” in Minnesota is a fantastic thing, as the entire state comes back to life after another long cold winter. Seeing the first tulips pop out of the ground, and the ducks return, while the frogs and turtles are awakening from their winter slumbers, was a great way to feel energized for the coming spring, summer, and fall.

There’s no denying winter, though, and it has its own great charms up here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Neighbor Dave tackled the plowing and resurfacing of a hockey rink annually, until both Justin and Alexa were out of the house and on their own. That first day, when Dave would pilot the four-wheeler out there with its blade attached, was a key signal that winter had firmly and officially started.

For the first few years, after we arrived in Woodbury from Austin, Tex. in 2002, the Jacobsen kids were young enough to hit the ice almost daily. And out front, other kids in other homes had their private rinks going as well. You could sit in our living room and hear the sound of skates, sticks, and pucks coming from all directions, often late into the night with portable lights blazing.

Having just moved to the Twin Cities from Texas, I was wide-eyed and appreciative of how Minnesotans embrace every season of the year. Growing up in St. Louis, winter was something we just tried to tolerate while we counted the days until spring returned, and it always seemed like a very long wait. In Minnesota, whether it’s pond hockey or ice fishing, winter is greeted with a smile and a rush to be “out in it” most of the time.

The single biggest email-generating blog installment from the early years had nothing to do with the pond, or the weather, or yet another airport. I’d been showing and writing about our fabulous cat Shasta from the early days and, as he aged and slowed down drastically, I made a point of including him even more. He was a truly wonderful guy, and I can still vividly recall the almost imperceptible sound of his padded paws coming down the  carpeted upper level hallway and into the room each night, when Shasta decided it was time to go to bed. You wouldn’t think you could detect that, but Barbara and I were both fully capable of hearing him walking toward the room, making the turn through the door, and a second later feeling him land on the bed after jumping up to join us.

When Shasta passed away, while I was on yet another airplane coming home from Norwalk, I wrote an ode to him in blog form. I lost track of the number of reader emails I received, when the total passed 250. I saved them all for a very long time.

We mourned for a good long while, and one night as I laid in bed I heard him coming down the hall. I was wide awake, and completely cognizant and realistic about his passing, but it sounded so real. And then I actually FELT him jump up on the bed. The bed shook, just like it did when he’d come join us. It was so real I had to raise my head and take a look, just to make sure he wasn’t actually there. He wasn’t, but maybe he was just for a few minutes, to say goodbye.

One of the hundreds of emails came from a guy named Buck, who wrote me for the first time after the Shasta blog. He told me he’d been reading since the first day, and how touched he was by my Shasta memories. He also said, “I’m a stage actor in New York” and I thought, “Sure you are. You and every other bartender in Manhattan.” It wasn’t too long afterward that Buck Hujabre landed a gig with the “Jersey Boys” touring company. Great friendships happen in so many unexpected ways.

After a few months had passed, it was time to think about allowing a new cat to adopt us, and the process started with an impromptu visit to the Woodbury Animal Shelter, as I was passing by. The very fact I pulled in told me I was ready, and I thought Barbara would be too. When I toured the cat area, looking into the various cages, I saw the two little fuzzy black brothers and fell in love. I took them both out and they jumped all over me, talking up a storm in their very vocal way. I had to get on a plane the next day, so I couldn’t take them home, but I talked to Barbara and said, “You absolutely have to go get those two cats. We need two, so they can keep each other company when we travel, and with them being brothers it will be even better. Please go get them. We must have them. They already adopted me!”

They made themselves at home right away, despite the “kitty colds” they brought with them from the shelter. Poor little Boofus was sneezing for days, and just as he started to get better Buster followed suit. They didn’t feel very well, but they bonded with us and are definitely bonded with each other.

They were also simply too adorable to ever ignore in the blog for more than one or two consecutive installments. I couldn’t help but document all the goofy and funny stuff they did, as well as the truly scary stuff like walking along the narrow bannister on the walkway above the living room or jumping over onto the window sill above the front doors.

They’ve been a huge part of this blog since the day they came home, and they will be for a good long while. They’re a little more sedate these days, sleeping in the sun or out on the porch, but at least a couple of times per day they become kittens again. The tails get fat, they bounce around sideways, and then they’re off, flying around the house at full speed before tackling each other and rolling on the floor.

They’re rarely bad, although fake plants attract them and eating those fake leaves makes for a few carpet clean-ups not too much later, but they remain so much like they’ve always been it’s amazing. Boofie has been a “Momma’s Boy” since the day he moved in, and he clings to Barbara incessantly. When she holds him, he can’t be still. He climbs up as high on her shoulder as he can get and rubs his nose and forehead on her nonstop. He also has a very different voice than Buster, and we can both tell who’s talking to us from across the house.

Buster is “Daddy’s boy” and he is the sweetest and most gentle feline soul I’ve ever met. He’s so sincere and so loving, and he loves to talk to me in a variety of ways. When he purrs and makes a noise that sounds like “Erfff” I know he’s at his happiest. He spends much of each day up on the top level of his kitty condo in the bedroom, and I make a point of stopping in there at least once an hour to say hello and give him some rubs. And all I have to do is get his brush out of the drawer and show it to him. He then heads straight to the living room floor and waits patiently for his brushings, flopping around like a fish on the dock so I can get him on all sides. They really are great boyz.

It’s already the height of summer here now, with all the trees full of brilliant green leaves while the yards need to be mowed weekly and the flowers on the porch need to be watered. When we lived in the old neighborhood, I would always stop and look around at the mid-point of each season, and marvel at how it was nearly impossible to envision what it was going to look like just a few months later. In July, surrounded by all this lush landscape, it’s inconceivable that we are mere months away from another winter, when the snow piles up along the side of the roads for months on end. In January, it’s just as inconceivable that it will melt and all of the white will be replaced by green. So I keep photos of the snow handy. And shoveling.

And then it will be February and time for Winter Carnival. There is no other frigidly-cold outdoor thing that is as much fun as Winter Carnival in downtown St. Paul. It was the first thing we fell in love with in Minnesota, since it was going on right outside our hotel on the first recruiting trip we made to come see the area and consider moving here from Austin.

We weren’t exactly sure what was going on, and we absolutely hadn’t yet bought the right type of apparel to stay outside for all of it, but the Torchlight Parade was way fun, and the campy atmosphere was brilliant. Hail the Vulc!

In later years, we didn’t always go to the Winter Carnival but I know we’ve been to it many more years than we haven’t. And we still root for the Vulcans to overthrow King Boreas, which allows summer to return. And we tour through Rice Park to see the ice sculptures and sit on the frozen royal throne.

And the people…  The single greatest thing about having written this blog for nearly 11 years is the fact I’ve met so many incredible people. Just regular folks who have become great friends. Interesting characters who added so much rich color to my life, like Kim The Lawyer, Crazy Jane, Scott The Pilot, Jim and Nancy Butler, Jon and Susan Cagle, and countless others. Plus my dearest best friend in the sport, Krista Wilkerson.

And the unique people who do neat things I can share vicariously, like Mike Hohler who produces the radio broadcasts for the San Francisco 49ers. He brought Neighbor Dave and Justin to the Metrodome one Sunday, to hold the parabolic microphones on the sidelines, and somehow neither one of them got run over by a wide receiver.

And Dennis Peek, a longtime music man from New Braunfels, Tex. down by Austin. I don’t even remember the first time we met, but we hit it off immediately and I get to pester him with all sorts of questions about music, musicians, and playing live. He always gives thoughtful answers. A good Texas boy if there ever was one.

And Nick Turner, who introduced himself to me on the final night in Pomona a few years ago. At the time, he was the drummer for a band called The Asphalt, and he ran over to me in the pits to say hello and thank me for the blog. He’s lately been playing drums for The Ataris and he’s on the Warped Tour now, as a sound tech. Very cool guy.

And the biggest rocker of all the musicians I’ve met, a big gregarious outgoing gentleman who came to the Brainerd race as a guest of CSK. We chatted for 45 minutes before I asked him what he did for a living and his response was, “I’m in a band.” Of course, I asked, “Oh, really? What’s the name of your band?” and he said “Bachman Turner Overdrive. I’m Fred Turner.” Well, you don’t say! Fred’s a fantastic guy.

And the aforementioned Mr. Hujabre. In case you’ve never known how to pronounce his last name, it’s sorta like “hu-ZHA-bear. Think Zsa Zsa Gabor and you’ll have the sound of it mastered.

We became email buddies immediately after he sent me the note about Shasta. Then, not long after that, when he’d joined the touring company, they came to Minneapolis and Buck left us tickets. After the show, we met him at the stage door and he gave us a quick tour around the backstage area, then we retired to a nearby bar for a couple of beers. Friends for life, ever since.

Buck and his wonderful wife Mary then lived with us when the tour came back through Minneapolis in 2011. They took over the whole lower level with son Gibson, who was just crawling at the time. While they were there, with us, Gibson took his first step. Now, Gibson and his little brother Hudson are growing so fast I can’t stand it. Great people. Absolutely world class. And it doesn’t hurt that Buck and I share a very warped sense of humor.

And let’s not forget that it was Buck who brought his cast-mate and buddy Nathan Scherich to the race in St. Louis, when “Jersey Boys” and NHRA were both “playing” in the Gateway City. Nathan made a habit of coming to the Englishtown race summer after summer, and he just wrapped up a long gig with the Broadway version of the show. He and his wife Allie have moved to Telluride, Colo. with their twin boys. The photos he shares of Telluride are breathtaking, and the boys couldn’t be any more adorable.

And athletes, both those I’ve met and those I’ve become friends with. Got to hang out with Justin Verlander for a day, a couple of years before he was both MVP and Cy Young Award winner in 2011. We had a nice time together, along with his mom, dad, and brother. Good guy, and a great pitcher.

And the guy who sat across the aisle from me and Neighbor Dave on a night flight back to MSP after the Denver race. At baggage claim, he spotted our embroidered shirts and he asked if we worked for a team. It was the summer of ’08, our last year with Del and the CSK team, and he was excited as all get-out to meet us and talk racing. He’d been at the race that day, too, with his dad. When it came time to ask him what he did for a living he said, “I play hockey” just as a Colorado Avalanche duffel bag slid down the carousel. He said, “I’m Jeff Finger” to which I replied, “Shoot man, I know who you are. I root against you at the Wild games!” We’ve been friends ever since.

And let’s never forget the night in Dallas when a large group of us dashed out of the track to make the drive up to the State Fair to see a certain band from Toronto. To stand in a backstage room and chat with Geddy Lee was surreal. I’m sure the guys remember it as vividly as I do, even the part where the ushers told us to leave our fifth-row seats because someone else had those tickets. I’m not sure how that screw up happened, but it livened up the evening even more!

Since we had entered from backstage, the real “owners” of the seats had the tickets that had been scanned. The usher’s level of concern for us was about a 1 on 1-10 scale, until we casually mentioned that we were at the show as guests of Geddy Lee as we demurely pointed out our backstage passes stuck to our shirts. We were quickly relocated to equally fine seats, one section over. All of us but Jeff Arend, that is. He got to stay in his original seat for the show. When it ended, and 15,000 people exited at once, how is it that he emerged from that sea of humanity and bumped right into us?

The same thing happened a few years later at Rush show on the “Clockwork Angels” tour, in Anaheim, as Jeff and his wife Windy were in a suite while Barb and I were down on the floor in front of the stage. As the Honda Center crowd poured out of the exits, the first people we saw were Jeff and Windy. Eerie isn’t it? Must be a Canadian thing, eh?

So many fabulous people, and so many priceless memories, all thanks to a little writing exercise called a blog. I wouldn’t trade a minute of it.

And my PR colleagues, over all these years. What a collection of wit, intelligence, and talent. Even you, Elon Werner. I stay in touch with so many of them, and can’t wait to see them this weekend. Even you, Elon Werner. Did I mention Elon Werner? He’s a PR guy for some guy named Force.

But the key to it all is this: None of this would’ve ever happened had I not been fortunate enough to be a manager and PR guy for Del Worsham and Tim Wilkerson. Being part of a team is what has driven me for most of my life, starting out as a baseball player, then running a few indoor soccer teams, and finally in the NHRA world with two fantastic organizations filled with great people. Talk about lucky!

Camaraderie is precious, and there’s none like it when you’re on a sports team. I’ve worked a few jobs outside of team sports, and yes it’s great when you and your coworkers band together and support each other as a team. But there’s something different and wonderful about being on an actual sports team, winning and losing with your teammates. Being mad when things go poorly, but celebrating like maniacs when those precious wins come along, there is truly nothing else like that.

And, I don’t think there’s anything in any other sport that’s as nerve-wracking and then totally jubilant as a win in the final round of a drag race. As the drivers stage their cars, you have no idea how it’s going to turn out but you know that in about four seconds you’ll be discovering the answer. When the win-light comes on in your lane, it’s a maximum release of joy and happiness all at once. It’s overwhelming. I never EVER got tired of it.

Then, after all the Winner’s Circle hoopla and all the photos, in all the different hats, it’s time to settle down and catch your breath, just so you can go out to dinner and bask in it. You soak it all in, you replay every round, you apparently enjoy the food but barely taste it through all the excitement.

In Seattle, when Team Wilk won that race 15 years in a row (OK, it was three, but who’s counting?) we headed to Black Angus to have a celebratory meal, with Neighbor Dave and I getting there first to get a large table set up. As the team entered the restaurant, I used my best radio voice to loudly proclaim, “Ladies and gentleman. Please welcome the Funny Car champion at this year’s Northwest Nationals…  TIM WILKERSON!!!”

The assembled diners all clapped and cheered. That was a fun moment, if by “fun” you mean it was priceless.

And then seeing the tape-delayed race come on the TV behind the bar, and having the pleasure of watching the surreal happen before your eyes as your boss and driver stares at himself being interviewed on the screen, after the win. Fortunately, we won again on TV. It sure would’ve been odd had we lost. The restaurant customers all clapped again. I think we made some new NHRA fans that night.

So…  Huge thanks to all of you have been reaching out via email and letting me know you’re still out there, following along. And thanks for reminding me of so many things that have made this blog so fun to write and create. Pond Cam, hockey rinks, great friends, and great neighbors.

It’s always been a privilege to write this. I never forget that, and I never take it for granted. It’s an even bigger honor to look back over all of it and condense the people, places, and things into one long rambling connection of dots I never expected to experience.

As I wrote earlier, talk about lucky! I’ve been extremely lucky. Extremely thankful, as well. And the stories will continue into the future, on many more Thursday Blog Days. Stick around!

I leave you with this, because why not?

See you all next week, if we can get Boofie out of that tube.

I’m off to Chicago tomorrow, to spend Saturday at the track with so many great folks. Can’t wait to see them all. Even you, Elon Werner!

Bob Wilber, at your service spinning yarns and telling tales.

My wife Barbara and I are both big hockey fans. Like, huge hockey fans. And not just the games, either (Go Minnesota Wild!) but also the talk shows and highlights. And, since many hockey players and executives are Canadian, we get a big kick out of one of the most standard lines you’ll ever hear from a Canadian-born coach or NHL Network analyst, with a perfect Canadian accent. When things haven’t been going well but are starting to turn around, for their team or one they’re analyzing, they’ll say “There’s PRO-gress in the organ-eye-zation.”

Any time we’re working on a project, whether at home or at work, and we’re finally starting to see the finish line, we both say “Pro-gress in the organ-eye-zation” and laugh.

Well, in terms of “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” and its long-running development, there’s been pro-gress since the first day I sat at my desk and started to write. But now, as June turns to July and I complete my sixth month of writing, it’s really heading toward the finish line and the biggest thing I have to keep in check is impatience. There’s a part of me that wants to strap into my office chair and work nonstop until I’m done. I’m getting that close, but that’s not the way to write. It’s not a marathon. It’s a series of short sprints.

Each day, when I’m writing a new chapter on Monday through Wednesday every week, I find four hours to be about the right amount of writing time. I can spend just as long fixing, editing, and tweaking things, but four hours of creativity is about right. When I write any longer than that, in one sitting, I start to get sloppy and see later that I have more “fixing” to do. After three days of that, I typically have around 20 pages done. Then, like today, it becomes Thursday and it’s Blog Day around here. On Friday, one more look and a few more tweaks, and then it’s off to Greg Halling for his input.

I finished the initial draft of Chapter 23 yesterday, and it focuses on my first job doing PR for professional teams on the NHRA circuit. That’s how close we’re getting. I wasn’t yet an independent PR rep at the time, I worked for a guy in New Jersey who represented a number of NHRA teams, but it gave me my first taste of writing press releases, pitching stories, and seeing my work appear in print, despite the fact we rode dinosaurs to work and sent out releases out via the Pony Express.

There would be a few additional detours in my career, as I consistently followed my heart and refused to stop and think, but the NHRA public-relations thing was imbedded in me, and would steer many of my dreams from that point forward. By the time Chapter 23 ends, I’m less than three years away from going to work for Del and Chuck Worsham. And I started this book writing about my earliest memories, when I was three years old. That’s a lot of ground to cover.

And while covering that ground, I’ve had to dig back into my memory banks to connect a lot of dots. Today is Throwback Thursday on social media, but my last six months have been one long TBT adventure. I sometimes blank out when it’s time to enter my PIN at the ATM, but I remember so many tiny details, spanning what’s now six decades of life, and it’s been a joyful thing to write all about them.

A few minutes ago, I posted this gem on Facebook. I was looking for a particular magazine to come up with a certain guy’s name (it’s research, and I do it every day because I don’t remember EVERYTHING) and when I reached into the back of yet another box full of stuff we moved with us to Minnesota, I found this photo.

I’m 99% sure the year is 1982. From left to right, we have Bob “Radar” Ricker, Lance McCord, and a very young version of me. I was a scout for the Blue Jays then, hence my apparel. We were back at the ballpark at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville for the annual baseball alumni game. We lost to the varsity, not surprisingly, and I’m pretty sure I went 0-for-4, but the fun was simply getting together with a bunch of former teammates and having a blast. There was also beer, after the game.

At this precise point, we were only three years beyond the last time we’d all lived together. Still so young, with so much ahead of us. So many experiences, good and bad, yet to encounter. And in just a few weeks, the three of us will be joined by another former Cougar and former roommate, James “Oscar” Noffke, here in the Twin Cities for our annual reunion. I can’t wait.

Keeping with the TBT theme, there’s this magnificent photograph. 1991 at Heartland Park Topeka for the AC Delco Heartland Nationals. I was the GM of the track, and I brought my parents over for the race. My mom took this photo of my father and me, behind the suite tower at the track. I am wearing a hat that is taller than anything any train conductor ever wore. And again, so young and so naive at the time.

Skip and Taffy had a great time, and the race was spectacular. We packed them in for four straight days, and I’m pretty sure we sent all of those fans home happy, knowing they’d seen a great event. I’m sure my dad was saying “Why do these cars have to be so loud?” in the photograph.

That year at Heartland Park changed everything. It was my first experience with racing of any sort, including NHRA, and before the summer was over I was convinced that I wanted to work for an NHRA team, doing marketing and PR. The funny thing was, I had never done any public or media relations to that point in my life. I think I saw myself as more of a marketing genius, but the PR thing ended up being the job I did best.

It took me a few years to make that dream of being part of a professional NHRA team a reality, but I never lost sight of it and I kept trying until I made it happen. I also went broke a few times, making the effort.

Here at the ranch, in Minnesota, we continue to make that pro-gress in our organ-eye-zation. Although we still need a second wine rack, we do have all the bottles safely tucked away and that allowed me to finish the “racing wall” in the lower level.

I have enough racing photos to fill a house of almost any size, but I made the conscious decision to follow a more minimalist formula. Instead of dozens of shots from various years, various cars, and various wins, I go with four frames that mean the most and cover my two-decade career. On the far left, a series of shots from the 2005 US Nationals and Skoal Showdown, when Del Worsham and all of us on the CSK team enjoyed our “double-up” win and the big oversized checks that came with it all. (Yes, as always, you can click on the photos to enlarge them).

In the middle is the single largest photograph I own, of Del doing his burnout in Denver circa 2002. It’s a great shot, but it has far more meaning than any standard burnout pic. In 2002, the year this was taken, Del won the race in Denver. But, I wasn’t there. It was the first race I’d missed since I joined the Worshams in 1997, and it was only because my father passed away just a day before I was supposed to get on a plane and leave.

In the photo, you can see the decal Del put on his side windows. It says “In Memory… Del Wilber”

The framed photos on the right are from my Team Wilk years. A great victory collage from Seattle, and Whit Bazemore’s unbelievably great photo of the LRS car lighting up the night.

I sent a FAX to the team hotel that Sunday morning after my father passed away, explicitly explaining my thoughts to my teammates. The FAX said “KICK ASS!” in large bold letters. The guys taped it up inside the transporter.

When they won, they called me from the Winner’s Circle.  More than a couple of the guys who got on the phone were crying. 100% of the people on my phone were doing the same. It was one of the more emotional wins of my NHRA career, and in such a sad but heartfelt way.

And that’s why I risked everything, on numerous occasions, to be a team PR rep. I wanted to be a part of a team. Of a family. I grew up in baseball, never dreaming of ever being in racing in general, or drag racing in specific. I never thought of it as a career path until I was hired at Heartland Park. And that’s when I knew I wanted to be on a team. I needed to be on a team.

I’m learning a lot about myself writing this book. As I piece it all together and go back over so many memories, so many things crystallize and become abundantly clear. Needing to be on a team is just one of them. And it needed to be a real team. A sports team. I’d worked a number of great jobs before I got to Topeka, and I always considered the people I worked with to be a team, but that wasn’t precisely what I craved. Winning and losing, as a sports team, is unique. There’s nothing like it.

Between baseball, indoor soccer, and drag racing I’ve been incredibly fortunate to be on a some phenomenal teams, and that’s not simply a case of winning. It’s the chemistry and the camaraderie. It’s winning AND losing. Having each others’ backs, supporting each other, pulling for each other. And when you do win… It’s incredible.

See you next week before I head to Joliet to see some former teammates.

Bob Wilber, at your service on Throwback Thursday.

There’s still one week left in the month of June, but by all counts it’s already been a good month in my life. For a lot of reasons. It’s been incredibly busy, frustrating at times, deliriously happy at others, and a good first taste of this new lifestyle we’ve adopted, wherein we live at “home” in Minnesota but Barbara maintains her executive position in Spokane. And it’s not over yet. It’s been…

A good month for “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts”…

June has been an enormous challenge for me, when it comes to “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts.” The cross-country move threw my routine out the window, under the bus, in the trash, and down the drain. Twice, during this last month, I’ve been forced to take entire weeks off because of that pesky thing called real life, but in the end it hasn’t really hurt my productivity. Surprisingly, the forced time off has made me more productive when I am allowed to have a week like this one; writing Monday through Wednesday, tackling this blog on Thursday, and then polishing, on Friday, what I’d written earlier in the week.

Chapter 22 is now in the can, and I’m not sure that would’ve happened in the same manner as it did had I not been forced to deal with things around the new house. Since January, I’ve had my routine down every week and found myself getting a little “writing tired” from time to time. Not burned out, just weary of doing the same thing each week. I’d often need to do mindless things on Monday mornings just to get my brain engaged.

When this Monday morning arrived, I was incredibly eager to get going but I had not one word written. That’s kind of a neat thing. I have the advantage of knowing what the subject matter is going to be for each chapter, because it is my life’s story in chronological order, but I rarely have a clue what the actual words are going to be. This week, actually starting last Sunday, whole sentences and descriptions were popping into my head and bouncing around like ping-pong balls. When I started on Monday, the words were ready to go. It was just a matter of getting them on the cyber page.

This chapter did present its own challenges in terms of ups and downs. The focus is 1991, the year I became the general manager at Heartland Park Topeka. I was coming off a very odd and strangely disappointing 1990, and ’91 gave me the chance to start fresh in a segment of the sports world I was almost completely unfamiliar with. Basically, at that time, you could say the vast majority of my experience in motorsports was watching the Indy 500 every Memorial Day. That was about it. I knew the names “Big Daddy” and Shirley and “The Snake” from Wide World of Sports, but frankly names like John Force, Mike Dunn, Joe Amato, and Gary Ormsby might have only been vaguely recognized. I knew Kenny Bernstein only because I’d been an attendee at the biggest sports-marketing conference in the country, a few years earlier in Chicago. Kenny was the keynote speaker at the large banquet lunch one day. I remember thinking it was neat to hear a guy speaking about sports sponsorships, but I wasn’t totally sure about what the whole world of drag racing was about. I thought he was well spoken, though!

So, in 1991 my life and my world changed. I was directly involved in a wide variety of motorsports at Heartland Park, from sports cars, stock cars, and motorcycles on the road course, to drag races on the strip ranging from local bracket cars to a Super Chevy Show, and from an NHRA Division-5 points meet to our biggest event of the year, the NHRA AC Delco Heartland Nationals in late September. It was all eye-opening, and it was a lot of work.

Fortunately, I had a terrific staff to work with. They all were dedicated and talented (that’s a good combination) and despite the fact we always seemed to have five different “most important things” on our plates at all times, we juggled those flaming plates to make every event run smoothly, with sponsorship, on time. They weren’t all successful, in terms of ticket sales, but we made it a priority to analyze why some of them failed to attract a crowd so that we could make adjustments in the future. If you hold a motorcycle race on the road course and barely sell 2,000 tickets, you don’t just hold it again the next year and hope it gets better. You have to figure out why. It was, and this is an understatement, a huge learning experience for me. It changed my life.

The key thing I discovered in Topeka was that NHRA events stood out clearly to me as the best possible piece of the motorsports pie. To be honest, we didn’t have a NASCAR Cup race and we didn’t host the Indy Cars, but we did have a stock car race with some NASCAR stars in it and we had the IMSA prototype Grand Prix race when IMSA was a big deal. Nothing, though, compared to the excitement, thrills, and packed grandstands of the NHRA national event. Compared to everything else we did, no matter how well and how hard we promoted the other events, the NHRA national event was in a different orbit. And starting that year, in January of 1991, I had never seen a drag race.

I wrote about how much of my staff accompanied me to Gainesville in March, to spend a few days at the Gatornationals shadowing the Gainesville Raceway staff to learn by osmosis. It was an eye-opening, lung-clearing, chest-pounding few days. If 1991 changed my life, the Gatornationals were a huge part of that. Here’s a snippet…

—————

When we arrived, sportsman cars were on the track doing their wheelstands and making what I thought was a lot of noise. I also thought they were going very fast. I had no clue.

I’d been warned about those wacky Top Fuel Dragsters and Funny Cars, and had seen them on Wide World of Sports, but no verbal warning would be sufficient when it came to preparing me for what I was about to see, hear, smell, and feel. The first time I watched a Nitro Funny Car warm up, I thought I was either in heaven or hell. The fumes were noxious, and bitter, and nearly asphyxiating. But, man oh man, they were cool!

When I watched the first Top Fuel car launch, from a solid 50 yards away, I was certain I could take the noise. With fingers planted firmly in my ears, it was still impossibly loud. But more shocking was the concussion that hit me in the chest and vibrated every ounce of me. It was pure sensory overload, and I was completely and utterly addicted. It was clear to me, in just one day, that NHRA Drag Racing was beyond special. It was a thing and an experience unto itself, and nothing in the racing domain could possibly compare to it. That was an assumption I made with very little racing experience. It’s one I’ve maintained and affirmed to this day.

—————

That trip to Gainesville was taken strictly as an observer. I kept my eyes open and my ears plugged, and I also asked a lot of questions. Six months later, when the NHRA tour came to my track, in the open plains of Kansas, it was personal. And it was incredible. I knew, before our national event was over, that NHRA was the place for me and that I had to find a way to be more involved at the team level. It wouldn’t be easy, and being broke trying to make it happen would be something I’d have to deal with, but I had the passion and the will to succeed. I just needed the opportunity and the time.

It was great fun to write about that tumultuous year. And yet there’s still so much more to go. As I said on Facebook yesterday, if this book were a drag race, I think we’re past the 660-foot timer now. That’s how far we’ve come. The finish line is in sight, and I’m putting my heart into the work to make the win-lights come on.

So the writing is rocking, and the process remains fascinating. To start a week with a time period in mind, but with little idea how the words are going to string together, and then to re-read it all on Friday, making a few punch-up changes, before putting it to bed and sending it off to Greg Halling, is magic.

And more about this month.

A good month for murder…

A few years back, my nephew Del Quentin Wilber took his career from successful to enormous, when he wrote and published the best-selling book “Rawhide Down” about the attempted assassination of President Reagan. This month, just within the last few days, he’s taken the next impressive step.

“A Good Month For Murder” landed on my porch, from Amazon, just a couple of days ago. I’m eager to open it and start reading, but I need to hold off until the weekend. It’s hard to do that.

To write the book, Del (who my siblings and I still call Del Three, because he is Del Wilber III) immersed and imbedded himself within the homicide unit in Prince George’s County, which borders Washington, D.C. on the Maryland side. It was a brutal stretch of violent times, and he was there every step of the way. His writing style is perfect for this sort of book, just like it was perfect for “Rawhide Down.”

He writes precisely, and eloquently, but he smartly avoids flowery hyperbole. He draws you into the drama and makes you feel like you’re there. When you read his words, the physical book in your hands disappears, as the words travel straight into your cerebral cortex and create movie scenes in your mind. I can’t wait to dive into this book, and I know I’ll have a hard time putting it down.

The New York Times has reviewed it, and Del had some frustrated fun with that. The reviewer gave him high marks, for the most part, but complained about a couple of things. I think that’s because any NYT reviewer feels they have to criticize to earn a living, but to complain about the title was sort of ridiculous. The title is a direct quote from one of the detectives, reflecting the gritty detachment they need to have in order to do such a difficult and horrifying job. The reviewer also mentioned that the book is strictly a recounting of the author’s time with the homicide unit, as if it would’ve been a whole lot better if Del had veered off into fiction and fantasy. Silly reviewer. And hey, it’s a heck of a lot better to have a few nit-picks in your New York Times review than to be ignored by the paper. I can guarantee, to a 99.99% degree of certainty, that “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” will not garner a review in the New York Times.

As you can see here, the rest of the reviews have been fantastic. (As always, you can click on the image to enlarge it).

Proud of him? Oh my gosh, off the charts proud. This will embarrass the hell out of him, but I still see him as “Little Del” shooting hoops in the driveway at the Wilber home in Kirkwood, Mo. Or playing catch in the backyard of his family’s home, in McLean, Va. I watched as he went off to Northwestern to play some college baseball and pursue his journalism degree. I watched him land a job at the Baltimore Sun, and win accolades for his work. Then the Washington Post. And Bloomberg. And “Rawhide Down” which put him on the national map. To walk into a bookstore at the Las Vegas airport and see my own nephew’s book at eye-level, in the “Best Sellers” rack, well that would make anyone proud. His folks are amazing. His sister Lindsay is brilliant and wonderful. And Del Three is really something.

A good month for being home…

We’re continuing to juggle jobs, book writing, and settling (we’re settlers, son) and we’re also continuing to make additional headway. That’s a good thing, and it’s good to be home.

The lower level is about 80% complete, though I’ll admit that 19% of the remaining 20% is the one guest bedroom we haven’t tackled in the least. It remains a scary pile of bedding, pillows, knick-knacks (I had to look up how you spell that), and other “stuff” and it looks like a small version of Mount Everest on the unmade bed. Hey, we have to have additional challenges, and we’ll get to it.

Despite the original plan to leave all the wine on the floor until we decided what to do about racks for the wine room, I hit the point of no return over the weekend and simply had to do something. Over the course of a couple of sweaty hours, I filled our existing rack and moved much of the rest of it out of the way. Today, or maybe tonight, I’ll be storing the rest of the wine in the room, out of sight, and the final wall in the lower level will be adorned with framed art. It’s the racing wall, so I’m eager to get after it.

I do have some adjustments to make with a couple of the bigger pieces in the portion of the lower level that acts as my office, but that’s just a matter of taking them down, measuring a new height, and putting them back up. One of them is the large frame that holds my father’s old Twins jersey, and it’s a bear to hoist and hang by myself, so we’ll pick a time when we can both be involved. It’s not a priority. Getting the racing wall hung is an absolute priority.

Up here, we have a few of our original oil and multi-media pieces on the wall, including the huge piece we call “the pears” on the landing going down to the lower level. We’ve always had “the pears” in our formal dining room, but this house doesn’t have an area for formal dining, and we still have plans to add a hutch to the wall by the table, so we felt “the pears” needed a new home. This way, when guests enter our very beige house through the front door, the giant splash of color will grab their attention.  I think it looks fabulous there.

And it’s funny how perspective changes with phone pics. This thing is pretty massive, but it looks kind of little in the photo. It’s actually big enough to be so heavy it’s hard to lift, and it needs reinforced triple-nail hooks to hold it up!

A good month to be boyz…

As much as it’s great for us to be home, there’s no denying it’s also a great for Boofus and Buster. They haven’t completely settled in, and are still a little wary of new things, but they’ve managed to scope out and claim their new favorite spots in this house.

We put one of their kitty condos in our bedroom, right next to the window, and we thought we were just putting it there temporarily while we got the house organized. Silly us. Buster loves sleeping the afternoon away up on the top perch, keeping an eye on the birds outside the window while he gets his cat-naps in. There’s no moving it now.

Boofus absolutely loves being out on the porch. I’m pretty sure Boofie would live out there if we’d bring him food and a litter box. Buster likes it too, and will spend hours out there with his brother, but he’s a bit more “husky” than Boofie and if it gets up over 80 degrees he gets hot and comes back in. Little Boofie just sits in the condo by the corner or stretches out on his white blanket atop the glider. Sometimes he just sits on the floor behind the rocking chair, because there are trees right outside the porch and the birdies flitter around the branches all afternoon. It’s like a cat version of a video arcade.

A good month to be a blog writer…

10 and a half years. That’s how long I wrote my blog on NHRA.com, and that’s how long it took to develop and attract a huge and loyal readership base. That’s how long I had the pleasure of seeing so many people at the races, who I never would’ve met had it not been for that blog, and Pond Cam, and Shasta the cat, and The Boyz, and travel stories, track stories, and complete and utter nonsense stories.

When I wrapped up my career last year, Phil Burgess was enormously kind enough to allow me to continue writing that blog until the middle of December, and as part of that he allowed me to promote this new “Bob’s Blog” in an effort to spread the word to my loyal NHRA readers, and help all of you migrate over here.

Many of you have. If you haven’t, you won’t be reading this sentence so I guess it’s not worth it to write “come on over and join the new blog party.” But it’s great to get emails and Facebook messages from so many people who are out there, still following this thing. I get surprises every single week, when I’ll hear from someone I don’t know, or I haven’t heard from in ages, and they tell me they’re still reading every week.

And the Thursday Blog Day routine has helped a lot in that regard. I had no real “plan” for how I wrote my NHRA blog. I just wrote whenever I had time or whenever I had the subject matter to put out there, and mostly all of my readers would just check the blog page to look for updates. Now, barring unforeseen circumstances, you know where to find these words every Thursday.

There’s always room for more at this table, though! If you read this, and like it, and look forward to Thursday Blog Day, please feel free to spread the word to your friends and neighbors. And don’t be afraid to “Like” this installment by clicking on the button at the top. Social media is a great way to spread the word, as well. Feel free to tweet, post, or Facebook. The more readers the merrier!

Since this is a private family site, I don’t make a penny writing this blog and you don’t have to wade through weird ads to read it. It’s just for fun. And great fun it is.

See you next week!

Bob Wilber, at your service during a good month for a lot of things.

Currently, as I write this, the NHRA Mello Yello tour is in the midst of a very real summer grind. Six races in seven weeks are at the heart of it, but the bigger summer picture shows the classic crunch. The teams get a breather on either side of Joliet, then it’s off to the Western Swing for three straight, heading from the mountains to Wine Country, then up through the redwoods to Puget Sound. Blink when that’s over, and you’ll miss Brainerd. After Brainerd, it will be time for Indy.

Seriously, didn’t the season just start? It never fails to go this way, where Pomona kicks things off and the full season seems like such a long and insurmountable adventure, but before you can even conceive of it races are piling up and months are flying by like calendar pages in an old black & white movie. If that last reference makes no sense to you, it means you’re too young to remember that old cinematic trick to represent the passing of time.

So right now, everyone is gathering in Bristol, at Thunder Valley. It was always one of my favorite stops and tracks, although there was usually a price to pay. Flying into Tri-Cities Airport requires connections, from MSP, and it requires a larger hit to your American Express bill. Small airports don’t generate the passenger count or competition that might keep costs down, but there’s not much in terms of options when going to Bristol. I’ve used Asheville and Greenville-Spartanburg in the past, but they’re generally not much cheaper and then you have the drive to make after you land. One time, and one time only, I flew into Nashville because it saved me $100. The long drive through a tornado, on the way back, was enough to dissuade me from doing it again.

The hotel situation was never ideal in Bristol either, although we finally did discover a pretty nice place north of the track after staying in Johnson City for so many years. Still, it’s one of those markets where the rates on race weekends bear little resemblance to what they charge on a typical day when nothing big is going on. I can’t imagine what they charge when the circle-track guys come to town.

People often ask me what my favorite tracks are on the NHRA tour, and the usual answer includes Pomona, Gainesville, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Sonoma, Bristol, and a few others. But, if you factor in the overall difficulty of travel and cost, a bunch of those would fall off the list. Combine a long drive from the nearest airport with extraordinarily inflated hotel rates for lousy rooms, and notoriously horrible TSA lines when you’re flying back out, and it can ruin the experience when you do it for 20 years. Or, as I would also say, “If you fly me to Bristol (or insert other town) on your private jet, then helicopter me into the track and have a beautiful motorhome all set up and waiting for me there, that would be really great.” Surprisingly, no one ever took me up on that. Hard to believe, I know. I love Thunder Valley, but I never much enjoyed getting there.

So, here’s this year’s most popular question. Whenever I’m at a gathering of friends and neighbors, people ask, “Do you miss it?” That’s a really good and totally understandable thing to ask. I just don’t have a neat and tidy answer for it.

Do I miss the people? Yes, absolutely. Do I miss the camaraderie, with PR colleagues and teammates? No doubt about it. Do I miss winning races? Oh, you bet! Do I miss the smell of Nitro in the morning? Oh yeah, and I think it becomes a bit addictive after a couple of decades. Do I miss getting to the races, standing in lines at airports, driving rental cars, and staying in so many hotels? I gotta be honest. I don’t miss that at all.

When we instituted the cost-cutting move of having me work from home when LRS didn’t host hospitality, it was very weird at the beginning. Then, a few races into that, I was talking on the phone with Elon Werner and I said, “You know what? It’s weird not being there, but on Sunday we got eliminated in the first round and I looked around and realized I was home. That was pretty good, actually.”

And here’s a piece of trivia based on that prior paragraph. I have, indeed, been to Epping for a race. It was, however, an IHRA race back in  1992 or ’93. Kind of hard for me to remember the specific year. But, LRS never did hospitality there so I have not been back for any of the NHRA events in Epping. I find that kind of funny in a peculiar sort of way.

I still talk with Krista Wilkerson on a weekly basis (we just chatted yesterday, as a matter of true fact.) I text Tim during the races. I talk with Elon and share emails or social-media posts with many of my former PR colleagues. And, I join the rest of you watching on FS1 where NHRA’s ratings and viewer numbers are astoundingly great. All of that keeps me connected, and the Wally trophies remind me of the good times. Every now and then, though, when I look at my Delta page and see that I “only” have about 20,000 miles in the bank this year, I get that pang of “Oh no! I won’t even make Platinum, much less Diamond. What am I going to do?”

I’m going to not worry about it. That’s what I’m going to do. It was great being Diamond. There are a lot of perks that come with that status. But the price you pay in terms of wear and tear on your body and mind is a stiff cost indeed. To be Diamond Elite, your life needs to be overtaken by the travel. I knew I was over it last year, and I’m 100% sure I was right to take this year and just be a stay-at-home writer. It was what I needed to do.

Of course, yesterday I booked my flight to Joliet, flying into and out of that charming little no-stress airport named O’Hare (sarcasm alert), so I do have that on the horizon. And I booked a room for two nights at Madden’s Resort for the Brainerd race. And I might go to Indy. And I definitely will be going to St. Louis. And Vegas. And maybe Pomona. I just need to get the book finished first.

To that end, I now have 21 chapters done and I’m working on Chapter 22 this week. It’s a fairly monumental moment in the book, because this is the chapter in which I take the job as general manager at Heartland Park. My first foray into the racing world. It all speeds up from here! That’s a literal statement and a pun.

Most of the book, so far, has been upbeat and fun, because that’s the way I try to live my life and I’ve been fortunate enough to do that. There are a couple of chapters, however, that simply have to deal with some bad times, or some sad times, or some confusing times, and I try to deal with those stories honestly. I do, however, try to walk a fine line between dragging the reader through too much muck and glossing over it far too much. I just try to be honest. Sometimes that involves telling important life lessons learned through interaction with people I didn’t get along with.

I think one of the things I’ve learned about myself, through this writing process, has been the realization that I have rarely been able, and I’ve rarely been willing, to just put my head down and work when I’m around people who are miserable, mean, or disrespectful. I’ve been flat broke (and deeply in debt) a number of times because I’ve chosen to walk away from situations like that, without taking the time to set up my next move. But each time, I chose to believe there was something better for me, even if I didn’t know what it was. I just trusted myself to find the next answer.

With all that in mind, I’ve made the decision to not share a snippet from Chapter 21. It’s a chapter that needs to stand on its own, and any snippet would be doing it a disservice by removing the overall context. I’ll make it up to you in chapters to follow.

So now, it’s time to write more about being home.

Last weekend, we attended a marvelous party in the old neighborhood, hosted by Mary Beth and Joe Gillis. It was a backyard party, with a fantastic performer who sang and played the guitar, on a perfect summer evening. It couldn’t have been better. But the best part of it was that we simply got the invite and we went. No airplanes, no travel, no trying to coordinate schedules or find someone to look in on the boyz. We just got in the car and drove over there. And we were surrounded by wonderful friends, just like we were the weekend prior when we attended the graduation party at the Blake’s house. It’s very good to be home again.

And, it’s good to be in a “home” again. Barbara had to spend this week out in Liberty Lake, so each day I’ve been trying to tackle one or two things in order to make this house feel like our home. I’m finally getting there.

I’m not doing much in terms of artwork on the walls in the main living space, on the upper level, because I need Barbara’s vision and input on that. But, since the main room in the lower level is mostly my new domain, I’ve worked hard down there. We still haven’t decided about racks for the wine room, though, so I’ve held off on putting any of the bottles away in case we decide to put in all new racks. That means those bottles and cases are still on the floor down there, in front of the big wall where my racing pictures will go. Those frames may need to wait until the bottles are moved, before they find their permanent spots on the wall.

The key to getting started down there was the installation of the new home theater. That happened this week.

Late last week, a new curvy console was delivered. It holds the sound system, the cable box, and our favorite DVDs. The television got mounted to the wall right above it.

We made the conscious decision to get what we wanted, without fretting too much over price. I said “too much” not “at all”. I’m sure you can easily spend $10,000 on a TV and surround-sound system in a heartbeat, if money is no object. I suspect it wouldn’t be that hard to spend twice that, actually. We wanted something nice, something very good, and something that’s on the cutting edge of technology. But, yes, there had to be some sort of limit on the cost. We upgraded our surround system with a new receiver and some ceiling-mounted rear speakers, and we went with a 65-inch LG television with an OLED screen. It seemed like all the TVs at the store were great, but when you’d watch a normal LED screen next to the OLED one, the difference was startling. It’s the finest television I’ve ever had the privilege to watch.

Once everything was installed, I had my parameters in place to start decorating. I decided to do groupings of frames in different parts of the room, as well. Near my desk, in that separated part of the room, it’s all baseball and all my dad. I like having his old Twins jersey right over my shoulder, looking down on me at my desk. His DNA is on that jersey. It feels like he’s there.

Around the TV, it’s entertainment. My autographed “Jersey Boys” poster, our Chuck Jones animation art, and my autographed Rush lithograph of the “Power Windows” album cover. In front of all that, our white leather furniture that dates all the way back to when we lived in Austin. It’s just a love seat and a comfy chair, and it was in our sunroom at the old Woodbury house. We made a point to sit out there on Sunday mornings, reading the St. Paul Pioneer-Press over coffee. We didn’t take it to Liberty Lake, though. We left it here in storage knowing we’d be back.

The reason it’s acting as our interim seating for the theater is because we haven’t totally decided on what theater seats we want. We found some that are spectacular, but they’re incredibly expensive and they’re custom made in Norway. It takes four months to get them, and then there’s that whole pesky problem of even conceiving of spending more (a lot more) on the seats than we did on the TV. The old white leather stuff will just have to do for a while.

On the wall to the right of that, it’s all music. Another autographed Rush lithograph is surrounded by our five framed autographed album covers, ranging from Stevie Ray Vaughn, to Bruce Springsteen, Genesis, Queen, and (duh) Rush.

And last night, to christen the new entertainment system, the first Blu-Ray DVD I cranked up was the “Clockwork Angels” concert, by my favorite band. I didn’t get to see their final tour, last year, so the Clockwork Angels show was my farewell concert, and it was a fabulous way to go out. That was the show we flew down to Orange County to see at the Honda Center in Anaheim. Jeff and Windy Arend were there, as well, although we had floor seats while they were in a suite. Somehow, as 12,000 people exited the building together at the same time, after the show ended, we ran into them outside and Jeff excitedly shouted “Best Rush concert EVER!” I agreed. While the band is still mostly mum on ever playing live again, I suspect there’s a chance they might do a festival or a stand-alone show at some point. I’m just not banking on that, and if Clockwork Angels was my last slice of Rush onstage, it was a fantastic slice.

There’s still so much to do here, but it’s feeling incrementally more like home with each passing day. Both of the spare bedrooms downstairs are still a mess, though, with stuff just piled up wherever we could put it. The whole wine room issue needs to be settled. And next week our master bedroom will enter the world of clutter in a massive way. We’re having our custom closet installed in a couple of weeks, but before that happens the installers will come out and take away the white wire racks we currently have, then they’ll spackle all the holes that will be left behind. We’ll need to repaint in there before the new stuff arrives, and we’ll need to go pick up some temporary racks the company will loan us, to have something to hang at least a portion of our clothes on. We’re a long way from high-fiving each other when we know we’re done getting settled here.

This afternoon and tomorrow, I’ll be back to work on Chapter 22 with tales of my first drag race and all the things we did at Heartland Park. Some of it was great, some of it was weather-plagued. All of it got me started on the path that led to the last 20 years. It’s worth telling.

I’ll see you next week, for another Thursday Blog Day.

Bob Wilber, at your service hanging photos…

As a couple, Barbara and I have moved a bunch. Before we got married in 1997, I moved from Indianapolis to her home, in Chapel Hill, N.C., then after about six months there, IBM transferred her to Austin, Tex. We loved both places, although Austin officially did make it almost impossible for me to find any Mexican food that meets the Tex-Mex standards I became accustomed to in that fine city. After four years in Austin, we moved to Woodbury and our beautiful 3-level home on the pond. After 10 years there, we were off to Liberty Lake for what we figured would be two years. It ended up being four.

While we were in Liberty Lake we pulled the trigger on this new place in Woodbury, for two reasons. First off, the housing market in the Twin Cities was starting to take off and we knew we’d be mad if we came back here in the future and had to pay $100,000 more than what it was listed for when we initially saw it. Secondly, sometimes we need an anchor. Talking about moving back was one thing. We’re really good at talking about doing things. We’re like total experts at that. Making sure we follow through on the discussions is a completely different thing. When our agent told us about this place, and we looked at it during a weekend trip back, we figured we should buy it. We liked it, it would further downsize us, and it was our anchor. At some point, we’d HAVE to move back here.

Add in the fact that individually, before we got married, Barb and I had lived all over the country in domiciles ranging from small apartments to luxury houses, and you can understand that we’re quite familiar with the process of moving. Not much about it is fun, until you’re finally all settled and you can look around and smile.

On Tuesday, the movers arrived here (finally) but all they did was unload. In all my moves, I’ve never had that happen. They’ve always unloaded and unpacked on the same day, and we’ve had much bigger homes than this place. These guys, though, just brought in all the boxes and other goods, then said goodbye. One of them came back yesterday, along with two different guys, to unpack us. Very strange, and what a drawn-out process. For more than 24 hours, the house was barely livable.

And yes, we do pay to have our stuff unpacked. We haven’t always done that, but we’re so over the stress of moving we feel it’s worth it. Plus, and it’s a big plus, they cart away the empty boxes and packing paper. There’s plenty of value in that. And there’s value in putting the responsibility on them to unpack everything without the sound of shattered glass. If we unpacked, that would be on us.

So, as they do, the unpackers (the theoretical football team that is the opposite of the team in Green Bay) simply emptied every box. All they do is put the items on open counters, and when the counters are full they shift to putting things on tables and the floor. It once again raised the question, “Why in the world do we still own so much of this stuff?”

It’s a tough question to answer. A lot of our things are objects we get important use from on a regular basis. That’s a no-brainer. But then we’d get to the bottom of some boxes and find the most bizarre things, many of which I don’t recall ever seeing before. Exactly how many little prongs for holding ears of corn does one household need?

And this is Phase 3 of our major ongoing downsize effort! I think one thing that worked against us was that the Liberty Lake house was much smaller than our previous Woodbury home, but it had the most storage space of any house I’ve ever seen, and it didn’t even have any space in the utility room! Instead, it had cabinets everywhere, including one whole lower-level hallway that was nothing but cabinets, uppers and lowers. So… We never got rid of much while we were there, and a great deal of it was just put into cabinets when we arrived in 2012 and then not seen again until we left in 2016. And now a lot of it is here.

When the guys left yesterday, we looked around and it wasn’t just “almost overwhelming.” It was truly overwhelming. It was a “Where do we even start?” sort of feeling. And we were hungry. And it was 6:30 p.m. We tackled a few kitchen cabinets just to clear some space, and then we concentrated on the essentials. Unbury the bed. Clear the bathroom counter. Make sure the hot tub is good. Just the essentials. You know, the important stuff.

Today, we’ve been going at it nonstop since right after the Comcast guy was here from 8:00 to 10:00 this morning. We’re upgrading to their new smart boxes and remotes, and he wired the lower level for the home theater, which gets installed next Tuesday. Plus, and this was big, he upgraded us to the newest and best Wi-Fi system. Our old router was officially classified EOL by Comcast. That would stand for End Of Life. It could barely get a signal to the lower level and it was SLOOOOOW. Now we’re firing on all cylinders, although we hiked the front end a little and it was hard to steer. (Wow, cool little drag racing digression there, but she started to rattle and I pedaled her real quick and she hooked back up and trucked right on down through there. She was haulin’…)

Barb has a gene that allows her to see 10 cubic feet of stuff, and put it in 5 cubic feet of space. I do not have that gene. So, the routine has been for me to put stuff in cabinets and then once we feel like we’re making good progress she takes a look and makes it all fit, plus more. Whenever I think the dishwasher is fully packed, she can reorganize it so that six more plates, two bowls, and five glasses can be added.

The fact I’m sitting at our dinner table, and Barb is on a conference call in the room formerly known as Bob’s Office, means we’re making some headway thanks to her superpowers. But, you should see the lower level, where the theater and my office are going to go. I can’t even bear to show you what it looks like. First of all, there are about 1,000 bottles of wine on the floor, waiting to be organized in the wine room. Secondly, there are roughly 50 framed photos leaning against the wall, ranging from baseball stuff and a lot of my dad’s memorabilia, to dozens of racing photos featuring the CSK team and the LRS team.

When you haven’t won much, and you win a race, you collect everything. Jackets, Wally trophies, and many Winner’s Circle photos. Back in the early CSK era, I got it all every time and framed a lot of it. And now I still have it. The jackets and Wally trophies are collectible by a lot of people, and frankly they raised a lot of money for me as rewards on the Kickstarter campaign for my book. 13 people pledged $500 or more to get a Wally, and nearly as many pledged half that to get a jacket. Despite the fact the jacket had my name embroidered on it. The Winner’s Circle or starting-line photos, although they are nicely custom-framed, really only mean something to me and the other people in the photos. So I keep them. And they take up space. Now I’ve got them all stacked against the wall in the lower level.

My goal for tomorrow is to go through all of them and pick the framed photos I want to display. Then I’ll find a place to store the rest. The utility room here is quite big, and I put in heavy shelves to make it more efficient, so “shelves, meet framed photos” is likely the plan.

This house also has a nice screened porch, and Boofus and Buster would probably live, eat, and sleep out there if we let them. It’s connected by a sliding door though, so to let them hang out on the porch we have to leave the slider open a bit. That’s a fun way to air-condition the great outdoors on a hot and humid day like today. They’re inside and don’t seem to mind.

The house is what’s called a detached townhome, like the Liberty Lake house also was. It’s a stand-alone building, with a real “cottage” look and feel to it, but the Home Owners’ Association hires crews to cut the grass, trim the bushes, and scrape the snow during the winter. They also pay to have the sprinklers fired up in the spring and blown-out in the fall. It’s worth the monthly dues. Plus, the entire subdivision has a very strong HOA, so the look and upkeep of the development are excellent.

And ah yes, the hot tub. Boy did we miss having a hot tub out in Liberty Lake. We had an incredible steam room there, but there’s nothing like a hot tub and we were spoiled by the one we had overlooking the pond at the old house. Now, every night if we want to, we can flip the lid and relax in privacy. The tub is tucked under the screened porch, facing out toward the trees in the back yard. It’s basically awesome.

And here’s my next mission. We’re getting a new surround-sound receiver for the home theater, to bring us up-to-date with current technology. That’s great, and the theater is going to be incredible, but at the same time I’m planning a concurrent move the other direction, back to ancient technology. I’ll use the old receiver, and some old bookshelf speakers to assemble an old-school stereo near my desk. On the top shelf of the rack will be something I’ll be buying soon. A turntable!

Digital music is more efficient than anything in history, but digits don’t have soul. Turntables and vinyl records have soul, and a real depth to the sound they produce. Also, reestablishing an album collection is going to be great fun. I lost a ton of albums in a flood back in the early 90s, but I still have 40 or 50 and the market for new ones (and the reselling of used albums) is booming.

Do you know what the single most popular piece of music technology was last year at Christmas? It was turntables.

Psychologically speaking, being back in Woodbury is already so “right” it’s hard to believe we haven’t been here all along, although there’s one thing I’m having to adjust to. People drive FAST here, and they’re not actually speeding. Regular boulevards in Woodbury, complete with stop lights, can have speed limits as high as 55. In Liberty Lake, we had one half-mile stretch of road that was 45, and the rest of the town was 35 or 30. And everyone did exactly the speed limit, which is pretty wise in a town that allows golf carts to be driven everywhere, even by kids. I told Barb the other day, “I actually have a hard time keeping up with traffic here. It seems like we’re flying!”

To see familiar faces still working at convenience stores, the grocery, and other businesses is amazing and heartwarming. We’ve been coming back here for random weekends, or even individual days, for quite a while, so it’s not like we disappeared completely, but it’s still fun to reconnect. The girl at the wine store said “Are you back for good now?” The first time I went and got lunch for us at Chipotle, after we got back, the checkout girl smiled broadly and said “I don’t think I’ve seen you for months. Where have you been?” It was enjoyable to tell her.

Last Saturday, Dylan Blake celebrated his high school graduation at his parents’ house. That would be Lynn and Terry Blake, who live just around the corner from our old house. We had a fantastic time celebrating all afternoon with Dylan and his guests. Just about all of our Marsh Creek neighbors were there, including Neighbor Dave and Nichol, Mary Beth and Joe, Scott and Barb, Kristy, and lots of others, some of whom we typically only see at the annual New Year’s Eve bash. It was nothing short of sublime to be surrounded by the greatest friends ever, the friends that made it essential for us to finally get moved back here. Four years have passed, but it felt like we never missed a beat.

The Blakes won’t be in the old neighborhood for long, though. With Dylan graduating and their daughter Maddie also getting her degree from the University of Minnesota (“The U” in Minnesota parlance) they are officially about to be empty-nesters. They’ve talked for a while about totally downsizing to a loft apartment in the bustling “Lower Town” area of downtown St. Paul, and they actually had the guts to pull the trigger. They officially move into their new 2-bedroom unit in just a couple of weeks. The old gigantic Post Office building in St. Paul has been converted to luxury residential, and their apartment will have spectacular views of the Mississippi and the skyline. Maybe someday, for us. I’m so impressed they’re doing it!

Dave and Nichol’s nest is also empty, so they’re in renovation mode, tackling project after project to get it spruced up. I think they’ll stay here in Woodbury like us, though. They’re starting the process of looking at detached or semi-detached condo life, too, here in “The Bubble.”

Here at our place, we did “hire” some guards to keep an eye on the place while we were still out in Washington. A couple of years ago we were at the famous Minnesota State Fair when we spotted a couple of concrete cat statues at a sales display. We had to buy them, of course, and they’ve been guarding the front walk ever since, through rain, snow, and everything else. I think they’re happy we’re back, but it’s hard to tell. They just sit there stone-faced. Totally stone-faced.

We’ve already had our bikes out on the trails once, and plan on doing that all summer. This development we’re in has many of its own paved trails, around lakes and ponds, but the city of Woodbury has miles and miles of them, around bodies of water of various sizes and through the woods. I’m still searching for that elusive route that covers 15 miles in a loop, with 100% of the distance being downhill, but that doesn’t seem to be scientifically possible. A guy can dream, though.

Out on the NHRA Mello Yello tour, I stay in touch with many of my former PR colleagues (Facebook helps, in that regard) and like so many people I’m following along on Fox Sports 1. The “live” coverage has been fantastic, and it’s getting better by the week. And, I’m proud to say that I predicted what’s happening when I told my colleagues, at our annual PR dinner in Pomona last year, that I felt like I was leaving the sport at the right time for me personally, but at the wrong time in terms of the future of the sport. I saw what Peter Clifford was accomplishing, in such a short time span, as the new President of NHRA and I was really energized and optimistic. And then the FS1 and FOX announcement made it inescapable, to me, that the sport was about to enter an entire new era of success. The TV ratings are, quite literally, through the roof. Attendance is on a major upswing, including a number days at a variety of races where the “SOLD OUT” sign had to be hung in the ticket window (including at Charlotte, the biggest drag racing stadium in the world). We were drawing TV audiences of 350,000 sometimes last year, maybe 500,000 when a good time slot and a good lead-in on the old network maximized our viewing numbers. We just had a race (I still say “We”) with 1.3 million watching, on FS1. And we haven’t even been on the main FOX Network with live programming yet. That is some mind-boggling (and very exciting) growth for the sport, and we haven’t gotten to the big numbers yet.

NHRA is big news and “the hot topic” for those in the sports-marketing world who pay attention to such numbers. There’s always a lag in terms of corporate sponsorship ramping up as the numbers get bigger, but I’m confident it will begin to happen in the next budget cycle. The sky is officially the limit.

And don’t count out Wilk for the Funny Car championship. He has the LRS car dialed in.

So now, it’s time to begin to tackle the lower level. The technical term for this undertaking is “Ugh.” One step at a time, here. One step at a time.

As for “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” I’ll have Chapter 21 done tomorrow. It’s been a fun one to write, although I did most of it on Sunday and Monday before the madness started around here. I’ll figure out a snippet for the next blog installment.

See you next week!

Bob Wilber, at your service during Move-In Madness.

It was a long trip. It was a long week. It was a long time coming.

Moving is not easy, even when a moving company is involved. Months of advance planning led to weeks of actual change, as we modified the look of our Liberty Lake house to stage it as well as possible for showing. Then, when niece Leah and her boyfriend Levi came out to “go shopping” and take whatever they wanted back to Colorado, to furnish their new house, we had more changes to make and more adjustments to deal with. Finally, when the movers descended on the house to pack us up and load our goods, we dealt with two more days of displacement, even going so far as to spend those two nights at the Residence Inn in Spokane Valley, since we had no place to sit or sleep.

Through it all, Buster and Boofus were real troupers (yes, that’s how you spell it.) We cleared out a lower level bedroom and put them in there while the movers were working, with their litter box, food, and water, and I posted a handwritten sign on the door, just to make sure no one entered, because such a transgression might allow the stressed-out boyz to escape. My sign told a simple tale. It said, “CATS INSIDE – STAY OUT!” I didn’t want there to be any miscommunication.

In the midst of it, a tow-truck arrived to take Barbara’s car to the transport depot so that it could travel in style via a car carrier, across the country. To add to the fun, the young guys who arrived in the truck left the engine running, but then discovered the new truck had locked its own doors once they got out. Not only were the keys inside, so were their cell phones. And did I mention the engine was running?

I loaned them my phone and they called their shop. 20 minutes later, after watching them sheepishly sit around contemplating their own ineptitude, a colleague showed up with a “slim jim” to pop the door open. Then we waved goodbye to Barb’s trusty Lexus HS 250h.

(As always, you can click on the photos to enlarge them!)

When we finally watched the United Van Lines truck pull away, with what was left of our worldly possessions stored within, our work was still far from done. Our goal was to leave the house as clean and neat as humanly possible. Did we truly need to do that? Would anyone be surprised if we left it just “pretty clean” and not spotless? I think “No” is the answer to both questions, but Barbara and I have both, individually and as a couple, taken possession of numerous houses where the sellers didn’t even bother to do basic cleaning, and that’s nothing short of gross. I mean, really. You couldn’t clean the hair out of the shower drain before you fled?

So, not wanting to be “those people” we both have an overwhelming urge to do the right thing in terms of how clean a house should be when you walk away from it. From the hardwoods, to the carpets, to the drawers and cabinets, to the bathrooms (on hands and knees with sponges), to the garage. We spent four or five hours cleaning on Wednesday, and then another six hours on Thursday, before it was time to finally say “We’ve done all we can do” and hit the road.

Before we left, something amazing happened. When we moved to Liberty Lake, we made a bit of a conscious decision to try to not make too many friends there, because we knew we’d eventually be leaving and leaving friends is a sad deal. We have, however, been friendly with our three closest neighbors, at least in terms of conversation by the mailbox or in the yard. All of them did something special for us before we left, and we were truly touched by it. One next-door neighbor prepared a wonderful dinner for us on Tuesday night, and delivered it to us when the movers were done packing. Another came from across the street with a nice bottle of wine, to wish us well. Our other next-door neighbor saw our bare porch, after the movers took our outdoor seating away, and brought two patio chairs over, so we could at least sit outside and enjoy our final evening. I was more than a little sad to be leaving such good people, and really honored that they would think of those things and act on the thoughts. Amazing.

Before we did that, however, on Wednesday night we went to our favorite Liberty Lake bistro, Hay J’s, for one last phenomenal meal. We knew the fresh Copper River salmon were being caught and sold, and when you live in Washington you can get it so fresh it’s still swimming. I kid, but it’s incredible when it’s in its short season. We also took with us a vintage bottle of Dom Perignon, to celebrate our return to Minnesota while we also said “So long” to Liberty Lake. When we asked our server if the Copper River was available, she said “It was. We sold out a couple of hours ago.” Sadness. But the Filet Mignon went a long way toward easing our sorrows. And the Dom was off the charts. As drag racing fan and backer Guy Fieri would say, “Money!”

When we finally gave in and hit the highway on Thursday, the boyz were ready to be in the car. They’re such great travelers now, and so easy to drive with, it’s hard to remember how much they moaned and cried whenever we’d put them in the car when they were kittens. Now, they basically jump in their carriers when we say, “Let’s go” and once we let them out they sit on our laps, walk around, get a bite to eat, drink some water, and watch the scenery. They, however, do not like big trucks. When we pass an 18-wheeler, they crouch down and stare at it. It’s actually kind of funny.

And, they’re not totally silent as we roll down the road, but what noises they do make are more like conversation and less like moaning. They are a pleasure to have in the car.

Barbara was in charge of iPhone photos and selfies, and she managed to take a photo of Buster that almost broke the internet. It looks like he’s taking the selfie, but it’s so fantastically composed and he looks so hilarious it continues to crack me up to this day. We were somewhere in Montana, and he was strolling around the car checking everything out, including the dashboard, the food dish, my lap, and the iPhone he was staring out.

Hilarious!

As reported in my short-and-sweet semi-blog last week, we only went to Missoula the first night, about 3.5 hours from Liberty Lake through some incredible Idaho and western Montana scenery. We checked in, got the boyz situated, and drove back up the road to a Mexican place for dinner. By the time we got back to the room, sleep was just around the corner. We had a huge day ahead of us on Friday. Getting up early was not going to be pleasant, but it wasn’t really optional, either. Missoula to Bismarck is over 700 miles, and we’d lose a time zone, so with a lunch stop and three gas stations involved, and some rain, and some construction zones (more than a few) it was going to be close to 14 hours before we arrived at Staybridge Suites Hotel No. 2.

The first part of the drive is more of the same, on high mountain passes with winding turns, all with a speed limit of 80 mph. You get pretty used to 80 after a while, and when we’d hit those construction zones and the limit would drop to 60 it felt like we were barely moving. When it was lowered to 45, it felt like we could walk faster.

The 80 mph limit is fine in terms of traffic, because with the limit being that high most people don’t really exceed it. It’s like “Well, they’re giving me 80 so why risk a ticket going 86?” Very few cars passed me, and I had the cruise-control set right on 80, to erase any fears of attracting a State Trooper. The only sketchy parts were the downhill mountain curves. It wasn’t so much that my car couldn’t handle the curves at that speed, it was the limited sight distances going around those curves. At 80, a surprise lurking around the corner would be hard to avoid, so I slowed to a more pedestrian 75 until we had clearer sight lines.

We traveled through Bozeman, Butte, and Billings (the 3 Bs of I-90 in Montana.) After Billings, we picked up I-94 knowing that highway would take us to within a mile of our home in Woodbury, but we still had six hours to go just to make it to Bismarck, in North Dakota. It was just turning from dusk to dark when we finally arrived. We checked in, got the boyz situated, had a glass of wine, and went straight to bed without passing “GO” and without collecting 200 dollars.

With “just” 450 miles ahead of us, we slept until we felt like getting up and were on the road again. That third day is actually the toughest one, because you’ve just had a massive Day 2 and you feel like you should be home. When we got on I-94 and the first mileage sign said “Fargo – 200” my heart sank a little. Fargo is still the width of Minnesota away from home, and it was 200 miles in front of us. In total, it can easily take six hours to get home, depending on Twin Cities traffic. After making it so far, it seems a bit overwhelming to know how much further we still had to go.

Fortunately, traffic wasn’t too bad and we made it to the Woodbury exit right on time. The boyz always react when we get off the highway, because they know something’s up, and they got more and more excited as it became clear we weren’t just pulling into yet another gas station off the exit ramp, but instead were quickly on neighborhood streets. They’re smart that way. When we pulled into our subdivision, they began to get really excited. I don’t think they recognized it (they hadn’t been here in two years) but when we pulled into the garage they were just about beside themselves.

We didn’t even bother with the carriers. We just closed the garage door behind us and carried them into the house. They went nuts.

When they’re somewhere strange, like a new hotel room, they crouch down with their tails low, and sniff around to scope the place out. But here, they actually remembered the house from their last trip here in 2014, after we got this place and used it as our summer home that year. Their tails were straight up in the air and within two seconds they weren’t just exploring, they were racing around the house, jumping over each other and tearing around corners to see it all. They flew down to the lower level, they checked out every bedroom, and when they found the food and litter boxes Barbara had arranged for them when she was here a few weeks ago, they made themselves right at home. It was truly fun to watch them act like such kittens, and to see that cats really do have emotions. They were happy. They were excited. They were thrilled. And they told us all about it with happy meows and loud purrs.

It was good to be home. It’s still good to be home.

We’ve been pretty nonstop busy since we got here, on Saturday night, although in the interest of fair reporting I must admit we totally took Sunday off, just sleeping in and recharging as best we could. We did a little housework and laundry on Monday, and on Tuesday we both got up and went to work here at home. Barbara will be using what had been my office, since her work really demands a quiet space and room to spread out. I’ve been working from the sofa or the kitchen island, since my desk and other office stuff is still on the moving truck. I just got a call from United, and we can expect the truck to arrive on Tuesday. Then the fun begins all over again.

We did pay the extra money to have the movers unpack us, but all they do is take the goods out of the boxes and set it all on open surfaces. We still have to organize it and put it all away, and we’ll almost certainly have some additional “weeding out” of things when we do that. We have a full set of dishes, pots & pans, and silverware here, for when we did come to check on things, but we have far more of that stuff on the truck. Somehow we have to make it all fit.

In addition, we’ve decided to pull the trigger and add some additions or extras to this house, to make it just exactly how we want it. We bought it as a new property (it was the model home in this community) and while it’s ultra-nice and very comfortable, it had a few things we wanted to upgrade. One is the master closet, which is a nicely sized walk-in (actually a walk-through) but we didn’t like the wire racks and the way it was organized. So, Barbara met with a custom closet company and we’ve laid out how we want it, with drawers and shelves to go with the hanging rods.

This house also has a little less storage space, especially in the very nice kitchen. To conquer that, we’re having pull-out drawers inserted into many of the cabinets, to make them more space-efficient.

And (this is important!) we have a dedicated wine room here, but we’ve never installed any racks and therefore have never stored any actual wine there. A “wine room designer” guy spent an hour here yesterday, mapping out how best to build and install some racks in the oddly shaped little room with the pretty glass door and directional lighting. Once we get that done, our wine collection will have a place of its own.

Bottom line is, we’re home and we want this home to be just how we want it to be. We may never move again (I said “may”) and we don’t want to look back later and think “We were too cheap when what we wanted was right there to get” so we’re doing it the way we want it.

We left behind the incredible home theater set-up at the Liberty Lake house, to help it sell, and we’re going to not just replicate it but exceed it here in Woodbury. We spent a few hours at Best Buy over the weekend, and got a great deal on a phenomenal 65″ TV and a new sound system to go with it. We’ve also looked at theater seating, and while we haven’t pulled the trigger on that yet we have in mind what we want. It will be my “man cave” and a great entertaining area for us, so I can’t wait.

As for Boofus and Buster, they’ve totally relaxed and they completely love it here. The thing they missed the most out in Liberty Lake was the fact we didn’t have a screened porch, but we have one here and they’re in heaven out there. In Washington, we put them out back in their hut or took them for walks in their cat stroller, but here we can just open the sliding door a bit and they can come and go as they please, raising their noses to sniff the outside air while watching the birds in the trees right below them. It’s all good.

And so is the writing, on “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts.” I was forced to take last week off from the book, after finishing Chapter 19 right before the move began. On Tuesday and Wednesday this week, I cranked out Chapter 20 in record time. I think I needed a mental break, and I was raring to go when I sat down on Tuesday to get back to work.

It’s another important chapter, and it details my year as an executive for the St. Louis Storm indoor soccer franchise, in 1989-90. It was a fantastic experience to do that job, and the thrill of walking out into the arena and seeing more than 14,000 people in the seats was something that’s always been hard to overstate and difficult to describe. My staff and I worked for 10 short weeks, beginning with nothing (not even a soccer ball) and by the time Opening Night came around our hard work paid off. We had the largest Opening Night paid attendance in the Major Indoor Soccer League, and it was the franchise’s first game ever.

Here’s a snippet, about that Opening Night, which happened just those 10 short weeks after I was hired as the first front-office employee. I was Vice President – Marketing, but after our original general manager was let go just weeks after being hired, I was effectively running the team and the staff. Stress doesn’t quite describe those 10 weeks, because while it was indeed stressful, it was also invigorating, thrilling, and exhilarating. Then Opening Night finally arrived.

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We were all collectively a nervous wreck throughout the day of the opener. I kept an eye on the ticket-computer monitor, smiling and marveling as the numbers rang up consistently from ticket-sales outlets all over town. Our team arrived. The Kansas City Comets arrived. The Storm was about to happen.

We’d brought in search lights to scan the sky outside The Arena, acting as a beacon for arriving fans while signaling, in Hollywood premiere fashion, that this game was a big deal. We waited. At 6:00 p.m., one hour before kickoff, the traffic started to back up on Oakland Ave., in front of the building. At 7:00 p.m., when a singer performed the national anthem, the cars were still coming in.

We put roughly 14,500 people into The Arena that night. We lost the game, and it was an uncommonly low-scoring affair, but our promotions went off just fine, the fans had fun, and as I stood behind the goal and looked at all those people, I felt an enormous rush of pride, not just for me but for my staff. I had goosebumps, and wasn’t too far from shedding a tear. The work had been manic, but the results were there and it all felt so “worth it” at that moment.

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It was really like that. And more so.

And that was just one game out of 26 home games. The story got better (and in many ways worse) from there.

So here we are. We’re home. I’m back to blogging and to writing my book. On Tuesday, after the movers bury us in more stuff and we get it all organized, I’ll be working from my trusty desk in the lower level, with my familiar memorabilia all around me.

The quest for more words continues. And Boofus and Buster are sound asleep on the couch.

Bob Wilber, at your service and back on the horse!

Greetings, from a nice hotel suite in Missoula, Montana.

Today is, indeed, Thursday Blog Day but unfortunately this has also been Moving Week for Barbara and myself. On Tuesday the movers packed up our belongings. On Wednesday, they loaded everything into a truck, and on both of those nights we stayed in a Residence Inn suite in Spokane Valley. Today, we finished cleaning the house for the new buyers and were in my car, rolling down the road, at 3:00 p.m.

It’s now 7:15 (MDT), and there’s no way I have anything approaching the mental bandwidth to write a full blog. My apologies.

Next week, I shall return and there will be plenty to write about. Moving is a big deal. Driving from Liberty Lake to Woodbury is a big 3-day deal. We put in about 3.5 hours today, just to get to Montana. Tomorrow, a solid 12-hour day to get to Bismarck, North Dakota. With Boofus and Buster. It couldn’t get any better.

We’ll see you next week. When I next write this blog, we will be full-time residents of Minnesota once again.

Bob Wilber, at your service behind the wheel…

Hello readers, and welcome to Thursday Blog Day once again. I am starting this missive in my office here in Liberty Lake, but there’s good reason to think I might just finish it and post it from the lobby of Larry H. Miller Lexus, in downtown Spokane. As one of 1.27 million details that have to be taken care of prior to next week’s move, my car is going in for its 10,000-mile service check-up today, despite the fact it only has 7,800 miles on it. I’d rather do it early, to have it looked over and get the oil changed prior to the long drive home to Minnesota. It’s about 1,400 miles, door to door.

Moving is hard. Moving yourself, as we helped Leah and Levi do recently, is physically hard. I still have some bruises on my arms from carrying heavy bulky objects, but I got off easy. They had to drive back to Colorado and then unload it all, in Jim Doyle’s garage. Then once they close on their new house, it all has to get moved yet again.

We have United Van Lines coming on Tuesday to pack everything up. On Wednesday they load. On Thursday, my blog day, we’ll clean up the house one last time and then hit the road for much of three full days of driving. With Buster and Boofus. I always look forward to the first part of this trip, at least the part from Liberty Lake to Billings, because it’s scenic and the driving is fun on those mountain roads. When you’re doing the trip the other direction, you’re tired when you get to the most fun parts, so it’s better going eastbound. But, as far as I know, I’ll never again have to do it westbound, unless we have a crazy idea to do a road trip.

Yesterday, I made a huge dent in getting all of my credit cards, bank accounts, and utilities set for the change. There are a couple of utilities here in Liberty Lake that I can’t alter, since I don’t own this house, but we’re getting that handled. And, yesterday I heard from the listing agent that the appraisal on the house came back right at value, so that’s another important box ticked off the list. The buyers are scheduled to close on May 30, so all of my fingers and toes are crossed in the hope that happens. The military guy who owns this house is a spectacularly good dude, and I want to help him get his place sold and off his hands. No better landlord ever, anywhere.

Yes, I made a “To-Do” list for all the utilities and accounts. It was just too hard to remember them all and remember what I’d done, but now all items but the two local ones are checked off. Fortunately, we’re all set up for this stuff in Woodbury, so I’m not going to be swamped with details once we get there. We’re officially “move-in ready” there, with the exception of one fun assignment still to complete. We’re leaving the fantastic home theater intact here, because it was such a selling point, but we’re fully spoiled by having it to enjoy for four years. Once we get back to Minny, we’ll be off to find a huge TV and then have it installed along with the surround-sound system we already own. I’ll be counting the days.

There is an office waiting for me there, as well, but I’ve decided to give that to Barb. She’ll have a ton of real work to still do once we get back, since she’s going to continue to work for her company, and the dedicated office is the best place to do that. I’m going to move my desk and workplace stuff to the lower level. That will be cool, because it will also double as my Man Cave. A guy needs his Man Cave. It’s a rule. You can look it up.

So much stuff still to do, but we’ve made huge progress so far and it will all take care of itself if we just stay focused on each new next task at hand. Then we’ll load up The Boyz and enjoy the ride.

Cool. Just got a phone call from our State Farm agent in Woodbury, letting me know that my agent out here has sent them what they needed to shift our car insurance and liability coverage. We’re going to save about $250 per year just making the move! Bonus!!! And seamlessly done with zero hassle for me. One phone call yesterday, to Emily here in Liberty Lake, made it all happen, and now we’re back with Lori in Woodbury.

What’s not enjoyable this year is the pollen in the Inland Northwest. My gosh, it’s horrible. I doubt it will be any better in Minnesota, but right now it’s so thick I need to be the “Bubble Boy” and just inflate a giant ball around me. My eyes itch and water, I’m hacking and coughing all day, and even bike rides are way less fun when you can feel the tiny yellow spores travel through your nose and mouth and into your lungs. Yeccchhh! And forget about keeping your car clean. An hour after a car wash, it’s covered in the stuff.

Okay, enough complaining. Everyone around here is hating on the pollen, so we all have to just deal with it. Or I can inflate the bubble.

Despite the fact we came out here four years ago with the thought of being somewhat anti-social, so that we wouldn’t make too many friends and then be sad when we had to leave them, we are both a bit melancholy. After four years in a town this small, you can’t help but to get to know a lot of people. Whether it’s Pat at the dry cleaner, or Lori at Barlow’s restaurant, or Patti who used to live next door but now has a new place a mile away, or the check-out clerks at Albertson’s, we could not have avoided getting to know them all and then finding ourselves liking them. And let’s never forget Nancy, who has come over so many times to be with The Boyz when we’re both out of town. She’s the best, and it’s hard to say goodbye to her. I know Boofie and Buster will miss her.

I’m going to miss this house and this area, as well. Just the other day, a high-school golf tournament was going on here on the course, so I went outside to watch these talented kids play the second hole, in our backyard. I was, in effect, the entire gallery for their regional tournament, and Barb took a photo for her Facebook “Pic Of The Day” thing she’s been doing. She decided, a week or so ago, to post at least one local photo every day, right up until we pull off I-94 and park in the garage in Woodbury. It was such a beautiful day, I just wanted to watch the kids and soak it all in. (And, as always, you can click on the photos to enlarge them.)

Also, over the course of the last few weeks, we’ve been trying to judge whether or not we will hit the mark for moving day in terms of various household necessities. We don’t shift over to the Residence Inn until Tuesday, and I just put our last trash bag in the kitchen can. Missed it by THAT MUCH. Also just put my last scoop of coffee in the coffee maker. And we have just one roll of paper towels left. Looks like I’ll have to do some restocking before we go, and whatever is left can move with us. Moving is complex…

At some point over the weekend, we’re going to have to make the big purge in terms of things the movers won’t take. Pesticides, weed killers, aerosol spray cans, anything flammable, and food. To keep the gas range clean, I’ve also stopped cooking dinners on the cooktop. Baking and broiling are fine, and we’ll clean out the oven before we leave, but no more splatters on the range. To make up for this, I think it’s obvious we’ll have to put a firm moratorium on eating out once we get to Minny. Right? Who am I kidding? Some of our favorite restaurants in the country are in Woodbury and the Twin Cities, and new ones are popping up all the time. Maybe we’ll just have to institute some budgetary rules. Well, not exactly rules, but more like guidelines. Not strict guidelines, mind you, but suggestions. It’s hopeless, isn’t it?

And maybe I’ll take one last walk around Liberty Lake. We take the views for granted, too often. It’s a beautiful place, and just the other day I did stop to look around as I walked up the hill to the elementary school and around Pavillion Park (yes, they spell Pavillion with two “L”s). On the way back home, I took a shot of the third green and the water hazard on the course where we live. Since we live on the second green, we see and hear golfers teeing off for this hole all day.

The white things in the water are swans. Sort of. The swans are fake, as a ruse to keep the Canada Geese away, and as such a deterrent they seem to be only semi-successful. I’ve seen geese swim right by them. Canada Geese are no dummies. As for the Mallards and Bufflehead ducks, they seem to actually adore the fake geese. A Mallard couple sits on them during the day. Just taking a ride on a couple of swans, but man they don’t get very far. So the geese are no dummies, and the ducks are pretty smart. It’s the swans, technically, who are actual dummies.

So I was thinking this would be my final blog from Liberty Lake, but it’s likely not. I’ll probably write next week’s edition from the Residence Inn after we leave the house on Wednesday. Then, I’ll post it Thursday morning before we hit the road. See what I mean, in terms of all the details. My head is spinning. Not like in “The Exorcist” but more like just being confused, which I am quite often.

Barb is actually in Woodbury, and at the Woodbury house, right now. She reports all is well, and that’s a good thing when you go check on a house you own but don’t yet live in. Houses, it turns out, need to be lived in. Garage doors need to go up and down. Faucets, showers, and toilets need to move water, not hold it. Ice makers need to make ice. Refrigerators need to be cleaned out. In a couple of weeks, we’ll be settled and it will finally be our home again. I can’t quite picture it yet, but it will happen.

And I’m already making plans for July, when my college teammates and roommates, Lance, Radar, and Oscar will come to the Twin Cities for what is now our annual reunion. Last summer it was Cooperstown and Washington D.C., and this year we’ll spend two nights at the Grand Hotel in downtown Minneapolis, eating well and touring around, and then a third night at the St. Paul Hotel. We’ll go to the Twins game on the night of July 15, and a gentleman I know, named Dave St. Peter, is working on making that a very special deal for my buddies. Dave just happens to be the President of the Twins, and he was the first person to become part of our Advisory Board here at The Perfect Game Foundation®, when we launched this charity. He’s a fine man, and a very generous one.

Speaking of baseball, I happened upon a photo of Yogi Berra, on Facebook, the other day. It was shot at spring training, and the photographer was clearly the Mark Rebilas of his day, because he captured Yogi’s swing from a precarious spot right next to the batter’s box. I thought it was a neat photo, but then something else occurred to me. The catcher looked familiar.

The stirrup socks told me the Yanks were playing Boston. The nose behind the mask sure looked like who I thought it might be. But the forearms and the hands sold it. That’s my father, Del Wilber, catching for the Red Sox. Amazing. In the family we call these “finds” as we discover photos or other memorabilia none of us has ever seen before. This one was roundly considered one of the best finds ever. I just wish I could get an actual print of it.

Finally, here’s your weekly update on “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts.” It’s been another fantastic week, and by tomorrow afternoon I’ll be firing off Chapter 19 to my editor. It’s yet another landmark chapter, because in it I leave my first non-baseball job, working for Converse Shoes, to head off to Washington D.C. to become a Project Director for a big successful sports-marketing agency, by the catchy name of DelWilber+Associates. That would be my oldest brother’s former company. The stories about projects I worked on and managed are many, and they include clients like IBM, Chrysler, Black & Decker, and USF&G. We managed major sponsorships in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, USA Baseball, the International Baseball Association, the Big East Conference, and many more. So far, it’s been a joy to write.

We’re really getting there now, and I’m actually sad that next week’s hurricane named “The Move” is going to cause me to probably not write for at least seven or eight days. We’ll see if I can squeeze any writing time into the process, but it’s likely I won’t. The thrilling thing is, at this point my move into NHRA Drag Racing is, chronologically, not that far away in terms of chapters. Then, all the stories I can tell about the people I’ve worked for or alongside will come to life. Can’t wait to get to that point and relive it all again.

Well look at that. My car appointment is still more than an hour away and I’ve put a bow on this blog. No need to bore you with photos of the showroom while I wait. This one, as we technically say, is in the books.

And, as is always the case, if you read this blog and liked what you read, please “Like” it with a click!

Bob Wilber, at your service and making the move…

Welcome back to Thursday Blog Day. It’s May 12, 2016 and that puts us exactly 12 days away from the morning United Van Lines will arrive to pack up our lives into many boxes. It puts us 13 days away from when they load those boxes into a big moving van. And it puts us exactly two weeks from when we will make one final sweep through this then-empty house on a golf course, before we load Boofus and Buster into my car and head to Minnesota.

We’re very much looking forward to being “home” for sure, and even the long drive is an adventure I enjoy. Getting to that point, though, is a complex process and I’m not going to inflate that word by saying it’s an enjoyable one. It’s just a process, with a lot of moving parts, and it all has to happen in a specific order.

When Barbara accepted the offer, four years ago, to take a job out here in the Spokane area, we needed to move and we needed to downsize. Our wonderful home in Woodbury, with Pond Cam views out of the massive living-room windows, featured three levels, four bedrooms, and about 4,800 square feet of McMansion “stuff.” The home here in Liberty Lake is wonderful, and it’s not exactly small at 3,700 square feet, but the purge we went through back then, to make the move, was massive. After making as many runs to charities and thrift stores as we could bear, we were still looking at rooms full of things we’d accumulated but no longer needed, so we had the trash company deliver a huge 10-yard dumpster to the driveway. We filled it.

Leading up to this next move back to Minnesota, we started looking around here and the feeling was slightly overwhelming. Once again, we had way too much stuff in our lives. Downsize version 2.0 was staring us in the face.

Nearly all of the furniture we brought out here with us was purchased when we lived in the larger home back in Woodbury. We’ve been furnishing our new place back there, piece by piece, with new things though, so there was no need to take most of this stuff back. Basically, that meant we had a ton of furnishings here that didn’t need to get expensively hauled across the country to the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Some of it had what you’d have to call “sentimental value” for sure, but you have to draw the line and say “This all has to go” when you’re once again downsizing to something more appropriate for a married couple with two cats. The new home in Woodbury is about 2,800 square feet.

We’ve made a lot of charitable donations over the course of the last month, and we’ve thrown a lot of pure junk away, but we were still sitting on rooms full of furniture we didn’t need. I was kind of at a loss to figure it out, but then we got the great news that Barb’s niece Leah and her boyfriend Levi had signed a contract to buy their first home, near where they’ve been living in an apartment just north of Denver. It was a heartwarming concept to think that we could help them start this important new phase of their lives by turning over custody of a lot of our furnishings, but the logistics seemed tough. We thought about renting a “POD” from the company of the same name, where you load up a big square crate and they haul it where you want it to go. That was reasonable in terms of price, but the challenge of actually having to carry and move some very heavy furniture was too daunting for just Barbara and me.

We talked to United Van Lines about possibly making two deliveries for us, but the price was too rich. It all just seemed like a great idea that couldn’t be implemented, and the stress and details about their first-ever home purchase had Leah and Levi too consumed to think much about it. And then I had an idea. Why not fly them out here, rent a U-Haul truck, and load all of these things into it so they could drive it home? Barb then took iPhone pics of much of our furniture, and sent those to Leah. That sealed the deal.

The two of them arrived here late on Sunday night. We picked up the truck first thing on Monday, and got it about 80% loaded that day, thanks to the strength and perseverance of all four of us. The sofa was the big elephant in the room, and we danced around it for more than a little while before diving in, since it had to go into the truck first. After measuring it five times, pondering how to do it, hoping for the rain to stop, and putting the boyz in my office to keep them from trying to escape the madness, we got after it and managed to get it out the front door, up the ramp, and into the truck. After that, it was on…

Levi has a great knack for visually figuring out how to put the jigsaw puzzle together, and as the day went on it all started to fit together and fill the U-Haul. We even had a few “alternate” pieces that we left for last, just in case the packing job was so neat we’d have room for more than we’d originally planned. Everything fit. Everything got loaded.

We had accomplished our Monday goals, right on time, and we celebrated by having dinner at Cedar’s, a fabulous floating restaurant on Coeur d’Alene Lake, with million dollar views and meals that are off the hook (Guy Fieri reference). It was sublime. Or as Guy would say, it was money. And then we drove back to the house and retired to the lower-level home theater to watch “Miracle,” one of our all-time favorite movies. “You were BORN to be hockey players!” Somehow, some way, we all stayed awake until the end and then we crashed.

We did have to leave one last thing for Tuesday morning, because we all needed beds to sleep in on Monday night. We have a nice new king bed back in Woodbury, so we decided to give “the kids” our phenomenal king-sized Sleep Number bed, and we all tackled the semi-complicated disassembly of it after we got up on Tuesday morning. Then, we had to move a queen bed from the lower level here, up to our master bedroom, and coming at the end of this long process that simple move taxed us to the limit. That mattress was not just heavy, it was bulky, it had no handles, and it had to make a sharp turn on the landing, coming up the stairs. Finally, the last pieces went in the truck and the door was closed. Leah and Levi cranked the motor and hit the road.

They made it to Billings by Tuesday night, and that put them a bit more than halfway home. They got to Loveland, Colorado yesterday afternoon, safe and sound. We feel great that we could help them out, and in the process it helped us. It was a huge purge, and a lot of the stuff we sent with them was important to us, but it’s all going to a good home and it’s staying in the family. Heck, we can go visit our furniture anytime we want, and I’m sure we will. It was a momentous couple of days, and it’s made the move very real.

With 100% of our living room furniture moving to Colorado, we needed a place to sit out there, so we moved two chairs (with ottomans) and plopped them down right in the middle of the room. This is no time to worry about how things look or if they conform to the rules of Feng Shui. We just need a place to sit and relax for a couple of weeks.

And the process is in full swing. Early this morning, a guy with a mobile “shredder” truck arrived to destroy about six boxes of files we didn’t want to simply throw away. When it comes to tax data, old contracts, banking info, and other private materials, it’s best to have it all shredded. In an hour, an appraiser will be here to take a look at the house for the buyers who have a contract on it, and right after that my guy from United Van Lines will come out to reassess what we’re moving, since we gave Leah and Levi more than we originally planned. Once the stuff started going and getting loaded, we just told them to “go shopping” and take anything they wanted other than my office furniture.

And, later this week I have to start contacting all the utility companies to begin the transition. There’s a lot to do. But, and this is a big “but” after so many weeks of seeing this as something way off in the future that we didn’t need to yet worry about, it’s all real. By the end of the month, we’ll be heading back to Minnesota. We’ll be headed home. We can’t wait to get there.

Aside from the move, my “job” as a full-time writer continues to go so well it’s thrilling. I’ve sent Chapter 17 off to my esteemed editor, Greg Halling, and I’m well into Chapter 18 now (although today is Thursday Blog Day, so this takes precedence). 17 and 18 are really important chapters, because they mark the “big change” in my life wherein I leave baseball and head off to do other things. All of that, of course, eventually leads to indoor soccer and then to racing, so we’re getting to the point where the finish line for “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” is almost within sight. That’s a thrilling concept.

As much as my memory is fantastic, and I can recall specific conversations or moments from 40 years ago, I still have to do quite a bit of research to connect all the dots when I’m writing. To that end, when I was on the chapter that included my first summer of professional ball, playing for the Paintsville Hilanders in the Appalachian League, I had to go back and reconstruct many of the memories. I knew I had an 8×10 color glossy of our team picture somewhere, but for weeks I’d been unable to find it. Then, in our massive effort to de-clutter and purge unneeded stuff from this house, I came upon a file box marked “Keeper – Old photos” and in there were two framed pics I wanted and needed. The first was the Paintsville photo, and here it is. (Remember, you can click on the photos to enlarge them!)

This photo brought back so many memories I could almost smell the grass and the pine tar on the bats. In it are a bunch of minor league ballplayers who ranged from pretty good to excellent, in terms of their talent, but every guy you see in the picture had the same dream. It was an extraordinarily close group, a true band of brothers, and we had the time of our lives that summer, playing every day, getting paid to do so, and riding our bus all over Appalachia.

One guy on this team played in the big leagues. He’s the 3rd person from the right in the second row. That’s Kevin Hickey, a lefty relief pitcher from Chicago who had a fine career for the White Sox. Sadly, we lost him a few years ago. Rest in peace, my friend.

Another guy in the photo, who was one of our most popular teammates, ended up managing quite a bit in the minor leagues and then coaching in the big leagues, for the Braves and then the Royals. Chino Cadahia is in the top row, 6th from the left. He’s still in the game, as a front-office advisor for Kansas City.

Great guys, all of them. Including Vince “The Bronze Fox” Bienek, far right in the top row. Thanks to the magic of Facebook, Vince and I have reconnected after all these decades.

The second photo is this one, and it provided me a ton of material for the book. This pic, taken at old Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, is populated with the entire scouting staff of the Blue Jays, as well as other front-0ffice staff and all of the minor league managers and coaches. In it are two gentlemen who ended up in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown. Can you figure that out?

Well, if you can’t, here they are: 2nd row, third from the right. That would be Pat Gillick, one of the greatest and most accomplished general managers in baseball history. It was both a pleasure and an honor to work for Pat.

In the 3rd row, third from the right, is Bobby Cox. He was the manager of the Blue Jays while I was with them, and he then went on to greater fame as the skipper of the Atlanta Braves. Both Gillick and Cox have been inducted into the Hall.

If you’re a baseball fan, there are plenty of other familiar names and faces in this photo. And in the third row, wearing a brown jacket and a dark red sweater, is the 27-year old version of me. I was still the youngest full-time professional scout in all of baseball then, and the second-youngest was standing next to me. Tim Wilken is still in baseball, and still highly respected. Plus, he and I became good friends when we started this journey and figured out how to spot talent. It was a tough job and a tough life, but the chapters about it in my book were a thrill to write. The stories and the characters are so rich it was great to recall it all and put it into words.

(Five minutes later).  Okay, the appraiser was just here and he’s already done. That was quick.

Now it’s time for me to wrap up this weekly installment and move back over to book writing. The shredder dude was here so early this morning we had to get up before our alarms to hand him all the documents, and that got me to work on this earlier than I normally do. Now, it’s only 10:00 a.m. and I can shift over to the book for the rest of today. I’m a writing fool!!!

T-minus 12 days and counting.  Minnesota is on the horizon.

Bob Wilber, at your service and ready to move.

The NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing season is officially at the quarter pole, which is what we call a metaphor since quarter poles are in horse racing and not drag racing. Still, the season is 25 percent complete. And guess what…

Tim Wilkerson is tied for first place in the Mello Yello points race. It doesn’t necessarily look that way in the standings, because when two drivers are tied for any points position they are listed alphabetically and Force (as in Courtney) comes well before Wilkerson (as in Tim) in terms of that pesky alphabet. This is a subject of which I’m well aware and familiar. Throughout grade school and high school my seat was always near the back left corner of the room. Students like Mike Abels and Tom Altepeter were always near the front, by the door.

Back to the more important guy with the W name, though. Looking at the glass half empty, you could point out the fact that Wilk shares the top spot in the standings despite the fact he’s lost in the first round at half the races. But the glass is far more than half full when you realize he’s been to the final round at the other three, and won two of them.

I was at Mall of America with family when Wilk won in Phoenix, and high-fives were shared all-around as we enjoyed some appetizers at Hard Rock Cafe. It was a nice bounce-back effort after the opening-round loss in Pomona, although it wasn’t world domination out in the desert. Wilk qualified 8th and had a couple of those “fortunate rounds” we all tend to convince ourselves that you must have, in order to win a race. But, a win is a win and it was awesome to see.

Then he qualified 4th at both Gainesville and Vegas, indicating that the Levi, Ray & Shoup Mustang’s performance was coming around. Unfortunately, both of those solid qualifying efforts turned into opening-round losses. This sport is hard. It happens.

After that, please call Katie and have her bar the door. Another No. 8 qualifying spot at the 4-Wides in Charlotte was followed by an absolute display of smash-mouth drag racing. Hopefully Lewis “Stat Guy” Bloom can tell me how many Funny Car drivers have won the 4-Wides while running the table (a metaphor again, since that’s a billiards reference) by winning each round outright. We, again, convince ourselves that winning NHRA races is so difficult you probably have to come in second at least once to win the 4-Wides. Not true. See: Wilkerson, Tim – at Charlotte. First across the stripe in all three rounds with three clean and fast runs. We call that domination.

And then it was on to Houston. No. 1 qualifier, then 4.03 in the first round, 3.92 in the second round, 3.90 in the semifinal, and 3.94 in the final round. The only thing to stop the Wilk juggernaut was Courtney’s 3.91 that earned her the trophy in a very tight (great) race.

An 11-4 round record after six races. Two wins and one runner-up. All from an under-budgeted team that has always found a way to stretch and pull a dollar bill until it pays for two dollars worth of stuff, taking out teams with resources and talent pools that are so vast it’s hard to see the bottom.

Tim Wilkerson is a smart guy. In 2008 he took the championship battle to the final day of the season before finishing second. That left a whole lot of people on very big teams either shaking their heads or bowing in his general direction. Remember, it’s a very hard sport. 10,000-hp Nitro-burning cars are such temperamental beasts they’d fit right into a Harry Potter movie, playing the role of the fire-breathing dragon. You’d think it really does take four cars, eight crew chiefs, and 100-person staff to win these things, especially in the dominating fashion Wilk has been showing. What it takes is a lot of smarts, good solid parts (rhyme unintended), consistent mechanical application, and chemistry. And the chemistry is of the human kind.

I’ve seen enormously talented teams fail in a lot of different sports. Imagine putting eight of the best Olympic rowers in a boat, and then watching as all eight of them try to do it themselves instead of rowing in sync, as a team. It doesn’t work. I’d rather have eight really good oarsmen who all pull in unison. Team Wilk is that group.

Wilk makes a point of recognizing “my guys” whenever he’s interviewed. Knowing they’re out there in the pit not just bolting it together “right” but bolting it together consistently to the same tolerances, gives him the confidence to get after it in terms of the tune-up. When things aren’t consistent, nothing seems to go right. I spent 20 years in the sport, and saw that problem rear its ugly mug on too many occasions.

And then there are two words that sum it all up: Richard Hartman.

I’ve known Richard for a long time. He and Del Worsham were already longtime friends when I joined Del in 1997, and Del always made it clear to me that Richard could not just do anything, he could do everything. He knows these cars inside out, he’s driven like a champ, he can tune, he can read the track, and he can oversee the mechanical side like few others.

When Tim hired Richard before the 2015 season, I was as pumped up as I’d been in years. Then, I was stunned when a very small minority of people derided the move. They obviously didn’t know Richard as well as I did. They couldn’t have known him at all. I knew exactly what he was bringing to the LRS party, and it wasn’t chips and dip.

When you add a guy like Richard Hartman to the mix (and there aren’t too many like him) what you get is a team that’s far greater than the sum of its individual parts. He makes everyone better. He makes Tim better. He gives Wilk the confidence to go for it, and he communicates with Wilk in a way no one else ever has. He’s been in the car, he knows how it feels, and they understand each other at an almost psychic level. It was fun to watch last year, and it’s been even more fun to watch this season.

The timing of the move to Fox Sports 1 and the addition of NHRA All-Access couldn’t have come at a better time for a guy like me. I’ve been following along on everything from the big screen TV in the home theater to my iPhone at Mall of America. It’s been a great first quarter.

Team Wilk could have the same 11-4 record with two wins right now, but in a totally different way. String together some rounds where the other guy red-lights, or crosses the center line, or goes up in smoke at the hit, and you can talk yourself into believing you’re better than you are. I’ve been a part of some wacky wins (hello Cory Lee!) and while they’re fun they leave you feeling very fortunate instead of very good. These last two races have been whippings, with the exception of Ms. Force in the Houston final, which was basically a draw that she deservedly earned by inches.

With that in mind, I don’t see this team fading away. They’re on the mark right now, and have been running fast in every possible set of conditions. Wilk used to be known as a “hot-weather ace” which is a nice way of saying “He doesn’t make the horsepower to win in prime conditions, but he can get down a gravel road when everyone else is smoking the tires.” That is no longer true. For reference, I point you toward a 3.899 (at 327 mph) on a stout 90-degree track in Houston.

To be realistic, the sport remains really hard. Great teams struggle all the time. The more writing I’ve been doing on “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” the more I see correlations to baseball. When things aren’t going well, it feels like you have two strikes on you when you walk to the plate. You start thinking too much. You decide to get aggressive and then you swing at bad pitches. You decide to be patient and the pitcher pours strike after strike across the plate. You’re always playing catch-up. Always one pitch behind. When you’re hot, the ball looks big and the pitches all seem to be right in your favorite zone. It seems easy. It’s not.

There will be some more struggles for Team Wilk. But this group has shown me that they can overcome that and win. I’m not going to make any predictions and I’m not going out on any limbs. Let’s just sum it up by saying that NOTHING this team might do will surprise me. Nothing. And anything is possible.

Go get ’em, guys!

As for the book, I just completed Chapter 17 and it’s an important one. It address my final two years in baseball, as a Scouting Supervisor for the Toronto Blue Jays. From here, in terms of the chapters to follow, we will head off into my sports-marketing career, which includes multiple stints as a senior-executive for professional indoor soccer franchises (hence the word “Balls” in the title). That’s important, because it was Bill Kentling, the Commissioner of the Major Indoor Soccer League, who got me into racing. There are still many chapters, many pages, and thousands of words left to write, but when I started this in January it was nothing more than an idea and an outline. Right now, it’s more than half of a book.

I haven’t done a snippet in a while, so here’s a new one from the end of Chapter 17. I’d played baseball my whole life. I’d chased the dream until two Major League clubs told me to kindly take my glove and bat, and go away. I’d scouted for four years because the Blue Jays had offered me a job and I took it. I had no idea what I was getting into. Some of it was awesome. A lot of it was not. And as the calendar flipped over to 1983, my final season as a scout, I started to feel like I was in the wrong place.

It struck me that I wasn’t having much fun. I’d consciously elected to go into scouting because it kept me in baseball and it sounded far more enjoyable and rewarding than broadcasting or anything else in the real world. I began to realize I might just possibly have been wrong.

It’s a lonely job, for one thing. You mostly work alone and are on the road for months on end, driving tens of thousands of miles, staying in lousy hotels, and eating terrible food. You see the actual people you work with, as part of your organization, just a few days a year. You run into scouts from other organizations haphazardly, but even that meant very little to me, being the youngest scout in baseball. Most of those guys were my dad’s age while I was still just 26. And you watch an awful lot of bad baseball just to hopefully find a gem hidden here or there in the tall grass.

It was beginning to sink in that maybe, just maybe, I needed to find the next great thing. 

By June of that year I resigned. My sports marketing career re-energized me and took me to places I never dreamed I’d be, both geographically and professionally. In just a few more years I’d be standing at the starting line at Heartland Park Topeka watching Gary Ormsby and Lori Johns match-race in their Top Fuel Dragsters, and nothing would ever be the same again. Still plenty of ups, downs, and challenges for sure, and times when I felt like the failures and tests were going to overcome me, but I never quit. It’s going to be fun to write it all down and finish this monster.

Thanks for following, everyone. And…. GO WILK!!!

Bob Wilber, at your service and typing like a mad man.

Welcome back, on yet another Thursday Blog Day. Here’s what this late-April installment will be mostly about: You gotta play the cards you’re dealt, and recognize the signs. Got that?

So here’s the deal, for parts number one and two of what are two really good things. Heck, they’re absolutely great things.

I played professional baseball for four different teams in three different leagues, back in 1978 and 1979. None of those teams, and none of those leagues, had baseball cards produced for their players. Therefore, for about 36 years I’ve gone through life absolutely certain that my mug has never been featured on any sort of baseball card. That always seemed like a bit of a hole in my life, considering how hard I worked at it, for so many years, just to get a chance to play in the minor leagues.

Today, just about every team in every league, from Class-A Rookie Leagues to Triple-A and the big leagues, has baseball cards and they often are made by two or three different companies. If you play a couple of seasons of low minor-league ball now, you’ll have a stack of those things. Back in the late 70s, not so much. As in not at all.

Then, earlier this week I was writing Chapter 16 of “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” and I came to a point where I needed to do some quick online research. You see, in 1980 I transitioned from being a player to being a professional baseball scout, and my employer, the Toronto Blue Jays, also wanted me to spend a few weeks in Utica, N.Y. after the draft in June. I’d be headed up there to help out as a coach for the Utica Blue Jays in the New York-Penn League, a Class-A circuit mostly made up of players selected just a week earlier in the draft. After being a professional player, and then having just started my professional scouting career, I was going to be able to add “Professional Baseball Coach” to my resume’, and I was really looking forward to it.

I did some Google searches to refresh my memory of the guys on that team, since I was only there about 3 and a half weeks before I had to get back to my full-time scouting job, and as I browsed through the stats and remembered a great many of those players, I also saw a few Google images on the page, and there were black  & white baseball cards among the images. I thought “Well that’s cool, I can put names to faces again and I bet I remember all sorts of stories I haven’t thought of in decades.”

So I clicked on one of the cards, and it took me to a page full of cards, of all the Utica Blue Jays. As I was scanning the screen, remembering some of the guys very well and others basically not at all, I came to a card on the far right of the group. And my jaw, quite literally, fell open. I was speechless, I honestly could not believe my eyes, and the hair on my arms was standing straight up. There, on an official baseball card, was the 24-year-old version of me, in a Blue Jays uniform with a small “chew” of Red Man tobacco in my cheek, smiling like I was still a ballplayer who had the world by the tail.

There is, after all these years of thinking there wasn’t, an honest-to-goodness baseball card of me. I’m still stunned. I had absolutely zero idea the the headshot some nameless photographer took that day would end up on a baseball card. So, after 36 years of assuming I never had one, now I do. I grabbed a screen shot of the card, just to put it on Facebook (and on this blog) and then I went to eBay to see if I could find it there. I assumed there would be no chance of that happening. Of course, I also assumed this card never existed for 36 years, so why wouldn’t I find a full set of 1980 Utica Blue Jays cards for sale? Yahtzee!

I contacted the seller to make sure my card was in the set, and he wrote back and said “Yes, your card is in the set. Are you related to former Major League catcher Del Wilber?” I told him I was, indeed, the youngest son of Big Del Wilber, and I also told him to package that set of cards for shipping, because I was hitting the “Buy It Now” button as soon as I sent my reply. The cards shipped yesterday, so I should have the actual one-and-only Bob Wilber card within a few days.

The only snafu with the card is that the manufacturer made a common mistake all of us in the Wilber family are quite used to. They misspelled my last name as “Wilbur” instead of Wilber. We all deal with that regularly, so much so that when I give my name to someone I always emphasize the “E” when I spell it out. I’ll say “Last name is Wilber, and that’s w-i-l-b-E-r” putting all the emphasis on the E.

It would be better if the card was spelled right, but it’s too cool to even care about that. I have a baseball card. I want to write that again, because I enjoy seeing the words. I HAVE A BASEBALL CARD!

It’s not quite like finding out at 59 that you have a sister or brother you never knew about (I assume) but it’s still awesome and very, very, cool.

So how about that? Sometimes you just gotta play the cards you’re dealt, and I never knew I’d been dealt that card back in 1980. I have, though, long since given up tobacco of any kind. As Barbara Doyle said “That’s a very good thing” and I agree.

And now about the second part of the hint at the top of this installment. You gotta recognize the signs…  I’m not talking about speed-limit signs, or a coach’s signs to steal or bunt. I’m not talking about signs that say “We’re Open” or “No Parking” either. I’m talking about signs that say “For Sale”.

We’ve kept this under wraps for a few weeks, which was very hard to do, but now it’s official and I feel the need to share the news.

We are moving again!

Where, you ask?

Back to….  Wait for it… Drum roll, please…

MINNESOTA!

When we came out here to the Spokane area, we almost bought a condo in downtown but then changed our minds. We found this lovely home out in Liberty Lake, just two short minutes from Barb’s office, and we rented it from a Lieutenant-Colonel in the military who had bought it at the worst possible time and couldn’t sell it when he got transferred to the western side of the state. We figured we’d be here two or three years, and we even signed a two-year lease just to make sure we had a roof over our heads for at least that long. That was four years ago.

The owner has graciously allowed us to keep living here on a month-to-month basis for last two years, and we’ve kept our commitment to him to take care of this place as if we owned it. It’s been a wonderful home, in a wonderful area, and with its steam room and home theater it has some luxuries that are far nicer than any other home we’ve ever owned. It also has million-dollar sunset views, it’s on a golf course, and it’s a gated community where the HOA takes care of the lawn mowing and snow removal. There’s absolutely NOTHING not to like about it. It feels like home.

But it’s not home. And when the Lieutenant-Colonel called me in March and told me that he thought he could finally sell this place without taking a bath on it, he asked me if he could put it on the market. He only asked because he’s that nice of a guy. He easily could’ve said “Sorry, you have to get out.”

It went on the market April 15. We worked our butts off to make everything perfect for the Open House, and we have a good system in place for showings. The agents have to give us 24-hours notice to show the house, because we don’t want people walking through the place if we’re not home but Buster and Boofus are. With the 24-hour notice, we have plenty of time to get organized, get the boyz in their carriers, and take them for a ride while the house is shown. I’ve done that four times now, including the Open House and I’ve been happy to do it in far less than 24 hours. The boyz didn’t like it the first time, but now they’re pros and they go for rides without much squawking. I do feel the obsessive need to vacuum and clean my car every time we get back, though. They shed a little bit when they get nervous. Just a little. Like just enough to build an entirely new cat after an hour in the car.

This week, the selling agent, Joanne (who is a real pro and a very nice person who really loved what we’ve done to the place) got two offers. One of the offers is now under contract.

The other detail we needed to put in place was that no buyer could close before June 1, so that we can stay here until the movers come and load us up to take us back to Minnesota. At the end of the month, we’ll take what we need for a week and move the boyz over to the Residence Inn for a few nights, then we’ll get packed up on May 24, loaded on May 25, and we’ll give the house one more good cleaning when it’s empty before we hit the road on May 26 in the afternoon. We’ll do the same trip we’ve done twice before, when we’ve gone back for the summer, and just drive a few hours to Missoula the first day, then make the long haul to Bismarck on the second day. Then we’ll only have about five or six hours on the third day to get to Woodbury. We should beat the movers there by at least a couple of days.

And yes, we’re moving back to Woodbury. That’s where our friends are, and that’s where are hearts are. We’re not going back to the same neighborhood, though. When we came out here we took it as the final sign that we needed to downsize, despite the fact we lived in a home we loved with zillion-dollar views of the pond and lake. Three levels and 4,900 square feet was just way too much house for two adults and two cats. The new place in Woodbury is much like this house in Liberty Lake, although it’s not on a golf course. It’s a “detached townhome” so it is a stand-alone house, but the HOA cuts the grass, trims the landscaping, and scrapes the snow. All the joys of having a house without some of the headaches.

And coincidentally, a lot of our best friends from the neighborhood, who had kids in school when we moved there, are now empty-nesters looking to downsize, as well. It won’t matter where we all end up living in the Twin Cities, because we’ll all be friends for life.

Earlier today, a home inspector came to tour the house and write up his report for the prospective owners, and I got to meet one of the buyers. The young woman and her husband-to-be are first-time home buyers, and it was great to show her around and point out all of the cool features this house offers. After meeting her, my first words were “You are going to LOVE this house” and I can tell she really will. She was so excited about purchasing her first home, and she made it clear that she and her boyfriend are really thrilled to have landed this place. I feel great knowing it’s going to such great people who will enjoy every square foot of it.

We’ve had the new home back in Minnesota for a little while, and we manage to check on it a couple of times a month since we got it. You wondered why I stopped in the Twin Cities on so many race trips last year, didn’t you? We’ve also been furnishing it bit by bit, as well, because we want the new place to really be new, while we also keep a lot of the stuff we’ve had for a long time and will never get rid of.

We’re still doing a ton of de-cluttering here, and we’ll probably sell some furniture (or give some things away) so that we don’t have to move it back there at all. And man, do we have a lot of stuff here. I remember how much junk we threw out or gave away before we sold the big house in Woodbury, and yet we still have things crammed into cabinets and closets here, as if we’re hoarding this miscellaneous stuff. We have a month to make additional trips to Goodwill, send some stuff to nieces and  nephews, and basically purge until we’re down to just the stuff we really use and only the things we really need. If I can sell the sofa and recliner, and a few other really nice pieces of furniture we’re just not going to need, that will be great too.

As for Barb’s job, the company here is being great and she will continue to work for them in the same capacity, as Vice-President of Investor Relations. She’ll join me in the realm of us cool folks who have a home office, where she will work remotely from Woodbury some of the time, and she’ll commute to spend a few weeks per month back out here, living in either in a corporate apartment or a hotel room.

It’s our next great adventure, and we can’t wait.

And speaking of Barbara Doyle, who is clearly an MVP at her company, today is a big day. It’s her BIRTHDAY!!!

Since her birthday fell on a Thursday, I’m just going to make my new fave dinner of cedar-plank salmon on the grill tonight, but on Saturday we’ll head over to the absolutely fabulous Coeur d’Alene Resort for a night of fantastic dining, at a world-class restaurant called Beverly’s, massages at the spa, and gorgeous views of the lake.  There is likely to be some champagne, as well. Imagine that…

Happy Birthday, Sweetie!!!  I can’t believe you’re finally 30, and I can’t believe how well I did in the marriage and best-friend sweepstakes!

So that’s enough big news for one day, don’tcha think? I have a baseball card, we sold this house for the owners in only a week, we’re moving back to Minnesota where we belong, and it’s Barbara Doyle’s birthday. I’m on overload!

See you next week, everyone.

Bob Wilber, at your service and on a baseball card!

This is going to be a very short blog today. But it’s going to be a hard one to write.

With Thursday being Blog Day, I awoke this morning in one of those moods that can be described as 50% excitement to write something and 50% dread of coming up with a subject out of thin air. There are those days. And then the subject hit me like a concrete block. Today we lost Prince.

It’s been a terrible year for musical legends. I’m still not over David Bowie. I was never a Merle Haggard fan but I knew what he meant to those who were his followers. Glenn Frey was a tough one, too, because The Eagles were such a major part of my high school and college days. I probably saw him play a dozen times, and the odd thing is I was always just a middling Eagles fan. They weren’t exactly “my type” of music, but he was always my favorite member of that band and when they came to town, well, you just went. Because it was The Eagles.

But Prince. This is different.

I’ve been a major Prince fan, and an even bigger appreciator of his work, since “1999″ (the song, not the year.) It was the dawn of the epic MTV era, when everything seemed to be changing so fast and new sounds and approaches were nearly a daily thing. It was also, of course, the dawn of the cable TV era, and MTV was built for that. I’ve always been a huge music fan, so having a channel that did nothing but play these new artists, in video form and 24 hours per day, was right up my alley. I could literally sit in front of the television and watch MTV for hours, like it was a mini-series and I was binge watching before we knew what binge watching was.

When I saw Prince, I was mesmerized. He didn’t look like anyone else. He didn’t play like anyone else. He didn’t write like anyone else. He did things that were as wildly and wonderfully creative as anything I’d ever seen, while he could also be obtuse and clumsy, trying to stretch out into new areas and themes that, perhaps, only he could see.

It was obvious from the beginning that he was a musical prodigy, but what I loved about Prince from the beginning was that he never reacted to popular themes or styles. He never copied anyone. He never wrote or played a song just because he thought it would be popular. He wrote and played what he wanted, and you could tell in his attitude that if you then liked it, that would be fine. If you didn’t, that would be okay also. It helped that he was a marvelous writer and a phenomenal musician. The man could play and the man could sing. And the music he made was peerless.

He was, by the very definition, never a “pop star” because that title describes someone whose sole purpose is to be popular. He didn’t care.

His lifestyle and his partying days were both the stuff of legend, but they never slowed the creative process. His energy was boundless.

He put Minneapolis on the map and made me want to go there decades before I’d finally be fortunate enough to call the Twin Cities home.

Once Barbara and I did get to live there, we developed an all new appreciation of the man, because we were living in the epicenter of the Prince universe. One night, when he had a major concert at Target Center in downtown Minneapolis, he first played a gig in the afternoon, stretching it into the evening. He was a little late to the show in the arena, but his loyal fans were not distressed. They knew they had a magical event waiting for them, and it was just that. After a three-hour raucous concert, Prince headed across the street to First Avenue, and he played some more. He absolutely lived to play his music.

He took on the record companies single-handedly, and in the end he won. He would compose and record a full double-album and simply give it away at his shows, as part of the price of admission. It was all about the music, and all about being fair and being creative. And he would always be true to himself.

After a trip to Maui many years ago, Barbara and I were at the airport there, waiting to fly home. Prince, and a small entourage, walked right by us, having just gotten off a plane. He was, of course, dressed in purple. He had stiletto heels on his boots, and he was still absolutely tiny. It was his music that was huge.

We were fortunate enough to see him play at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul a few years ago. Yes, we got a free CD as part of our admission. The concert was played “in the round” and Prince filled the building with so much energy it was nearly draining for those of us in the audience. I’d frankly never seen anything like it. I still have not.

His movie “Purple Rain” was so awkward and, in many ways, amateurish it was actually precious. I still stop and watch whenever I pass it flipping channels. And yes, the musical scenes in the movie were shot at First Avenue, the venue he would still drop in to play (often in the middle of the night) until recently.

As many people know, I’m mostly a fan of heavy rock. I’ve seen Rush more than 20 times. My favorite channel on SiriusXM is Octane, where I can find Breaking Benjamin, Evans Blue, Chevelle, Seether, Disturbed, Tool, and other artists who take great care in their craft, but who love to play it heavy. I consider it music with guts.

Prince defied all of my musical tastes. That’s why I loved him so much as an artist. We use that term to simply label almost anyone who plays just about anything, but he truly was an artist. His pallet was ingenious and creative music, and his supply of it seemed endless. He was a genius. And his craft was truly music with guts.

Minneapolis is covered in Purple Rain today, and will be for quite some time.

Rest in peace, Prince.

Welcome to Liberty Lake, Washington, where Spring throws more jukes and head-fakes at you than a shifty NFL wide receiver. This past weekend, it was so sunny and warm we had all the windows open, but by mid-afternoon on Sunday it was actually getting hot inside the house. Mark the date. On Sunday, April 16, 2016 we turned on the air conditioning.

Today, it’s not so hot and the AC is not on. We’ve had light rain or mist coming down all morning, with low clouds scudding across the mountain tops in the distance, and it’s 42 degrees. Me thinks that once this system moves out we’ll see new snow at the tops of the hills. And the snowmelt from the winter was all but over this week. Maybe we’ll get a supplemental supply of snowmelt from this.

That snowmelt is an interesting thing around here. When the tops of these small mountains finally do warm up, and the snow melts, it obviously has to go somewhere. That somewhere would be downhill, of course, but eventually the water works its way into Liberty Lake itself, that being the lake not the town, but the latter part of that sentence is true as well, in a way. Did you follow me there?

The water runs downhill and it ends up in the lake. When the water in the lake gets to a certain level, it tips over the edge of a run-off canal that feeds into a long ditch, running north toward the Spokane River. For about 340 days a year, that ditch is bone dry. For a couple of weeks though, during this time of year when the melt is really going, it fills with crystal-clear water and flows rapidly, only a few blocks from where we live.

The ditch carries the water to another retention area, where it then flows into an underground concrete pipe that carries it the two more miles it needs to go in order to reach the river. It’s pretty fascinating to ride our bikes on the trail that borders much of the ditch, and see it absolutely dry one day and absolutely full two days later. Then the next week, bone dry again.

Last year, when it was too warm to snow much, it barely ran as a trickle. This winter was even warmer (the warmest on record), but the winter storms that did roll through as rain here were heavy, wet, snow up in the elevations, so over the hot weekend we had quite a rapid river running in the canal (the fancier word for “ditch”). Yesterday, not a drop.

That entire digression about snowmelt and water runoff was created out of thin air because I wrote about the miserable day we’re having and that it’s probably snowing up there on the peaks. Such is the unmapped style of blogging via a method we call “stream of consciousness.”

It’s a good day for a cup of soup and some writing, though, and since it’s Thursday here I am. As for “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” Chapter 14 is in the can and will get fired off to my editor Greg tomorrow.

Even when I get a chapter done early, I still typically hold it until Friday. One reason is to let it sit for a few days so I can take a fresh look at it one more time before I share it with Greg. It’s amazing what you see or discover when you step away for a bit and then go back. Another is to keep Greg and me on something of a synchronized schedule.

That’s not necessarily an easy thing to accomplish. All I do these days, for a job, is write. Greg not only has a real job, he’s got a very demanding and time-consuming job as the Executive Editor of the Standard-Examiner, which is the newspaper in Ogden, Utah.  There are few jobs that are more repeatedly stressful than newspaper editing.

First of all, the paper has to go out every morning. You can’t say “Well, we don’t have time for this one, so we’ll just skip Wednesday.” The deadlines are hard and strict, and every day you start out with nothing, when it comes to the actual stories and editorial content. I worked on the school paper in college for a few months, and even that little rag drove me to knew lengths of stress on a daily basis. I can’t imagine what Greg’s job is like.

So, I’m on a pace of a chapter per week, and he’s on an editing pace of about a chapter every 10 days or so. Right now, I’m a few chapters ahead of him, so there’s no use in piling on and firing new material at him just to do it. I’ll stick with the weekly pace and we’ll get it done.

I’ve also been trading emails with my contact at Outskirts Press, learning all about the things a new writer never thought of before. The biggest unthought-of hurdle is the need to gain the rights to any images I want to use. Many photos are copyrighted, usually by the photographer and in some cases by the publication that first printed them. Copyrighted images, therefore, can’t be published without permission. Today I got the forms I need to fill out and get signed by the various professionals who have taken photos I hope to use, including the exceptional photographer Mark Rebilas, who shot the cover and some other cool photos I’ll use inside the book. It’s going to be a pain to gather real signatures from so many people, but it’s the only option I have if I want to use the pics. All I really want to do is write, which makes me I think I need an assistant. A good one, who pays lots of attention to detail and has tremendous organizational skills. Who will work for free. That last part is kind of important. Buster would do it, but he’s not exactly that good about emailing things or getting forms signed. He’s exceptional at sleeping and wanting treats, though.

Okay, so Chapter 14. It’s a short one, coming in at only about 5,000 words, which correlates to about 12 pages. I’ve had a couple of monster chapters hit 35 pages, so this one was a quickie. The main reason for that is because Chapter 14 is mostly all about one single important day in my life. The first few pages are a lead-in to that monumental day, and it’s one I’ll not only never forget but can still remember vividly, as if it just happened. It actually happened, though, on September 29, 1979.

Because it’s such a critical chapter with such a great story to tell, I don’t want to give away too much of the material here in snippet form, but I found a couple of paragraphs from the “lead-in” segment that I do want to share and here’s the background on that. My summer, in 1979, was spent in Medford, Oregon where I started off as a hot-hitting outfielder but then got badly hurt. By the end of the summer, much to my complete and unexpected surprise, I was a relief pitcher.

I was getting hitters out, despite the fact I was totally making it up as I went along out there, so when I got back home in September I kept working on it with one of my college roomies, who had been pitching his whole life. He became my de facto pitching coach, and I was making great headway with him. Finally, I asked my dad (whom we all called Skip) to watch me pitch and to give me an honest appraisal of whether or not I could really make this transition at the age of 23. I pitched (pretty well, I thought) while he watched, and then it went like this…

Afterward, Skip was relatively effusive in his praise. Over the years, he’d mastered the art of being diplomatic with his youngest son, in terms of my baseball skills. When I’d get on a hot streak, he’d vociferously praise my hitting. When the hits dried up, he’d try to encourage me and point out some things I could work on. He never once said “Sorry, you just can’t hit.”

On this day, after he’d seen me pitch, he had a look on his face I’d never before seen. He prefaced his remarks with one of his go-to lines, “Well I’ll be go to hell” and then said “You can do this. You need a little more velocity, but more pitching can do that for you. The fastball is nasty, and the curve is coming along. Lance has to keep working with you on the release point for that, so that you’re not telegraphing the curve with a higher release. The only thing I can tell you is that you should work on a change-up. With three pitches, you’ll get a lot of people out.”

I couldn’t help smiling, and I vowed to work on that change-up although I’d already been working on it a little. We didn’t have much time though. It was getting to be late September.

Obviously, as you all know, after that session I went on to a marvelous 18-year Major League career, won the Cy Young Award four times, and now I’m in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Okay, none of that is true. That was just the dream.

And the “Well I’ll be go to hell” line was one of Skip’s favorites. It made no sense, of course, but we knew what he meant. He was also prone to saying someone who was playing well was “hotter than a two-dollar pistol.”

The headline on today’s blog has to do with my current pace and my work toward having the book complete. I can’t be sure if I’m actually halfway to the finish line yet, because I still have so much to write and I never know how long a chapter is going to be until I write it. You’d think I’d be in control of that, but it doesn’t feel like I am. I just write. I try to write all of it, and then we trim from there. If a chapter is meant to be 12 pages, then that’s what it is. If it’s meant to be 35, so be it.

But, I do think I’m about halfway. Maybe I have another three months to go with the writing, hopefully less, and then we get to final production and publication. I’ve felt like I’m ahead of schedule, but looking at it this way I figure I’m about right where I thought I’d be. Maybe I’ll find a way to pick up the pace a little more, as we move forward.

Shifting gears now, I’ll look back fondly on those days of yore when it was warm and sunny here. That would be all the way back to last weekend. Barbara and I have been tackling projects around the house one by one, and I mentioned the carpets and windows in last week’s installment. On Saturday, we decided to spruce up the front of the house with one easy small project. At the corner of our driveway, where it meets the street, we have a little “island” of landscaping, with a small tree, a few rocks, and a brick pillar with a decorative light atop it. We use nuggets of pine bark in our landscaping because they’re heavier than mulch and don’t blow around as much, and that was our Saturday project. We’d buy a few bags of pine-bark and freshen up the little island. And it looked great!

Then, we decided to do a little more.

I went back up to Home Depot and bought 10 more bags, and we started on the south side of the house. We have this landscaping all the way around the house, but we weren’t going to do it all. We’d concentrate on the most visible spots.

On Sunday, we decided to go a little further with it. And I bought 10 more bags. Then 18 more bags. And we kept going. By the end of a very warm sunny day, we’d finished the entire landscaping, all the way around. It was insane, but very rewarding.

As I said to Barb when we were done, “This is just like us. We decided to dress up the little island by the driveway, and before we could stop we’d done the whole house.”

We were a little tired. Just a little. All in all, I think I bought a total of more than 50 bags at Home Depot, and my car can really only hold about 15 in the back, so that was a lot of trips up and back to do that, all while covered in the stuff and soaking wet with sweat.

The last time I checked out and paid for the final car-load, the clerk asked me if I was done and I said “This is that day when you look around your house and think ‘We should’ve landscaped with rocks’ instead of pine bark.”

I didn’t feel the need to go to the gym that afternoon, that’s for sure. Each bag probably weighed about 30 pounds and I had to load them onto a cart, load them into my car, take them out of the car, and carry them around to various parts of the house. My biceps got bigger as the day went on. And my lower back got more sore by the hour.

We’ve also been simplifying the way the interior of the house is decorated, to spruce that up quite a bit and de-clutter a lot. One of the improvements in that regard was moving the two side-by-side cat condos out of the living room.

The rattier one of the two went to the garage to await its eventual fate, and I moved the other one to our bedroom, right in front of the window. The boyz seem to love it there, and now that we’re having a cold and gray day here they’ve been nestled in each other’s arms for hours. If I go in to look at them, all they do is open one eye and then close it again. Good boyz…

Boofus is serene and happy now, but he had a total meltdown the day the guy came to wash all the windows. One of the final things the professional glass-cleaning guy did was take down all the screens and clean them, too, and he had a special gizmo for that all set up in the backyard.

We decided to put the boyz out there in their pop-up hut, so we could all enjoy the sunny afternoon together, and Buster calmly went right in and laid down. Something about the window guy, or the screens, or the gizmo that was cleaning them freaked Boofus out, though.

I was carrying him and he basically went haywire. He was manically trying to get out of my arms and we were having quite a tussle, then he won the fight when his back claws dug into my forearm, fingers, and stomach and I had to let him go. When he got free, he leaped and landed right on three screens that were leaning against a chair. Those screens are now at Ace Hardware being fixed.

He shot around the front of the house and I chased him, but it became immediately clear that he wasn’t going to be caught, and he also wasn’t trying to run away. He just wanted back inside. We got the front door open and he flew in there so fast he was just a little black blur running through the door, to the bedroom, and under the bed. Poor little guy. I don’t know what flipped him out, but we shall most likely never take him outside again when screens are being cleaned! And after applying copious amounts of Hydrogen Peroxide and Neosporin to my slash wounds, I think I have avoided major infections. Those back claws are SHARP!

So that’s about it for this week, I guess. Remember, if you read this blog and liked it, please “LIKE” it by clicking the button. We need those “Likes” here in blog land.

See you again next week.

Bob Wilber, at your service.

It’s Thursday. That’s Blog Day, of course, but it’s also the day I’m having all the carpets in the house professionally cleaned and for the last two hours my feet have been wet. Plus I’m wearing adorable blue “booties” while everything dries. It looks great though! Tomorrow, I’m having the windows professionally cleaned both inside and out, so there’s your guarantee that it will rain on Saturday, right before the apocalyptic dust storm rolls in.

In addition to all of that, Thursday is also a popular day for posting old photos on social media, and since this blog is technically social media, I might as well partake in the thing that is “Throwback Thursday.”

The photo that got me started on this today, is to the right. The guy on the left is my nephew Ewan, and in the pic we are at Hacienda Mexican Restaurant near the old Wilber family home in suburban St. Louis. Ewan was a huge fan of the refried beans there. (And remember, all the photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.)

The photo is noteworthy in many ways, not the least of which is the fact the much younger version of me is wearing a dress shirt and a tie. With that apparel noted, I can narrow this photo down to a couple of brief time periods. It pretty much has to be 1988 or 1989, or conceivably very early 1990.

I only wore ties and jackets to work for a few brief segments of my life. In 1986 or thereabout, I moved to Washington, D.C. to work for my brother Del at his sports-marketing agency. We dressed well for work, so my wardrobe went through a major makeover. After a couple of years in D.C., I was transferred back “home” to work in a new satellite office in St. Louis. So, that’s a possibility, in terms of this photo.

In mid-1989, I then took a job as Vice President of Marketing and Promotions for the St. Louis Storm professional indoor soccer franchise. We wore ties to work there, as well. That’s a good possibility, too, I think. I could easily have met my sister Mary and her family (including Ewan) at Hacienda after work. We all loved that place.

After that, the next time I wore a tie to work was 1991, when I was general manager at Heartland Park Topeka. But that would, of course, have me living in Topeka, so that doesn’t work. Ewan was born in early 1979, so if this is from my St. Louis Storm era, he’d be 10 or 11 years old. If I was working at DelWilber+Associates, he would be more like nine. And for the record, this second photo is what Ewan looks like now (or at least recently) and coincidentally he’s in another restaurant, but this time with his family.

Bottom line…  I’m not really sure but I’d lean a little bit toward 1989-90 and Ewan being 10 or 11 in the photo. Hacienda is still there, by the way, and as far as I know it’s still great. I’m having a Pavlovian Response right now, just thinking about the shredded-beef enchiladas.

After I put the top photo on Facebook today, I started thinking about other old photos and I realized I rarely post any Throwback stuff from days as a “business” guy. There are really only four times I had jobs where I got up in the morning, but on a coat and tie, and went to my office carrying my briefcase. My time with DelWilber+Associates, my one-year stint with the Storm, my year at Heartland Park, and then my two years as general manager of the Kansas City Attack indoor soccer team.

Okay, to be fair maybe it’s 4.5 different times. In midsummer of 1976 I was living in Indianapolis and was persuaded to take over the operations of the Indianapolis Twisters indoor soccer team as their GM, in order to “save the franchise” but I was only there a couple of months before the owner stunned us all by folding the team. He hadn’t told any of us he was going to do that. Do you know why that’s okay, though? Because it caused me to call some cat named Del Worsham to see if I could help him. Things happen for a reason. Had the Twisters’ owner stuck it out, and had I stayed with them, I never would’ve worked for Del and Chuck Worsham and my life would be completely different. I never would’ve written my NHRA.com blog, nor would I have migrated that blog here.

This next segment is not about me, but I think it’s fascinating and it was important to me at the time.

Throwing it back even further, let’s go to the mid-70s when the Spirits of St. Louis were playing in the American Basketball Association (ABA). During their first year of existence, I was simply a big fan. I liked the run-and-gun style of the ABA and the red, white, and blue basketball. They introduced the 3-point shot, as well, and tried all sorts of crazy promotions to entertain the fans. In the pre-Jordan era of the NBA, that league was seen as stodgy and nearly on life-support. It was a different time.

The first winter the Spirits played in St. Louis (1974-75), I was a freshman in college and a devoted fan. I went to a lot of games, down at “the old barn.” The next year, which was also their last, I was an usher at the St. Louis Arena so I likely saw every home game they played.

A brief version of the Spirits history is needed, because of a couple of incredible things.

First, the team was moved to St. Louis from Carolina, where they were the Carolina Cougars. The owners were brothers, Ozzie and Daniel Silna. They wanted to own a basketball team and originally made a run at purchasing the Detroit Pistons, but couldn’t close the deal. So, they looked to the ABA with a good plan.

It was becoming obvious that both leagues needed to stop fighting each other and raiding players, so merger talks were beginning to happen. The Silnas bought the Cougars specifically to move them to St. Louis, expecting the NBA to very much want that market back after the old Hawks had moved to Atlanta in 1968, and if that happened the Silnas would have their spot in the NBA.

The problem was, the NBA only wanted four teams from the ABA, those being the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New York Nets, and San Antonio Spurs. The ABA’s Virginia Squires folded at the end of 1976, as did the Utah Stars, and the Kentucky Colonels and Spirits of St. Louis were scheduled to be bought out by the four teams that would make the move. The Colonels took the cash deal, but the Silnas had other ideas.

At the time, the NBA’s TV revenue was minuscule. So, the Silva brothers banked on the future, and they worked a deal with the four ABA teams and the NBA that would pay them roughly 2 percent of the NBA’s TV revenue, for a long time. A very long time. The contract was written to state the Silnas would get 2 percent of that revenue for as long as the NBA was in business! In legalese that’s “in perpetuity.”

The deal generated almost no revenue for the brothers for the first couple of years, and I’m sure the owners of the Kentucky Colonels felt like they got a much better deal. In 1980, Ozzie and Daniel received about $550,000 which I suspect seemed like a generous windfall to them. Then the NBA went through the roof. By 2010, the two brothers had become very rich men, and were receiving upward of $17.5 million (MILLION!) annually, all for NOT merging into the NBA with the Spirits. There have been numerous discussions about buying the brothers out of this deal, but the money is so enormous now it’s hard for them to even consider such a buy-out.

This deal is roundly considered the single greatest thing of its kind in the history of professional sports. It’s staggering.

And if you never heard of the Spirits, you might be surprised to know how much talent came through that team. Over the course of two years, they had Moses Malone, Marvin Barnes, Maurice Lucas, Don Chaney, Caldwell Jones, M.L. Carr, and many other fine players. They were quite a cast of characters.

Back to the Spirits, though. When the franchise was announced, a very young play-by-play guy from Syracuse University sent a tape to the general manager. It just happened to be at the top of a stack of such auditions, and the GM only listened to that one tape. It was from 22-year old Bob Costas. He got the job. I listened to him call many games, and although he was really just a kid, he was already fantastic.

Sadly, I may have been a huge Spirits fan, but I was part of a very small group. Other than one brief period at the end of their first season, when the upset Dr. J and the Nets in round one of the playoffs with crowds of 10,000+ in the building, their attendance was not very good.

But Ozzie and Daniel Silna are still getting paid. Royally.

In 1991, I moved to Topeka to be the GM at Heartland Park, for Track President Bill Kentling. I knew Bill from indoor soccer, as he had previously been the Commissioner of the Major Indoor Soccer League and we knew each other from those days. I had never seen a race of any kind, in person, on the day I was hired. I had a lot to learn!

As the GM, I was allowed to use one of our pace cars whenever I wanted to, although I also had my own personal car at home. During my time there, I drove two different Chevy Corvettes, one white and one metallic green, when those candy colors were all the rage in the auto industry.

Bill even let me drive it to St. Louis once, to see my folks, and this photo includes my dad, as he checked it out.

Not a bad company car, huh!

Moving on to 1994 through a bit of 1996, when I was the GM of the Kansas City Attack…

The Attack also brought me in to save the day, as they were bleeding cash at an alarming rate, and this time the owner didn’t surprise everyone by folding the team. He let me rebuild the front office and institute some real marketing plans and we did a lot of good things there. It was a ton of fun and great experience, but they didn’t pay me particularly well. My salary was only $30,000 a year, but to help me make ends meet I also had it in my contract that they would provide an apartment and a car, the two biggest expenses most people have. It worked out fine, and for two years I got to drive around in a free Toyota Camry, adorned with the team’s logo on each front door.

Here I am in the driveway of the Wilber house, playing basketball on a day when I had made the drive across the state to see the family, with my FREE CAR in the background.

The apartment wasn’t bad either.

So there you go, more Throwback stuff than you ever wanted to know. Don’t you wish you were Daniel or Ozzie Silna?

Tomorrow, Chapter 13 heads off to my editor Greg Halling, and that means Chapter 14 can’t be far behind. I’m basically half-way to what my original goal was, in terms of pages for “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” so I’m either going to tighten the book up quite a bit with Greg, or go over my perceived limit of 450 pages. Or, I guess I could just leave out a decade of my life and career. Who would notice?

Want a snippet from Chapter 13? Well here it is. It’s about our first road trip when I was a member of the Medford A’s in the Northwest League, and it focuses on Craig Harris, a pitcher who had been the Oakland A’s No. 1 draft pick two years earlier. He had arm problems, though, and was still trying to get healthy and have some success in Class A ball. I present to you, Craig Harris, whom we all called Harry:

———————————————–

And, on that first bus ride we learned two new things.

One, Craig Harris had a boombox and he brought it with him on the bus. He would do so all year, but the only 8-track tape he wanted to play was Carole King’s “Tapestry” album. I could not be more serious. If the only No. 1 draft pick on the team wanted to play Carole King, we were all going to listen to Carole King.

Two, Harry had decided, after years of going by his nickname, that he now wanted to be called Craig, to change his luck. So, of course, no one ever called him anything but Harry. Before long, if anyone asked him a question, such as “Hey Harry, what time is it” he would begin his answer by saying “Craig, man” as in “Craig man, one o’clock.”

———————————————-

There are plenty of stories to tell about a wide variety of funny characters, and it’s been a riot to put it all into words. There are many more words to come, too!

See you all next week…

Bob Wilber, at your service! (Craig, man.)

Welcome back to Thursday Blog Day! Nope, I didn’t make a trip to an NHRA race in the past week, no spring training ballgames, no drives in the mountains, and nothing really noteworthy other than a lot of writing. And that’s a good thing. I’m on fire, hence the headline.

It’s hard to say exactly how many pages I’ve written because a page in Google Docs does not equal a page in a book. My book will be in a 6×9 format, and my research indicated that for book pages of that size, with typical fonts, you average about 450 words per page. To this point, I’ve written a little more than 108,000 words, so we should be right around 240 pages. That’s awesome, but it’s also a bit worrisome.

I really want to keep the book under 500 pages, for what I think are good reasons. 500 pages of anything is a lot, and the heft of a 500-page book might scare a few buyers off, so I’m technically halfway to my target. The problem is, I’m not quite halfway through my life, as the writing goes. I just finished Chapter 12, and at the end of it I turn 23. This summer I’ll be 60, and we still have more than 20 years of drag racing to write about, after my scouting days, my soccer days, and my years doing agency work. You think anyone would notice if I just skipped the years from when I was 30 until I was 38? They were pretty boring.

Nah, I’ll just get a little more efficient with my words. So far, it’s all been childhood, school, and baseball, and those years contain so many rich characters and stories that beg to be told, but once I got out of baseball and started having “real jobs” the routine got a little more mundane. Really? Who the heck am I kidding? I never actually had any real jobs after baseball. The last real job I ever had was when I was an usher at Busch Stadium and the St. Louis Arena during college.

After baseball, I was either giving away Converse Shoes, or working for my brother Del’s sports marketing agency where we consulted with big-time sports leagues, teams, and sponsors, and then after that I was running indoor soccer teams, or… Finally… Working in NHRA Drag Racing. The closest thing to real jobs were the agency work and the soccer teams, because I got up every morning, put on a tie and a jacket, then grabbed my briefcase before going to the office. Once I got to the office, however, my work consisted of selling or managing sponsorships at DelWilber+Associates, or later managing professional sports franchises while trying to win games and championships.  Not exactly “real job” material. I’ve been very fortunate to have a skill set that allowed me to do all that. It’s a good thing I never tried to become a physicist, a finance executive, or a sumo wrestler. Not. My. Skill. Set.

The last few chapters have been great fun to put together, because they’re about my short but fascinating professional baseball career, which somehow took me to four different teams in three different leagues for two different Major League clubs, all in two years. And oh the stories…

Thanks to the magic of the interwebs, I’ve met a fantastic guy named Clinton Riddle, who is not only familiar with the part of the country in which I played my first season of minor league ball, Appalachia in the aptly named Appalachian League, but he’s also a fantastic researcher and writer. I’ll have to meet this guy someday soon, because we have so much in common and a lot of shared history.

As I was writing about my summer playing for the Paintsville Hilanders in the Appy League (ballplayer lingo) we started bouncing names and teams off each other and he’s been coming up with some incredible old newspaper stories through his research. I thought I remembered all of it, each and every day, but with some of the things Clinton is finding I’m sensing neurons reconnecting in my brain and entire new stories and memories fire back to life. Ack, I’m trying to have a bit LESS material. Maybe this book needs to be three actual volumes instead of “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” all stacked together. Just kidding. I think. Yeah, I’m kidding.

Today he sent me a couple of clippings, and one was from a story on the Paintsville club by the Louisville Courier-Journal. I actually remember when the reporter and photographer came to a game, in Johnson City against the Cardinals, and after the season I sent the paper a letter and they were kind enough to send me some photos from that day. It was our final road trip of the season, and after these games in Johnson City, many of us would never see each other again, which is a shame because that Paintsville group was truly a band of very tight brothers. In terms of team chemistry, I don’t think I’ve ever played with a bunch of guys who got along as well and grew as tight as that bunch.

(And remember, you can click on these photos to enlarge them)

Vince Bienek and I have reconnected, and that helps trigger some additional memories as I go. We lived the same experience, but that doesn’t always mean you recall it exactly the same way. There is one thing we can’t help but remember the same way, though, and that’s the fact Vince met a beautiful girl named Mary that summer. She was actually from tiny Paintsville, Kentucky and before the season ended he knew he didn’t want to leave her behind. They got engaged, and then married. When Barbara and I met up with Vince and Mary in Sonoma last summer, it was Mary who came into the restaurant first, and we recognized each other instantly.

Kevin Hickey was the only guy on that team to play in the big leagues, and he did so very well as a relief pitcher with the White Sox. His story is beyond fascinating, but you’ll have to read that lengthy segment after you buy the book (this is what we call “incentivizing” for future sales!) He’s not the only guy to get to the big leagues, though. Catcher Chino Cadahia  played as high as Triple-A, but then he went into managing and coaching, and eventually Chino made to the big show as a coach. What a fabulous and fun guy he was, and he’s now in the front-office for the Kansas City Royals.

And I gave shoes away, ran soccer teams, and then got a lot of rubber on my face and nitro in my sinuses for 20 years after all of that.

I was telling Barbara the other day that one of the most pleasant and unexpected benefits of writing all of this is that it gives me a totally new perspective, and some new appreciation, looking back on the lengthy part of my life that revolved around baseball.

It’s easy to look back at a couple of years in Class-A ball and consider myself a failure, especially in comparison to what my father accomplished in the game. Once you drape that big heavy blanket named “Failure” all over your memories, it’s hard to see all the positive things you did accomplish and how close you were to reaching the highest pinnacle of your dreams. I wasn’t that bad. Heck, I was actually pretty good.

I got a college scholarship out of the game, and that allowed me to get my degree. I got a chance to play professionally, and that was a dream. I battled some injuries the whole time I was in the pros, but I managed a few “highlight moments” despite that, hitting a grand slam against a guy who was throwing about 95 mph, stroking a walk-off hit in extra-innings to beat Jesse Orosco of the Twins, and robbing a few guys of home runs with leaping catches at the wall. I struck out my fair share, and had some slumps, but we all need to remind ourselves that a lot of the guys who “only” failed 70% of the time at the plate for any length of time, ended up in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Hitting a pitched baseball and somehow getting it to land out there where no one catches it, is the single most difficult thing in sports. You know the line. You have a round bat and a round ball, and you have to hit it square. It’s hard to do.

So next up is Chapter 13 and it is about another big seismic shift in my baseball career with a fairly heinous injury thrown in for good measure. I still have the scar…  I need to let Chapter 12 rest for a day, then I’ll take a new look at it tomorrow before firing it off to Greg, my editor. If I have any mental and physical energy left in me, I imagine I’ll get going on Chapter 13 before the weekend starts.

And that point about physical energy is a real component when you’re writing this much. Chapter 12 was 33,000 words and at one point I sat here writing it, nonstop, for roughly five hours. I’d heard from many writers that you have to put limits on yourself, and there’s only so much writing you can do in a day. That big day for me was one where my brain was truly on fire, and I simply wanted to keep going. After about 4 hours though, the physical side was nagging me and hinting to me that I needed to slow down. My neck hurt, my fingers were getting tired, and most noticeably my typing was getting worse. I sort of limped to a predetermined finishing point and closed the lap top. When you see a sentence appear on the screen and 10 out of the 12 words are misspelled, it’s time to take a break.

That break was easy to take yesterday, because Barbara was flying down to Phoenix and I promised to give her a ride to the airport. When I got home, I broke my string of consecutive days with long walks to do something I hadn’t done for many months. I got my Trek bike out and went for a six-mile spin around Liberty Lake on a beautiful spring day. When all you do is ride 40 minutes but get off the bike with a sore butt and wobbly legs, that’s generally a sign that it’s the first ride of the year. Nailed it.

Oh, and while I’ve been writing this blog I’ve also been corresponding with Todd Myers, my esteemed and very talented graphic artist who is doing the cover for “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts.” We’ve been using a draft image of what Todd came up with for a few months now, but neither one of us was 100% sold on the graphics for the word “Balls” and we let it lay there for a while in the hope a new direction would finally present itself. It did, and Todd created the best thing yet, today. I’ll be changing the Facebook page and using this new cover from this point forward.

We tried literal soccer ball marks, abstract ones, and everything in-between and I could sense that collectively, between the two of us, we had to both be furrowing our brows with every new rendition. This one found the middle ground that says “soccer” without actually looking like a soccer ball. Great work Todd!

And, speaking of book covers, the big news this week was the finalizing of an agreement with Outskirts Press to be my official publisher. Thrilled to get that step behind me.

I’d done a lot of research on self-publishing, and the pitfalls are many. Some of these firms are really nothing more than commercial printers, and they need you to do ALL the work. Heck, I read one company’s website and they even want their writers to submit the manuscript as a PDF! That’s insane. That’s also a surefire way to make your book look like it was produced during Amateur Hour at an elementary school.

Others are totally online companies and you may end up with a beautiful product but you never speak to a human throughout the process. That wasn’t for me, either.

Outskirts Press is different. They’ve developed a really neat niche for themselves, and their approach is to partner with the writer, not just print the writer’s book. I won’t make as much, per copy, as I would with most other publishers, but it will be in the best interest of Outskirts Press to market and promote the book, because they’ll make more money that way. The fee I am paying them is minuscule compared to many other self-publishing firms, but they’ll make a nice slice of every copy we sell, and so will I.

Once we’re done, you’ll be able to go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble’s website and order the book there. You can get it in print or you’ll be able to download it digitally for your Kindle or other device. I’m very excited about getting it out there, and I’ll be spending most of the money we raised on Kickstarter to buy as many copies as I can, so that I can sell them directly and also do book signings, hopefully at some NHRA races but I haven’t even thought of the process for doing that. Apparently I can’t multitask everything at once.

That does bring to mind a title for another book I could write. I’d call it “The Procrastinator’s Guide” with a subtitle of “You Can Read This Tomorrow If You Want”  That has best-seller written all over it.

I guess that’s it for today. I hope everyone has a great weekend and to all the racers and fans in Las Vegas for this weekend’s race, I say “Good luck. Go Fast. Be Safe!”

Bob Wilber, at your service.

Well that was a week to remember. It was a crazy whirlwind of airplanes, rental cars, hotel rooms, turnpikes, toll roads, insane traffic, and it was nonstop, but it was also invigorating and heartwarming to be around so many good friends and family members. I’m back in Spokane now, on Thursday Blog Day, and it feels like I’ve been gone a month. When I got home very late last night, I think Buster was telling me he thought I’d been gone a month, as well.

Adding in the overnight layovers in the Twin Cities makes the trip, effectively, two days longer but it’s a much better way to go. If I had tried to get from Spokane to Tampa in one day, we’d be talking about a 6:00 a.m. departure out of here and I’d be lucky to be in Tampa by 8:00 p.m. It’s no fun.

So, on Thursday I flew to MSP and spent the night in Woodbury. Sometimes it’s the little things that make you feel really “at home” and just flipping on the TV and seeing familiar faces on the news, or familiar uniforms on the ice or court, is a sort of soothing balm for a guy like me. We’ve made the most of our time out here in the Inland Northwest, and we’ve seen parts of the country we’d never ventured to before, but we love Minnesota and there’s a big piece of us missing when we’re not there. It’s always good to be back.

I had a midday flight the next day, from MSP down to Tampa, and I got the added bonus of having a fully refurbished 757 as the aircraft, with all the in-seat entertainment goodies. Unfortunately, it was cloudy almost all the way there so I didn’t get to enjoy spotting familiar towns and rivers as we cruised at 33,000 feet. Whenever I’m flying over the midwest, I always sit in a window seat because I really enjoy seeing towns I’ve been to or even places I’ve lived. Mentally, I’m a pretty “map oriented” guy and it’s easier for me to see the big overhead picture than it sometimes is when I’m down there on the ground, like a rat in a maze. With the entertainment system, at least I could mess around with that and pass the nearly three hours, until we made our descent into Tampa Bay.

There’s something wonderful about that first step off the plane when you’ve just dealt with a long cold winter and the plane you’re stepping off of is in Florida. The warmth, the humidity, even the smell of the Gulf of Mexico can find their way into that jet bridge and your entire perspective immediately changes. We spent so many family vacations going to spring training with my dad, and the weather is a direct link to those younger and simpler years. To simply take that first step and realize it’s spring and this is Florida, puts me in a time warp. I tried to soak it in a little more, to make the most out of this trip.

I still had to make my way up to Ocala, however, so as rapidly as I could I got my bag, picked out a car, and hit the road. Every time I make that drive (and I’ve done it a number of times when attending the Gatornationals) I quickly realize I’ve forgotten two things. 1) Ocala is farther away than I remembered. 2) Drivers on the major highways in Florida are, well, basically, kinda…  How do I say this politely? They’re insane. As I told a number of people while I was there, I think Florida could save a lot of money by simply removing the speed-limit signs from all the highways. They’re certainly not obeyed, and they’re really not even treated as anything approaching a suggestion or a guideline. And then you mix in the snowbirds who are doing 10 mph BELOW the posted limit, and you have a spread of about 40 mph between the fastest and slowest cars. Hence, there are wrecks all over the place, and those wrecks back up the traffic, which then begets more wrecks. It’s bumper cars. I felt very relieved when I turned my car back in on Monday night without so much as a ding in it.

And that raises another point. I’ve always been a good driver, and I’m normally pretty alert and aware of what other drivers are doing around me, but my awareness hit a new level after the broadside smash I received last fall in Indy, and it’s still at that hyper-alert level. Once someone you never saw coming plows into the side of your car and totals it, you tend to watch a little more closely, and keep a sharper eye out for numbskulls doing stupid thing. In a place like Florida, on those highways, that’s a lot of people to look out for.

I did get to Ocala, got checked into the Hilton, and relaxed with thoughts of the Gatornationals spinning in my head. It was a really weird and surreal thing. For the first time in 20 years, I’d be arriving in Gainesville with no work to do, no team to represent, and no real plan for my day, so I was excited, but a bit anxious as well. I’m a creature of habits and routines, especially when it comes to the races, so not having any habits or routines in place for this sort of thing was slightly off-putting. And then there’s the whole nonsensical worry that you won’t fit in or you’ll feel like an outsider. As I sat there in my room in Friday night, I was consciously aware that such a worry was just plain dumb, but I still couldn’t quite get it out of my mind. After all, to me it seemed like my last official race was eons ago (it was, indeed, if by eons you mean roughly four months) but in terms of the new season, Gainesville is only the third race. To all of my colleagues, it hadn’t really been “that long” since I last pestered them.

It got weirder in the morning, driving up to Gainesville on a Saturday, and not at the crack of dawn but at whatever time I chose. And, it was raining a little bit so that made the whole thing a little more casual. I was in a real hurry to get there, but I was in no hurry to get there. Does that make any sense?

As I approached Gainesville I was still considering which route I’d take to get to the track, and then I saw the traffic on I-75 backed up on the shoulder for a half-mile at the exit most people take to get to there. It is indeed the shortest and most direct route for anyone coming up from the south, but it’s full of frustrating backups and stoplights, so I put that precious local knowledge to work and picked my way through a longer but quicker course. When you’ve been going to a race for 20 years, and have stayed in hotels all over town, you establish quite a good database of alternate routes. I didn’t see any traffic until I made the final turn for the track.

Then I had to do something I haven’t had to do for two decades. I had to stop at the NHRA VIP Credentials trailer to get my ticket and parking pass. The Media Relations department had me all set up, and I hit it just right with no other interlopers in line. Badda boom, badda bing. All that was left to do was get parked and head in.

Since the Media Parking lot is right behind the tower, I headed up to the third floor Media Center immediately. Not all of my former colleagues were there at that precise moment, but we started out the day right with a lot of hugs and hearty handshakes. It felt like I’d never left, but it also felt very liberating to know that my visit was strictly informal. I was just there to have fun.

I put my stuff neatly away in a corner and made the plunge to head out into the pits. Walking up the staging lanes, the most amazing “how could that possibly really happen?” moment did, indeed, occur. With a bit of mist falling, there were no cars or people in the lanes except for me and a guy riding a wheelie on his powder-blue BMX bike, all the way down the lane right at me. Two decades ago, as I started this career in drag racing, my boss was doing the same thing. And in Gainesville, in 2016, he rode right up to me and said “Bob, what are you doin’ man?”  Really, could it be any more “full circle” than to run into Del Worsham on his bike, riding a wheelie, before I saw any other racers. I think that was meant to be.

I wasn’t sure where the Team Wilk pit area was, so I just headed into the middle area to find it. As I was walking down the center of the pits, I heard and sensed the approach of a scooter coming up behind me, and as it passed I felt the pop of an open hand smacking me on the butt. And then Ron Capps kept on riding without so much as a look back. Sometimes life can be pretty perfect. I was definitely home again.

When I got to the pit, I spotted Shelley Williams from LRS first, at the front door to the hospitality center, and we shared a huge hug. Then I walked around to get into the working pit side and as I made the turn to do so Krista Wilkerson and I almost plowed right into each other. I’m not sure how I can even describe how great it was to see her and to receive one of the strongest and longest hugs I’ve ever gotten. Over these years, Krista and I have become really close friends, and we still talk almost every week on the phone. I don’t have to guess and nor do I have to exaggerate to say that she’s one of my best and closest friends on the entire tour. It could not have felt better.

The next hour was spent reconnecting, shaking hands, hanging with Tim in the lounge for a bit, and just kind of getting my feet back on the ground. It was surreal for a while, then just odd, then it felt pretty normal, especially since we were in a rain delay and everyone had time to just relax and catch up. For once, a light rain actually worked in my favor.

Within an hour, it was as if I’d never left. To make it better, once I went back up to the tower everyone was there, and I had plenty of time to bring everyone up to speed on what I was doing and how it was going. I could tell they were all really happy to hear that the book is going so well. That meant a lot to me.

Kelly Topolinski was also there, and since the media member whose name tag was on the desk right next to her was not in attendance on Saturday, I got to sit there for most of the day. We motivate each other, and always share our latest ideas, concepts, and accomplishments. And our frustrations too, but both of us are pretty good at keeping those to a minimum. Life’s too short for negativity.

Dick Levi arrived midday, and it was really a highlight for me to spend a few minutes with him. Of all the people in this sport who care so much about it, and who invest so heavily in it, there is no better person than Dick Levi. There are some others with hearts equally made of gold and all the right intentions (Terry Chandler instantly comes to mind) but Dick is right there with the best. I made sure I took the time to seek him out later before I left, and I hope to see him and the rest of the LRS gang in Joliet and St. Louis.

I walked miles, I shook a thousand hands, I met up with longtime blog readers and fans, and I cruised the pits with a big old goofy grin on my face. It couldn’t have been more fun.

Once the final session was getting ready to happen, I said my goodbyes in the pits and headed back to the tower one more time. When I let everyone know that I was getting ready to go, Sadie Floyd jumped up from her chair in the second row while she said “I’m starting the hug train. Here we come…”  More hugs all around.

These people in the PR room are really some of the best and most dedicated individuals I’ve ever had the privilege to know. And even though I’m technically an outsider now, there’s not a single “work room” in the world where I could be surrounded by 25 or 30 folks who feel more like family to me.  Yes, even that Elon Werner dude. My brother from another mother.

It was a day that was good for the soul. Very good.

I headed back to Ocala for the night, and then in the morning it was off to Orlando to see Barb’s sister Kitty, her son Todd, and his wife Angie. Todd and Angie are expecting twins soon, so it was great timing on my part to be able to get there and see them. They live right in the city and frankly I have to tell you that I had no idea the city of Orlando was so cosmopolitan and hip. I thought it was just a big antiseptic urban jungle in the shadow of Disney World, but it’s actually a vibrant place with many blocks of bistros and coffee shops. We had lunch at one such place, and then it was time for me to make the next big drive, down to Punta Gorda near Fort Myers, amid many more knucklehead drivers attempting to demolish every car on the interstate. Great to see Kitty, Todd, and Angie, though, and I’m really happy I had the chance to do that.

One other comment about Orlando. In the city, it’s pretty easy to see that the citizenry is nuts about their new Major League Soccer franchise, Orlando City SC. Banners, bumperstickers, window decals, jerseys, and all sort of Orlando City merchandise wherever you look. For an old ex-soccer guy like me, that makes the hair on my arms stand up a little. Goosebumps.

On my way down to Punta Gorda I did make one detour on the way. I was on I-4 headed toward Tampa and I needed gas for the rental, so I chose to do that in Lakeland, and for good reason. 37 years ago, at just around this time of year, I arrived in Lakeland to participate in spring training with the Detroit Tigers organization, at the venerable Tiger Town complex. All my life I’d been going to spring training, watching it all happen, but on that day when I pulled my little red Ford Fiesta into Tiger Town, loaded down with all of my clothes, gear, and bats, I was there for real. It’s a moment I’ll never forget, so I wanted to do a quick fly-bay of Joker Marchant Stadium and the Tiger Town area just to see it all. It was a bit after 4:00 when I got there and I figured if the big league Tigers had a game that day, hopefully it would be over so I could look around. Instead, it was just about to end and the State Troopers were out in force with lights on, getting ready to manage the outgoing traffic flow. Such a thing pretty much precluded me from being able to see where I’d played, but I decided then to see if I could find my way directly to the apartment I’d shared that year with Roy Dixon and Dan O’Connor, two other members of the Lakeland Tigers in the Class-A Florida State League.

I went right to it like I’d done it yesterday. And the place looked nice! I’d been by there 10 or so years ago and it was really rundown, but this time it was all freshly painted and the cars parked there even looked nicer. Well played, landlord person.

I had decided to stop in Punta Gorda because there was a nice hotel there, not far off the interstate and right on the water. After another harrowing trip on Florida highways, it was good medicine to smell the salt water and feel the tropical breeze, but sadly some clouds rolled in just when I thought I was going to enjoy a brilliant Gulf Coast sunset. I left my sliding door open to allow the breeze into my room, and I smiled a lot thinking back on the fantastic couple of days I’d just enjoyed. Sublime would be a good word for it.

The next morning, I made the 30-minute drive down to Hammond Stadium and, as we would almost certainly do, John Fink and I arrived within mere seconds of each other, coming from different directions. John is one of those rare friends you can have where no matter how much time passes between your visits, it’s as if you were together the day before. I relish those kinds of friendships, and ours is a great one.

We at hot dogs, guzzled water, sat in our seats for a bit, and then walked all the way around the ballpark a couple of times, just soaking up spring training and the uniquely wonderful ambience it has. Before we even went into the park, I stopped outside of the stadium and just stared at if for a bit. I wanted to really take my time to appreciate it all and not just “go to a ball game” like I’ve been doing my whole life. There is nothing like spring training, and the Twins fans flock to Fort Myers in record numbers for every game. The family sitting next to us were from Oakdale, Minn. They lived roughly five minutes from our old house in Woodbury. Smallish world…

Over the last couple of years, the Twins and Lee County have embarked on a huge renovation of Hammond Stadium, and while it was always a good and serviceable spring home, it’s now a true gem. They’ve added a boardwalk that completely circles the outfield, widened all the concourses, put in new seats, and totally upgraded the concessions. During the game, any fan can do what John and I did and just casually walk all the way around in a big loop, catching the action from different perspectives.

I hated to see it end, but once the Twins and the Pirates started pulling out their starters around the fifth inning, John and I said our goodbyes and got back in our cars. I drove up to Tampa Airport, turned in my car (with nary a ding nor a dent to be seen) and checked into the Marriott inside the airport. In the morning, I flew back to MSP.

My original ticket had me arriving in the Twin Cities around 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, and then leaving again at 11:00 in the morning the next day, but that meant I’d really only be there long enough to sleep, so I changed the final segment to an 8:00 p.m. departure. Seemed like a really good idea, at the time.

And then the weather forecast changed. In the morning, when I would’ve been getting up and heading to MSP for my original flight, the weather was just fine. It wasn’t technically spiffy, but it was fine. By noon, it started snowing. And it kept snowing. A lot.

Once 3:00 rolled around, the roads were getting pretty treacherous, and even though my flight was still five hours away, I figured the best thing I could do was get back there to the airport before it got far too tricky to drive. I had full confidence in the snow crew at MSP (they can handle anything) but not as much confidence in my fellow drivers.

I got my first taste of how bad it was as I approached a stop sign on gentle downhill grade, and by just barely touching the brake pedal I activated the anti-lock system. With my foot down and the brakes chattering, I took a full accounting of my options as I continued to slide, and the best option seemed to be steering gently back and forth to find deeper snow and get off the compacted icy stuff I was on. That worked, and my car came to a gentle stop right at the sign. Just like I planned it! From then on, two hands on the wheel and no speed faster than what the car could handle. What’s normally a 20-minute drive to MSP became a 90-minute crawl, never going more than 30 mph, even on I-494 where fortunately the cars around me were being operated and controlled by Minnesotans, who have done this thing a time or two. Everyone went slow, and no one crashed into anything.

I got through TSA still having four hours to kill, or at least three and half before boarding, so I headed for the Sky Club. And got my first “ping” on my phone that the flight was delayed 50 minutes. And then another 20 minutes. The aircraft was at the gate, but the pilots for said aircraft were still in Grand Rapids, Mich. and they were snowed-in there. A long day was rapidly becoming a much longer one…

While in the club, I got online and saw the news that Joe Garagiola had died at the age of 90. Joe meant a lot to millions of people, and to many his voice is the one they associate with Saturday afternoon baseball, the only live game you could see all week. Joe was also a lifelong friend of the Wilber family. A dear and trusted friend.

My dad and Joe played on the Cardinals together in the mid-40s, and both were catchers. Joe had the good fortune to play for his home-town team, since he was born and raised on The Hill in south St. Louis, and he grew up there with another famous catcher, Yogi Berra. Later in life, Joe would laughingly say “I wasn’t the best catcher in the big leagues. Heck, I wasn’t the best catcher on my street!”

It really doesn’t matter what kind of catcher Joe Garagiola was. His stats mean nothing to me. It was his presence and his joyous outlook on life that will always define him. And the care he took with all around him, whether it be a teammate or the usher in the stands. He treated everyone like a VIP, and when my father needed assistance getting into a specific nursing home in Florida, before he passed away, it was Joe Garagiola who helped make it happen, with his Baseball Assistance Team (BAT) Foundation. A true friend.

While I was in the Sky Club, my nephew Ewan found this old photo and posted it on Facebook. Just two catchers, at spring training. Two good guys. Two real friends. Rest in peace, Joe. You lived one incredible life.

Finally, at around 8:00 I headed for the gate and the agents there were doing the best they could to make it bearable. They brought in snacks and drinks and kept everyone up to date on the details. Once we learned the pilots had taken off from Grand Rapids, there were cheers all-around. In all, with the delays and needing to get de-iced, we finally took off around 10:00 p.m.

I walked in the door here, in Liberty Lake, around midnight. It had been a long, fruitful, and wonderful week. It was simply capped off by some travel woes no one can avoid. When late-March storms hit the upper midwest, it truly is March Madness. And now it’s time to wrap this up.

From Liberty Lake, Wash. I bid you adieu once again. See you next week! And, as always, if you read this blog and you liked it, then please “Like” it before you leave!

Bob Wilber, at your service.

Welcome aboard Delta 1484, heading eastbound to Minneapolis-St. Paul. We are traveling together in seat 2-D, and in moments I’ll have to take a break when the standard hot turkey sandwich on wheat bread arrives. To avoid as many empty calories as possible, I usually open the sandwich and fold over the turkey so it’s all on one side, then chop off the other half of the bread. These tricks for airline food are offered free of charge, but I’m going to have to bill you $25 for that bag you brought with you. And please bring your seat-back to its original upright position.

Well that didn’t take long. Sandwich has arrived. Back in a few… Talk amongst yourselves!

Okay, that was delicious, if by delicious you mean “it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve eaten since the grade-school cafeteria.” All done now.

We should get in at MSP a little early because we had the benefit of a west-to-east takeoff out of GEG. The prevailing winds in Spokane are typically out of the west or south, so you usually have to take off to the west and the loop back to head east. Head East?

Remember them? Back in the 70s they had the hit song “Never Been Any Reason” and after they played the outdoor festival at my college, as a warm-up act, the student newspaper gave them one of the more direct and concise reviews ever. It was “As for the opening act, Head East, I suspect they probably should. That would be best for all involved.”

How many of you have been around long enough to remember those golden blog days of yesteryear, when I not only worked for the Worshams and the CSK team, but I also had my own luxury office in the hospitality trailer? Ah yes, I was a popular guy then. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact my office had, by far, the best AC in the pit. Maybe in the entire pro pit area. You could hang meat in there. But I know, deep in my heart, that all the frequent visitors I had in there were only present thanks to my magnetic personality. And maybe a little cool air. Just a little.

Anyway, back then I had an Apple iPod speaker set-up, and would not only crank my fave tunes all day, I’d often report on what was playing when I’d write a blog. Were there really blogs that long ago? And an internet? Hard to believe.

Today, I have my Bose headphones on, in lieu of a speaker boom-box here on the plane, and I have the volume turned up to 11 as I rock (and blog) my way across the upper tier of the lower 48. So…

Now playing: “Face To The Floor” by Chevelle. I thought it was a great song even before I saw the lyrics, and even before I heard one of the band members on Sirius-XM Radio telling the story about how that song is actually about the infamous Bernie Madoff, he of the notorious Ponzi scheme that cost a lot of people an enormous amount of money. That took it to a level I rarely reach with music. So there.

I’ll only be in Woodbury for one short night, and then I’m off to Tampa in the late morning tomorrow. From there, a not-too-long drive up to Ocala, where I have a hotel room waiting for me. Ocala is just far enough away from Gainesville to not have ridiculous hotel prices or those famous G’ville “minimum stay” requirements. I wouldn’t want to stay there for all four nights of a race, although we have stayed that far away from various tracks over the years, but since I’m only going to the track for Saturday it’s a good deal. I can stay at the Hilton for about half what I’d pay for the Best Western in Gainesville, and without the three-night minimum. Slam dunk.

Getting back to “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” I have all sorts of good vibes going now. Chapter 10 went to my esteemed editor a few days ago, and yesterday I sat down first thing in the morning and, instead of taking it slow until the writing gears engaged, I dove right into the deep-end on Chapter 11. It’s now at 8 pages with probably another 8 to write, and it’s been huge fun to get into so far.

In the interest of short snippets, I shall introduce this one, which was written this morning. In our later college years, we had a routine of favorite nightspots to hit on specific nights, mostly because they offered SIU-Edwardsville students a special on a certain night of the week and we were suckers for saving what little money we had.

On Thursday nights, we always went to a bar on Main Street in Edwardsville called Spanky’s. There was nothing noteworthy about it, other than the fact that on Thursday night it was so overcrowded with SIUE students I’m honestly flabbergasted the Fire Marshall never did anything in a legal “throw some of us out” sense. We flippantly use the term “wall to wall” far too easily. On Thursday nights, it was truly wall to wall. Packed. It was ridiculous, but there was a reason. It was “Dollar Pitcher or Dime Draft Night.” It was a neat thing and it happened every Thursday night, without fail and no matter the weather.

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It was packed, and by packed I mean wall-to-wall in the most literal sense. You could spot a buddy 15-feet away and it would take you both 15 minutes to wade through the crowd and meet halfway, but the benefit of Thursday nights at Spanky’s was the communal feel to it. We all seemed to know each other, with the baseball, basketball, wrestling, and soccer teams frequenting the place, along with other students, cheerleaders, and reporters from the school paper. It was an unofficial but quite steady weekly gathering of good friends.

The most interesting dynamic about Spanky’s was that it just happened. There was no live music, and only a couple of pool tables and a Foosball table in the back room for entertainment. We all just showed up and had fun. And when we won the Flag Football Championship and had our team photo taken after the game, in our Spanky’s jerseys, they proudly framed and displayed it. We thought that was off-the-hook cool.

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I’m sure every college town had its version of Spanky’s, but in my lifetime it was a truly unique and wonderful place. Just plain fun. And one night, we had a celebrity in our midst there. Donny Most, who played Ralph Malph on “Happy Days.” I never did hear why he was there, but he was and he held court in one corner of the little place until closing time. Seemed every bit as much of a nice guy as his TV character.

Now playing: “Bat Country” by Avenged Sevenfold (or A-7X, as the cool kids refer to them). It’s one of the most high-energy manic rock songs I’ve ever heard. You literally feel like you’re on a roller coaster when listening to it, and that’s mostly due to the other-worldly drum work of The Rev, may you rest in peace James Owen Sullivan.

And here’s the next bit of almost-ready-to-announce Big News for the book. I am 99.99% sure I have the publisher I want. More details as soon as things are signed on the dotted line, but I’ve done my research on these people and they have a great reputation. I will have my own personal Publishing Advisor I can actually talk to on the phone or email directly, and they think they can go from manuscript submission to printed copies in about three months. The only reason I haven’t signed the deal is because of this trip.

I was speaking to the guy there yesterday, and the more he heard about my story and the book the more excited he was getting. When I mentioned the history of the blog, how many readers I have, and the incredible success of the Kickstarter campaign, I couldn’t help but directly feel how excited he was about it, because it got me all amped up, too.

When the book comes out, it will be available on Amazon and a slew of other online sales sites, and you’ll be able to buy it in printed paperback form or as a digital version for your Kindle or Nook. I’ll get a nice royalty for every one of those sold, and the money from Kickstarter is going to go a long way toward buying crates of these things to have in my own possession. I plan to do book signings wherever I can, once I have them in my hands. Can I wait?  I can’t wait.

Now playing: “Simple Design” by Breaking Benjamin. Great song, by a band and a front man (the dark and mysterious Ben Burnley) who consistently take the care to add those little extras and flourishes in a song to make it special.

I should always write a blog when I’m flying. This makes  the time fly! (See what I did there?)

More good news…  I’ve been excited to see everyone in Gainesville for months, but I just discovered this week that Kelly Topolinski is also going to be there. That’s epic goodness. Kelly is my soul sister who left the sport the same time I did to tackle her writing dreams, and she’s all-in just like I am. More “can’t wait” epic spectacularnous. How come spell-check doesn’t like spectacularness? I just made it up, but it’s a great word

I posted on Facebook that I’m expecting my former PR colleagues to take care of the cruddy weather they’re having down there before I arrive. I expect Elon Werner to gather the troops and make that happen. Terry Blount, Pat Caporali, Sadie Floyd, Nicole Erickson, and everyone else, get to work!

Now playing: “Forty Six and Two” by Tool. If you want to see a stunningly wonderful video, just search for “Kids playing Tool” on YouTube and then click on this song. The group of kids all attend an extremely advanced music academy, from what I understand, and they’re absolutely phenomenally wonderful. Barbara doesn’t even like Tool and she was mesmerized by their playing.

So…  We’re all somewhere over North Dakota right now. It’s pretty cloudy, so there’s not much to see. Guess I might as well wrap this up.

The next edition of Bob’s Blog will have a lot more photos in it, and it will also probably set a new standard for length since the move here. Even if the wet weather continues, I’ll have a great day seeing so many good friends and valued colleagues. And then on Monday it’s down to Fort Myers to see the Twins play the Pirates at Hammond Stadium, with my dear friend John Fink. Can I wait? Of course not. I can’t wait.

See you in a week! We’re beginning out descent and I don’t want to get “that look” from the flight attendant by still having my laptop out when I shouldn’t.

And remember one thing. We love “likes” on the blog, so if you read it and you like it, then “Like” it too! 🙂

Bob Wilber, at your service from 33,000 feet.

A little more than a week ago I mentioned, to the young lady giving me a haircut, that I hoped I wasn’t jinxing us but I was pretty sure spring had actually sprung out here in scenic Liberty Lake, Wash. We’d broken the standard winter-long string of gray and gloomy days, the clouds had lifted, the mountains were clearly visible, and we even had some heavy spring rains instead of the incessant fog, smog, and gunk. It sure felt like spring…

Consider me the jinx. We’re not back to winter by any means, but we are back to a string of gloomy days with a lot of rain. Which brings to mind the gag from childhood that went “If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?” The answer, of course, was “Pilgrims”. That always got big laughs in the fourth-grade classroom. I’m here all night. Remember to tip your bartenders and waitresses.

Anyway, we’re stuck in an Inland Northwest rut of overcast skies, afternoon drizzle, and even a few showers from time to time, and that’s just making me want to get to Gainesville all the more. One week from today I’ll fly from Spokane to Minneapolis-St. Paul, then I’ll spend the night in Woodbury before getting on my Friday flight to Tampa. From there, an evening drive up to Ocala to spend Friday night before getting up early on Saturday to spend the entire day at the track in Gainesville. I can’t wait. And, spending the night in Woodbury means I split a very long trip into two just normally long segments. The only  way to travel farther in the continental United States would be to fly to Miami, instead of Tampa, so stopping in the Twin Cities in each direction is a fine way to make me less weary. Or at least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. A week from today, I also may need to get the laptop out on the plane if I want to hit my Thursday Blog Day deadline. I can do that.

And, a week from Monday I’ll be at Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers to watch the Twins play the Pirates in a spring training game, with my good friend John Fink. Win Twins! Photos will be taken, and I’m looking forward to getting back to Hammond Stadium to see all the updates and renovations they’ve made since the last time Finkster and I attended a game. Now, the entire main grandstand is made up of individual stadium seats, so no more bleachers and sore backs for us! Hot dogs and peanuts are probably a sure bet, too.

Speaking (writing) of spring, I can’t believe this weekend is the start of Daylight Saving Time. I’m also relieved it’s not next weekend, since the loss of an hour of sleep when attending a race is usually not a good thing. In the fall, when we go back to standard time, it’s usually on the Saturday night nearest Halloween, and that was unanimously appreciated by all of us in college. We were big into Halloween parties, and having an extra hour of sleep after such a soiree was always a plus. My best costume in college? My junior year I went all-out as a rock star. I blew my hair out and sprayed it into submission, put some glitter on my face, wore my best T Rex platform shoes, put on some wide bell-bottom pants, and walked in to the party carrying a plywood guitar I’d made myself. You know those electric guitars that are V-shaped? Gibson made them famous and their most popular model was actually called the Gibson Flying V, and as modern as it still looks it was actually first produced in 1957. Well, I got the electric saw out at my folks’ home in Kirkwood, Mo. and carved one of those bad boys out, then spray painted it glossy black with a white center, before adding strings that were made of actual string. As in twine. I was a huge hit, if I must say so myself, and my roommate Lance’s sister came along as my groupie. Epic.

And, since Thursday is not just blog day but also Throwback day on Facebook and other social media, I shall indulge in another trip back to Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville in the early spring of 1977. It had been a very snowy and cold winter, and in March our ballpark was still mostly covered in the white stuff, with many of the drifts remaining thigh-high. We had been working out indoors to get ready for our baseball season, which would start with a spring trip to warmer climes, including a two-game set against the University of South Carolina Gamecocks, and the  school paper decided they wanted to shoot some photos of a few of us in the snow, as a send-off. My teammates Stan Osterbur and Dave Schaake accompanied me to the ballpark and we frolicked in the snow for the cameras. I had a few of these photos in my musty old scrapbook, but until Stan emailed this one to me I had never before seen it. I present to you the 21-year old version of me, along with my teammates, preparing to throw snowballs at the photographer if he didn’t let us get out of there to warm up our frozen feet.

So, how’s the book writing going? You asked that, right? Well, it goes well. Thank you.

Oh, you wanted more detail? Well, I finished Chapter 9 by working on it a lot over the weekend, and that’s the first time I’ve extended my work week to do that. Barbara had a lot going on as well, so when she’d have to dive into her laptop I’d do the same, and by Sunday night I was done with the chapter and had put another 18,000 words into print. That’s roughly 35 pages. Chapter 10 is underway this week.

Monstrous Chapter 9 is about the summer of 1978. As I mentioned last week, I’d been signed by the Detroit Tigers and sent off to Bristol in the Appalachian League, but before the season started I was optioned, along with two of my Tiger teammates, to Paintsville, Ky. in the same league. It was a very memorable summer in a very unique part of the country, and it was honest-to-goodness professional baseball. I knew it at the time because on the 1st and 15th of each month I got a paycheck. For playing a game I’d always happily played for free. Little did I know at the time that I’d be going back to the Tri-Cities annually for many years, after NHRA added Bristol Dragway to the tour. Great memories, and that chapter was huge fun to write.

And, since I gave you a snippet of Chapter 9 last week, when it was still a work in progress, I’ll have to skip including a teaser this week. Chapter 10 is still far too much in first-draft form to include anything here, but hopefully a week from now (whether I’m writing on a plane or not) I’ll have something new to share.

And, considering I’m probably now one-third of the way done with the writing, I’ve begun the process of digging into various options for self-publishing. A friend of ours from the old neighborhood in Woodbury just self-published a book about public speaking, and she used a Minneapolis-based company called Mill City Press. She said they did a fine job, but the entire publishing process from manuscript to having a printed book in her hand took a year! Well, that’s way too long for me, but her book was full of illustrations so maybe that slowed the process down. She also had them provide the cover design, the graphics, principal photography, and editing but I’ve already hired experts to do that, so hopefully my timeline would be shorter if I choose that firm.

I’m also looking at a publishing house called Outskirts Press, and I’m going to keep researching until I find the right group to work with. If any of you own your own publishing firm and you want to pay me an enormous advance to print my book, just let me know. I’ll sit right here and check my email every 10 minutes…

You’re not going to believe this but I did not go to a Bruce Springsteen concert this week.

Here as I write today’s blog installment, my bodyguard and copy editor are by my side keeping track of things. Bodyguard Buster sits in his usual location, atop my printer, to keep a sharp eye on the front yard. In all of my years writing this blog, I have never been attacked by an elephant, rhinoceros, or even a crow, so he obviously does a great job. The crows worry him quite a bit, though, and the sight of one elicits primal grunts and growls, but he stays at his post. He stays there until I get up from my chair, anyway, and at that point he will become my advance man by sprinting into the kitchen to make sure the coast is clear in case I want to give him treats. Dedication!

As for his brother, Boofie, it’s another tough day standing right next to my laptop to keep an eye on the magic letters that appear here when my fingers move. And that little arrow-shaped cursor? Hoo boy, that thing is mesmerizing but he hasn’t been able to grab it off the screen yet. He’s not short of perseverance!

(25 minutes later…)

I had to take a break for a bit to have a carpet-cleaning guy walk the house to give me an estimate on some in-home spring cleaning. We also have to make about a dozen runs to Goodwill in the coming weeks, just to purge this place of a bunch of apparel and other items we really don’t need. And, at some point this spring we’re even going to donate some of the furniture we brought here from the old house in Woodbury. There’s a halfway house in Spokane that always needs furniture for the housing they provide, and they’ll even come out with a truck to pick it up. I think that’s a great thing and we’ll feel good about sending some of this slightly used stuff to a new life making someone else feel at home during a tough time.

In the world of dining-out news, we got “outside the bubble” the other night, when Barbara had her car in for service in downtown Spokane. After we picked it up on Tuesday night we stayed downtown and she took me to a pub/bistro/restaurant called The Onion. It was fantastic! I mean truly off-the-hook great, with spectacular food and a terrific vibe. Plus, the Gonzaga basketball team was playing in the championship game of their conference tournament, and if they won they’d get an automatic berth in the NCAA tourney, so that was on every television in the place. Can’t believe we’ve been here four years and that was the first time I’ve eaten there. If you’re ever in Spokane, check it out and don’t even think about ordering anything other than the bacon-wrapped tater tots as your appetizer. Seriously. Wow.

So that’s about it today. I’ve been such a writer for the last week it seems like that’s all I’ve done, and since I didn’t travel anywhere in the last seven days I’m short of material. But I’ll make it up to you all in the next two installments, as I head across the country to attend my first NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing event of 2016.

Well, sometimes you just have to type something to jar a thought loose, and that last paragraph did just that for me. In just the last couple of days, we got two nice pieces of news from NHRA, and both were nicely positive. I’d like to brag that I called this first piece of news late last year, but until the actual numbers came out it was all still speculation. Now it’s official. The move to Fox Sports 1 has already paid off for NHRA and for the fans. Our ratings for the first two races were up 15% over last year, and that’s remarkable considering we’re on a totally new network. I could’ve understood if they stayed flat or were even down a little compared to ESPN2, because of the switch and people’s natural tendencies to need some time to find a new network, but instead they’re up considerably. I will go on record as saying I think they’ll go up even more as the season plays out, and the four races on the main FOX network will set all-time NHRA ratings records. You heard it here first.

Secondly, there had been some talk about NHRA also offering a premium “live streaming” online service, and that’s going to be up and running starting next weekend. For just $99.95 for the rest of the season, you can tune in on your digital devices and see it all as it streams out to the world. That’s fantastic news for everyone, and the price is a total bargain. There are 22 races left to go this year, so that’s basically $4.50 per race, to see every qualifying session and round of eliminations. If you want to sign up for it (I already did!) just go here:

http://nhraallaccess.com

Okay, now (finally) that’s about it for today. Remember, wet shoes in the snow are no fun, no elephants have been harmed in the production of this blog, and go to The Onion if you’re ever in downtown Spokane. Get the bacon-wrapped tater tots, too.

Bob Wilber, most truly at your service!

Welcome back, to Thursday Blog Day here at the creatively named space known as “Bob’s Blog.” Okay, we didn’t want to overthink it.  I’m not sure how long this one will be, because so much happened in the last week. I got back home to Spokane on Tuesday and felt so tired I actually told Greg, my editor, that I might take the week off. Barbara and I had met in Minnesota on Friday, coming from different directions and managing to meet up on the F Concourse at MSP, then her brother Tim and his wife Kelly arrived on Saturday.

We spent a few days being tourists with them, having a great time, and then on Monday night we got to see Bruce Springsteen for the second time in about a month, with this show being performed at the Xcel Energy Arena in St. Paul. Tuesday was a travel day for all of us, going in different directions, so Tim dropped me off at MSP around 9:00 a.m. then he, Kelly, and Barb went back to the airport later in the afternoon for their flights, with Tim and Kelly going home to Pittsburgh while Barb headed for meetings in Los Angeles. When I got home on Tuesday, I was nodding off by dinner time but I forced myself to stay up until 9:00, then I slept for 10 hours. I must’ve needed it!

Once I got out of bed, I started to shake off the mental cobwebs and by yesterday afternoon I realized I was wanting to write. We’re up to Chapter 9 now, and by the time my fingers stopped moving on the keyboard in late afternoon, I had eight new pages in the can. So, my thought about taking a few days off and only concentrating on today’s blog is now out the window and down the drain. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. When in Rome, do as the Romans. Time flies when you’re having fun. A penny saved is a penny earned. OK, I’ll stop now.

Anyway, what all that means is that it was actually hard for me to prioritize this blog over the book this morning. I wanted to dive right back in where I left off last evening, but part of the strategy for getting all of this done is for me to stick to the plan. Thursdays are blog days. And I’m happy to be here.

To summarize a bit more about the big weekend, we ate well, we played a few games of Boggle (a word game I used to play as a kid that we found at a toy store), we toured Minneapolis and spent Sunday afternoon at Mall of America. Then we went to the concert, and then all got on planes. What else happened? It seems like I’m forgetting something…  Let me think…

Oh yeah, some dude named Wilkerson WON THE RACE in Phoenix. What a true thrill that was, although our obligations as tour guides took us to Mall of America right around the second round, so I couldn’t watch the race “live” on FS1. I followed along via my iPhone and Twitter. The NHRA app wasn’t working well for me, I didn’t have access to a TV with Fox Sports 1 on it, so Twitter was the best way to keep up to date. I follow so many media and PR people there, it’s about instantaneous to see the winners and the results as each round goes by.

We were still in Woodbury when round one happened, so I was listening to Alan Reinhart on the Audiocast for that, and heard Tim beat Chad Head. That was all good, and I was very happy for him and the team that they got that first round “W” in the column. By the time we got to MoA, I checked Twitter and saw that Wilk had beaten Ron Capps in round two. That got a big “WooHoo” out of me. We decided to get a bite to eat at Hard Rock Cafe, and that’s when Tim beat Robert Hight in the semis to move on to the final round against that John Force cat. It was getting to be beyond exciting!

We were done with our food and drinks by then, but we decided to wait right there until the final was over. It sure seemed like a long wait.

The new Hard Rock at MoA is located in one corner of the giant amusement park that fills the central atrium. Being there, it has all the typical indoor seating, a concert stage, and the standard treasure trove of rock memorabilia, with a heavy emphasis on Prince stuff ranging from purple concert wardrobes to a lot of cool guitars. But, it also has a second seating area in a patio “outside” under the roller coaster at the amusement park.

Barbara loves to sit outside whenever we go to a restaurant that has patio seating, even if it’s 90 degrees and mosquitos are buzzing around. I, particularly, don’t like sitting outside, where you’re constantly shooing flies and grabbing your napkin as it flies away. Sitting “outside” at the Hard Rock, though, was right up my alley. Because, well…  It’s actually inside!  I did, though, ask Barb if I was earning an “outside dining credit” by sitting out there on the patio below the roller coaster. She said yes.

Finally, mercifully, Twitter began to rev up with tweets about the all-female Top Fuel final between Leah Pritchett and Brittany Force. I thought that was really cool and either way it went, it was going to be good for the sport and historic. I’ve known Mike Guger, who tunes Leah’s car, for many years, so I’m not going to deny that I was pretty happy for both Mike and Leah to each get their first Top Fuel wins as full-time crew chief and a driver, respectively.

And then Twitter began popping with photos and tweets about Force and Wilkerson pulling to the line. And Kelly needed to go to the bathroom, so Barbara went with her. And time moved very slowly…

When the tweets started blasting about Tim’s win, I was torn between going crazy there on the patio or trying to restrain myself a little. I tried the second option, and failed. Just then, Barbara came back and I yelled “Tim won!!!”  High-fives were shared all-around.

Did I miss it, just then?  Of course I did. I so wished I could’ve been there to celebrate with a great group of guys and give a huge hug to Krista. But I’m committed to what I’m doing and I’m loving it. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything, but my heart is still in that sport and still with that team. That’s a very good thing.

What was just as heartwarming was the fact my phone blew up with well-wishes and fabulous messages right after the win, from other racers and PR reps, to family and friends. After the second round, I had texted Tim to congratulate him to that point and wish him well as he went to the semifinals, and he replied with a very nice text about how much they missed having me there, and that put a little extra glow in my heart.

Alan Reinhart called later that evening, to tell me how funny Wilk was in all the post-race interviews, and it was great to hear from him. It was simply great all the way around.

If you missed the live TV or haven’t seen the final, here’s what it looked and sounded like:

Very cool deal. Way to go Team LRS! Can’t wait to see everyone in a couple of weeks, down in Gainesville.

Also, Joe Castello always has the winners on his WFO Radio podcast after each race, so if you want to listen to a great interview with Tim here’s a link. The order of the guests on this show has Alan going first (as he always does), then Leah, then Brad Littlefield from National Dragster, then Tim, and finally Jason Line to wrap things up. The whole thing is great, but if you want to skip to Tim’s part it’s at around the 1:39 mark. I’m proud to report that I got a little mention near the end of the interview, in a very humorous way.

WFO Radio NHRA Nitro Podcast 03/01/2016

So back to the book. “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” is moving along at a very rapid (thrilling) pace, and I’m really starting to see the form it’s taking toward what it will be in the end. It may not be literary genius, or even one of the more competent sports autobiographies ever written, but I’m thinking and hoping it will be a fun read with a lot of rich stories.

Since I’m writing it mostly in a straight-line chronological order (starting out when I was a kid) I’m very aware that a large part of this book is going to be about stuff other than drag racing. After all, I was closing in on 40 when I saw my first drag race, so there are plenty of fun and interesting stories to tell before I get to the point where I land the job as GM at Heartland Park, which kicked off this whole second half of my career. Knowing that a large percentage of my potential book purchasers will be racing fans, because that’s really where I became sort of semi-famous or at least well known, I had been feeling some pangs of worry that it would be hard for them, or perhaps even too boring for them, to get through all the childhood stories and the baseball stuff, in their quest to read what I have to say about my years in the NHRA world. That concerned me for a while, but then this week I realized that I have to write it all, and I have to tell the whole tale and then trust in my ability to weave an interesting story out of things race fans might, or might not, be really interested in.

That realization came to me via a string of connected thoughts. I was talking to Barb’s brother Tim about the book and the Kickstarter campaign, and was telling him how wonderful it was to see so many blog readers, race fans, sponsors, and racers happily and generously support this endeavor. I can thank this ongoing blog for much of that, especially the 10+ years of it over at NHRA.com, because that’s what got me known and got my writing out there in the public eye, with many thousands of folks enjoying all the stuff I wrote about, not just the racing material. I had to find that confidence again that I could write about anything and make it compelling. The heartfelt comments I’ve heard the most over these years, from blog readers, are that to them it feels like I’m in the room talking directly to them and that I write about a lot of stuff they don’t follow or really care about, but they still can’t wait to read it. That’s humbling, and it’s the sort of realization that props my confidence right back up.

So here I am writing Chapter 9 this week, and it’s the chapter that finally gets me out of college and into professional baseball. Shouldn’t be any surprise that this is a part of the story I truly relish, and there’s not a lot of research needed for most of the stories. They happened nearly 40 years ago, but they’re still very vivid in my memory. And hoo boy, the characters on these teams are just too rich to not retell them in depth.

I’ve been doing snippets of the manuscript each week, and getting a lot of emails from people who are really enjoying that, so we’ll do another one here. The backstory is that it’s about how I was signed by the Detroit Tigers out of college, and was sent to Bristol, Tenn. to join the Bristol Tigers in the Appalachian League. Yes, the same Bristol where we’ve raced for so long. The motel they put us up in for the first week, an EconoLodge in the main part of Bristol, is still there.

Bristol was Detroit’s “Rookie Level” team in Class-A. It has a short June through August season, because almost all the players on the roster are signed in June, either as drafted players or as undrafted free agents. I fell into the latter category. So, basically, Bristol was the absolute bottom rung on the Detroit farm-system ladder. Or was it?

We had a brief training camp before the season was going to begin, and on the third day we split into two groups and played an intra-squad game. I had, by then, evaluated myself compared to my teammates who came from all over and from great baseball programs, and I felt very confident that I fit in. I wasn’t the best rookie there, but I fit in. During the game, I got a base hit and then, a few innings later, I faced the hardest throwing pitcher on the team, who could bring it up there at 98 mph. He was a bit wild, as well, so hitting off him was truly a challenge if he did manage to throw strikes.

He’d loaded the bases with walks before I came up, and I managed to foul a number of his heaters off before I finally squared one up and hit a grand-slam home run. I wasn’t on Cloud 9, I was on Cloud 109. I couldn’t wait to call my dad after the game and tell him all about it. But…  The Detroit Farm System Director, Hoot Evers, called Buddy Slemp, Dan O’Connor, and me over to the side before we went into the clubhouse. And he had this to say…

——————————-

Hoot looked at us and said “I want you three guys to know that we’re optioning you to Paintsville, Kentucky here in the same league. It’s what we call a co-op team, and along with the Orioles, White Sox, and Twins, we’re each sending a few players there so that you can play more and develop faster. You would be splitting time with a lot of high draft picks here, guys who we have a lot of money invested in. We think it’s better that the three of you go up there to Paintsville and get more action.”

Looking at me, he said “Bob, we made this decision before today and before we saw your grand-slam. You have impressed us with all facets of your game. You’ll be fine in this league, as will you Buddy and Dan, so get your gear together and get on up to Paintsville. We’ll keep an eye on you, and we’ll look forward to seeing you when we play up there or when you come down here to play us. All the best to you guys. Make us proud.”

With that, Hoot turned and walked away and the three of us blankly stared at each other, not sure what to say.

The co-op team concept wasn’t common back then, and as far as I know it doesn’t exist at all now, but it meant one thing to the three of us. Bristol, in the short-season Appalachian League, was the lowest rung on the Tigers’ organizational chart. It was a “rookie league” in every sense, because almost all of us were making our pro debuts. It was as low as you could ever be in the Detroit farm system, and yet somehow we’d managed to get sent down from there.

——————————-

You gotta roll with the punches, sometimes, and as it turned out our experience as members of the Paintsville Hilanders was a great one. At the time, Buddy, Dan (two guys I’d just met and didn’t really know) and I were a bit stunned, but you plow forward.

I love this shot from that summer. First of all, I was the same height I am now but probably weighed thirty pounds less. Maybe 170 but probably more like 165. We’d just completed batting practice on a hot summer day at our little ballpark in the coal mining hills of eastern Kentucky, and someone took my photo as I stood by my locker, wearing a sweaty cut-off tee shirt. Things to notice: The cool name plates they put on all of our lockers. My nickname written on athletic tape at the top. My spare uniforms, gloves, hat, and street clothes within the locker. How young I was and how young I looked. Our schedule taped to the front of the locker, on the right. And, most importantly, a blow dryer! I wouldn’t need that in my locker today! Ah, youth…

In the middle of that locker is my black Detroit Tigers jacket, which had my name embroidered on it just below a cool Tiger logo. Keep in mind, it was probably 90 degrees every day during that part of the summer, but many of us had those jackets from our parent clubs and we wore them proudly whenever it was cool enough to do so, and I mean that in both ways regarding the word “cool”. You know what I mean.

The parallel to later life would be the “Winner’s Jackets” we could get after every NHRA race victory, also with your name embroidered on the front. There’s no arrogance in proudly wearing one of those. You put your heart and soul into the endeavor, and accomplishing something like winning a race is so epic it’s worth celebrating it for years. I’m sure the guys on Team Wilk are currently plotting out how they’ll buy a jacket from the Phoenix race. They’re fantastic jackets, and they are a bit pricey, but their worth to the wearer is absolutely priceless.

And, I found one of those 1978 Paintsville pocket schedules on eBay once, which is further proof that almost anything in the history of mankind can be found there. This is what it looks like up close (click on it to enlarge!)

Most of the other teams in the league were in the Tri-Cities. Bristol, Johnson City, Kingsport, and Elizabethton could all commute from their own ballpark to the others on game nights. Bluefield, W.V. and Paintsville were way too far away for that, so we went on real road trips, riding the bus on the winding 2-lane highways through the coal-mining hills. Lots of rich memories, and I’m not afraid to tell you that it was a big day when that little schedule showed up in the mail. Another piece from the past, back in my hands.

And yes, I still have my Tigers jacket. And my Oakland A’s jacket. And my Toronto Blue Jays jacket. I’m not a hoarder, those are precious memories.

And finally, about that Springsteen show…

I’ve always enjoyed Bruce and his music, but I’ve been on record before admitting I was never an avid fan like so many people are, including my wife, her brother, and Lewis Bloom. The legion of Bruce fans is enormous, loyal, and as avid as any Rush fan is, just like me.

I’ve enjoyed going to the shows over the years, with Barb, but to me it was more just an enjoyment of the spectacle than of the show itself. Some of his songs are absolute masterpieces, truly some of the greatest rock songs ever written, and I can get into it as much as anyone when he plays them with such high energy, but some others I consider kind of “throw-away” garage-band songs, just basic rockers, and I’ve always had a hard time getting into those.

The Pittsburgh show we saw earlier in the winter was the first on this unique tour, in which he plays “The River” album in its entirety before playing another hour’s worth of hits. In Pittsburgh, they still obviously had some bugs to work out regarding the sound mix, because it was muddy in places and too sharp in others. Clearly, now about 12 shows later, they’ve got that all figured out.

The sound at Xcel Arena was spectacular. The show was fantastic. There are still a few parts of the lengthy playing of “The River” that slow down a bit and give a lot of people the chance to go to the bathroom or grab a beer, but the entire 3-hour and 30-minute show, which is played nonstop, is something any music fan should see. It’s not just epic, it’s unique and truly special. If you have a chance, see this tour. See it!!!

And, having this show in St. Paul meant a couple of other fantastic things would happen. Neighbor Dave and Nichol had tickets as well, just a couple of sections over from us. About midway through the concert Nichol came over and she and I swapped seats, so she could sit next to Barb for a while and I could hang with Dave. That was fun, and it was cool to get a different perspective from different seats. The sound was great at both spots.

And, before the show started, somehow miraculously another neighbor from our old neighborhood, Terry Blake, found us at our seats and said hello. How does that happen in an arena full of 18,000 people? I don’t know, but I’m glad it did.

So there you have it. I started this blog by admitting that it might not be a very long one, but look where we ended up. It happens that way.

Now I’ll take a little break, have some lunch, and then we’ll see about getting back to work on Chapter 9. I have to give my fingers a break, for a bit.

See you next week, gang!  And the week after that I’m heading to Gainesville. Can’t wait!

Bob Wilber, at your service!

Welcome to Thursday Blog Day! I’ve discovered that picking Thursday as my day to blog is one of the best decisions ever. Like, ever! Like, totally! For the last 10 and a half years I’ve just written blogs whenever the feeling hit me, but for those last 10 and a half years I wasn’t also writing a book. I was writing all sorts of press releases, columns, and PR updates, but those also tend to fall into a specific pattern and in total they might add all the way up to 2,000 words in a week. Possibly 2,500, tops. This week, so far, I’ve written about 8,000 words, which is a little more manageable than last week, when Chapter 7 stretched 33 pages and 18,000 words. Chapter 8, this week, is a more standard length for the flow and pace I’ve been using, checking in at about 15 pages.

So, what that means is that I’m really writing a lot, and that’s a wonderful thing, but if I didn’t carve out Thursdays for this blog I’m pretty sure it would always come in a distant last in the race to put words together. All of that is just a long-winded way of saying this new Thursday Blog Day tradition is a really good one and a really efficient use of my time.

These last two chapters have been a riot to write. That means they’ve been a ton of fun. It doesn’t mean all the keys on my keyboard broke into a huge brawl and set my desk on fire. I’ve gotten to the chronological point where the younger version of me is in college, and the last two chapters have delved deeply into those years in two different ways. Chapter 7 was heavily focused on my classes at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville and my four years of NCAA baseball there. Chapter 8 goes back to freshman year all over again but it is far more about the people, friends, roommates, teammates, instructors, and other crazy characters I knew at SIUE, so it’s two different ways of looking at the same thing and it was really a fantastic experience getting it all written. Kind of exhausting, as well, but very fun.

The memories from the SIUE days have always remained really fresh in my mind, because it was such an important era in my life. I loved the school, loved my classes, and loved all the people who came through my life there. Many are still a big part of it, too.

Of course, playing baseball for four years there provided a very rich vein of gold to mine, so those stories are important, but I also had some other friends from my classes and I’ve recently been in touch via Facebook with the single best non-baseball friend I had there. Jim Keegan and I went through the Television – Radio Broadcasting curriculum in the Mass Communications Department at SIUE, and it was an incredible experience for both of us. Majoring and getting my degree in TV/R meant many hours in the studio (both television and radio) and many quarters of big long creative endeavors, to start with nothing and finish the quarter with a TV show, or a movie, or an audio play. After we’d been there a while, they pretty much let Jim and I have the run of the place, and often we’d have a “class” that never met as a class during the quarter. After the two of us flew through the regular set of required classes, they started creating “Colloquium” classes for us, which is a fancy way of saying they simply told us to come back at the end of the 10-week quarter and show them what we did.

Jim was from Lockport, Illinois, which is right by Joliet. He was as funny as anyone I knew there, and equally as smart. He was a baseball fan (a Cubs fan, at that) and we went to a lot of Cardinals games together, usually on a whim and almost always sitting in the right field bleachers for $2 each. Edwardsville was only about a 15-minute drive from Busch Stadium, so you could actually be eating a pizza for dinner at 6 o’clock and decide, on the spot, to head to the game.

Recently, he made contact with Barbara Regnell, who was one of our favorite instructors in the program. He got me in touch with her and we shared a few really heartwarming emails. I’m definitely going to try to get together with her when I’m in St. Louis for the race in September, and it’s funny that she only lives about two miles from the house I grew up in.

One of my other favorite instructors was Dr. Jack Shaheen, and he taught me so much about history and criticism of the arts it was practically thrilling to take his classes. I signed up for every one I could. His class “Motion Picture Criticism” was truly a lesson in how to critique a movie, and how film critics assess everything from acting to directing and production. Great stuff. Barbara Regnell had Jack’s email address and we made contact this week. I went to SIUE 40 years ago, and my instructors there had dozens of students in every class, for every quarter, for many years. What a thrill to not only make contact with two of them, but to also find out they actually remember me! Amazing.

When recounting my baseball experiences at SIUE, in Chapter 7, I was thrilled (but not totally surprised) at how little backtracking and research I had to do. So many details, many of them tiny, are still fresh in my memory and I only went back through online archives and my old scrapbooks to double check exact dates and numbers. It still feels like I could pick up a bat and strike out just as well now as I did then. Here’s the pitch. Swing and a miss.

In a lot of ways, because baseball is such a humbling sport, you can’t help but look back and see a lot more failures than successes, and over the decades that makes you think that you must’ve been a bum. After all, if you play at any level of the game and fail 70% of the time when you’re hitting, you’re probably the best player there. If you do that in the big leagues, you’ll end up in Cooperstown. For failing 70% of the time. It’s a tough game.

It’s just when I write it all down like I did that I feel a little more pride in doing as well as I did. I played grade-school ball, four years of high school ball, and then earned a full scholarship to a very fine school, played four years there and two of those were on teams that advanced all the way to the NCAA Div. II World Series. Then, I got the opportunity to play professionally for a couple of years. I guess that’s not so bad, and more importantly I got a fantastic education, I made the Dean’s List every quarter I was there, and I left that school a much smarter and more mature version of me. It was, cliche’ or not, the experience of a lifetime.

When I was finishing up Chapter 8 yesterday, I was recounting details about a bunch of the guys I played with (who were nearly all priceless characters) and one of those guys was Steve Novak. Steve and I shared an apartment with two other guys for two years, and we were a lot alike when we got there as scholarship freshmen. His dad played 11 years of minor league ball, so we both grew up in baseball families, and although I don’t think our dads ever actually played together, they certainly knew of each other when they were playing.

Steve was a really good ballplayer, and a fantastic first-baseman, while he also baked the best crumb cake ever. Like, EVER! (Totally!)  But, what was really memorable about Steve was his innate instinct for standing or positioning himself in the home dugout when our team was batting, so that he’d miraculously be in the background of many of the photos that would be in the paper. He managed to get himself in the background of almost every photo I still have, in old tattered scrapbooks. It’s hilarious.

Steve is just one of hundreds of fantastic people I met in my time at SIUE, including the three quarters I had to come back for after my fourth year ended and my scholarship ran out. Playing baseball at that level demands so much of your time it’s very difficult to graduate on time, and almost all of us had to go back to finish up. We had a ton of fun, we drank a lot of beer, we played a zillion innings of baseball, but for the most part the vast majority of us hit the books seriously and graduated with honors. I’m proud to have been a Cougar at SIUE.

And, to continue on with this other new tradition of including snippets from my work here on the blog, I present the following in which I recounted how it was Lance McCord who finally got me to see the light about having some fun while we were in school. I was Joe Serious when I got there, and that’s fine, but Lance was the guy who got me to loosen up, and that probably also made me a better teammate.

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College is really your last time to benefit from the freedom and the lack of adult responsibility that is laid out in front of you. Once you’ve left school, you usually have very little choice but to grow up and join the real world. It would’ve been a shame to have not discovered this until it was too late, and it was Lance who finally showed me that there’s plenty of time to be serious in school, and grades were important to both of us, but there’s also time to play, to have fun, to be social butterflies, and to get almost, but not quite, into some harmless trouble. He made it clear that this gold mine of social freedom was deep and rich, and it should be approached with the same passion as the game of baseball. We had the time of our lives.

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Fun times, for sure. Like, totally!!! Lance is also the guy who, in 1997, introduced me to one Barbara Doyle, a colleague of his at IBM. So there’s that to thank him for, as well.

On a related but unrelated note, one of my backers on Kickstarter was a woman named Michelle, from Down Under in Australia. The reward she selected, when backing me, was a classic old embroidered crew shirt from the CSK days, but when I was back in Woodbury to get all this stuff shipped out I didn’t have time to ship the last three international packages, including hers. I had to get them out a few days later, from here in Liberty Lake. This morning, I got a great email from her and a photo of the shirt, all the way from the other side of the globe, including the “Thank You” note I put in the package before I sealed it up. Amazing to see one on my shirts, that I just had in my hands a few days ago, now sitting in her house in Australia. And what a nice email, too.

The book has been going through an important evolution lately. What seemed an insurmountable mountain of a project when I started, is now rounding into what is already recognizable as a book, although it’s still a “book to be” early in the process. I’m at about 130 pages now, and eight chapters, and since I’m aiming for somewhere around 450 pages, we’re really getting there. I assume I’ll probably end up writing well more than 500 pages, and then it will be up to Greg Halling and me to trim here and cut there, in order to make it a more manageable read.

I can’t wait to write some more!

Here in Liberty Lake, I hate to jinx us all by writing this but I think Spring might actually be sprung. In all the time we’ve lived here I don’t remember the golf course we live on opening before the middle or end of March, but yesterday I heard the telltale sounds of multiple golf carts and sure enough, the course was open. On February 24th. Amazing.

What’s also different is just the shift in the weather. Winters here can be pretty cruddy, and very gray, as the clouds move in and get stuck up against the mountains. We can go weeks without any bright sunshine, and when that’s the case the air gets really stale and dirty and it’s not fun to be outside. When that pattern breaks, it tends to break for good, or at least until the next winter. The last few days here have been very sunny, in the 50s, and with a beautiful blue sky.

And now we have golfers. Glad I got that last “walk in the park” in a couple of days ago.

And for the record, I still have my snow sticks in the ground along the driveway. I figure the day after I take them out, we’ll get a foot of heavy wet March snow, so they’re staying put for a while. Just to be safe. Because I’m totally safe. Totally!

Bob Wilber, at your service. Like, totally!!!

I bet you never considered the physical side of long-form writing. I know I never did, before I casually walked up to the edge of this writing pool and dove into the deep end, taking on “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” like just any other writing assignment. After all, I’d just spent 20 years writing many thousands of words per week as a PR person in the NHRA world, so how could this be any different?

It is different, and I’ve already learned a few lessons about keeping the words flowing without have the machinery (my body) break down. Writing, as it turns out, is a very physical thing. Especially when you’re putting 11,000 words together over the course of three days.

I did some quick research before I got started on this, and the “expert advice” from so many established writers was pretty much all over the board. Some made no mention of how much or how long they write per day, others were very specific about having limits and walking away from the keyboard after a predetermined amount of time, but only a few mentioned anything about pain.

When I got started, and my esteemed editor Greg Halling and I were talking about my pace and how many pages we were shooting for, I mentioned to him that I’ve had a compressed disc in my neck for years, as well as one in my lower back, so just staying healthy as I wrote this book would be a real priority for me. I can only sit here and type for so long before the buzzing in my neck starts to shoot down my arm when the nerve gets pinched or inflamed, and I definitely can feel it in my lower back when I try to stand up straight after four marathon hours of blistering typing. But, these are things that have to be overcome.

It’s all really noticeable to me this week because the book hit Chapter 7 and that made for a really big transition. “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” is a chronological life story, so of course it starts out in my early childhood. Technically it actually doesn’t, and I’ll tip you off right here that Chapter 1 is about a series of major moments in my life, in REVERSE chronology, so it starts in the present day and works backward to when I was three years old. At that point, Chapter 2 picks up right there with adorable little three-year-old me and from there we move forward.

I have an in-depth outline to work from, to keep me headed in the right direction without too many weird digressions (hey look, a squirrel!) but I also realize the value of flexibility. If an idea pops into my head and it hadn’t been on the original outline, I go with it anyway. A couple of times, Greg has pointed out where those spur-of-the-moment inclusions didn’t make contextual sense, and we then corrected those mistakes, but most of them add value to the story so I’m always willing to follow those tangents when they seem important.

Chapters 2 through 6 took me all the way up to the end of high school, so as much as all of that is still etched in my memory, I still had plenty of research to do in order to make it all correct, and I still had lots of thinking to do in order to get the very best stories into words. Chapter 7, however, is about my college years and at this point I’ve got almost all of it right up here (points at his head) and the stories are just begging to be written.

From Monday though Wednesday this week, I’ve done more writing than I’ve ever done in a three-day period. And here we are on Thursday doing more writing, but in blog style.

College was a major turning point in my life in many ways. I fell in love with learning, I became a much better baseball player, and I made most of the best friends any guy could ever have. There’s just SO MUCH to write about.

So here’s another snippet just to give you a peek at how this is coming together. I make it clear in the book that I was mostly a disinterested student in grade school, and then once I moved on to a very fast-track high school (St. Louis University High) a lot of the math and science classes weren’t just over my head, they were incomprehensible to me. It wasn’t until I got to college that I discovered a real thirst for learning, and that was eye-opening for me. It goes a little something like this…

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The biggest adjustment for me, in terms of school, was comprehending the fact that I now somehow loved learning so much it was as if a long-overlooked switch had suddenly been flipped to the “On” position. Instead of feeling like my instructors were force-feeding me ridiculously complicated nuggets of stuff I’d never again need, I realized my college teachers were simply offering me the opportunity to widen my horizons and learn new things. I had a ravenous appetite for what they were serving, and I raced through my classes with pure joy, practically giddy each time I entered a classroom at my beautiful new campus.

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So far, I’m not done with it yet but Chapter 7 already is made up of 11,000 words and 20+ pages. I suspect it will end up somewhere around 25 pages by the time I’m done, but the writing about college won’t be over. I’ve already made an adjustment to my outline, and Chapter 8 will now be about college, as well, but more about the people than about the events. I originally planned to make it all one chapter, but by Wednesday, when my back was sore and my neck was buzzing, I realized there was just way too much material to do that. So Chapter 7 focuses mainly on things that happened, while introducing many of the main characters from that part of my life, and Chapter 8 will flesh out those characters while it tells many of the tales of college life off the baseball field, and yes that has to include my introduction to beer. That’s the plan, anyway. Always subject to change.

One thing I’m dealing with is a lousy office chair. I mean, that’s a problem for everyone, right? I’ve had this chair for at least five years and frankly it’s worn out. But, we hope to be moving back to Minnesota soon and it seems ridiculous to buy a new one out here in Washington, so I’m dealing with it despite the fact that my neck buzzes, my lower back is stiff, and my butt hurts. Maybe I need a Snickers bar right about now. I sound like a diva…

I’m not digging ditches here, but if typing creates pain I’m in trouble, so I have to take my time, not overdo it, and get up and walk around regularly. It doesn’t help that my laptop is on a desk so I have to look down at it all the time, either. Yesterday, I was typing so fast and so furiously, it was like the words were pouring out of my brain and my fingers could hardly keep up. It’s an amazing thing, really, to just think of these stories and see them pop up on the screen, letter by letter, in a torrent of writing.

Around 3:00 yesterday afternoon, the stories were still flowing and I was finally up to my junior year at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville, but my hands, neck, and back had reached a point where I needed a break. I looked to my left and saw Boofus sitting on my printer, staring at me, and that’s all I needed to figure out that a quick trip to PetSmart to get these wonderful boyz some new treats was just what the writing doctor ordered. I did that, and then came back home and wrote another 1,000 words.

Today is blog day, though, so Chapter 7 will most likely take a seat on the bench for this day. We’ll see how I feel a little later on.

I know I’ve mentioned Kelly Topolinski more than a few times in my blog, and today is another day for me to do that. Kelly and I spent many years together in the NHRA public relations universe, and we simultaneously made the hard decision to leave that world behind at the end of the 2015 season, in order to follow our greater dreams of being writers. We stay in touch a lot, and motivate each other enormously, but what’s so inspiring to me is that she’s going a far more difficult route. Kelly is writing a novel, a very personal and very deep novel about life, and love, and relationships with a working title of “Baby Love.” I don’t know if I could do that. I’m simply writing about my life, so the whole story is written in my head and my job now is to get my fingers to type it all in the correct order. Kelly is creating art out of thin air. There’s clearly a difference between being an author and being a writer, and I’m so impressed by what she’s doing.

I know her book isn’t exactly aimed at a demographic of 59-year old males, but I also know I’ll have to ravenously read every word of it once it’s published, because my friend created it. And, because all the greatest authors need pen names, she’s created a fabulous one for herself. As an author, she’s Natalie Novak. If you’re on Facebook and you want to follow an artist at work, just search for Natalie Novak and follow her page.

And speaking of Facebook, I’m never hesitant to decry what it does so poorly while I also recognize what it does so well. What it does best is allow you to reconnect with old friends in ways we could never have done before. And lately I’ve reconnected with Stan Osterbur, who I was coincidentally writing about yesterday.

Stan was a great left-handed pitcher for the SIUE Cougars, and we became good friends while playing together. So much so that we’d often room together on road trips. He was a year older than me, and the story of him not getting to pitch in the 1977 NCAA Div. II World Series, despite the fact he was our best pitcher, was a key part of what I was writing about yesterday.

Not getting to make that appearance in front of so many MLB scouts probably cost him a chance to get drafted, but he went off to Beeville, Texas to play for an independent team that summer. The next summer, when the Detroit Tigers signed me and sent me to Paintsville, Kentucky in the appropriately named Appalachian League, we needed a lefty and I talked the manager and owner into bringing Stan to town. Therefore, Stan Osterbur was the only baseball player I ever played with, on the same team, in both college and professional ball.

He was the subject of my Throwback Thursday post on Facebook today. And thanks to Facebook, he and other teammates have all had reason to smile looking at the photo I posted. My gosh we had fun.

For the record, it’s exactly 1:02 p.m. Pacific Time and Buster is still in bed. Even Boofus thinks that’s crazy.

Also for the record, it’s past lunch time and I haven’t eaten yet. These are important facts to bring up here, folks. Jimmy John’s might be in my near future.

As for the Kickstarter deal in support of my book, yesterday marked an important final milestone in two ways. First, the funds from Kickstarter were finally direct-deposited in my bank account, so that’s a good thing. I was thinking of putting it all on one spin of the roulette wheel in Vegas but I figured I probably ought to save it for the publishing costs. Or to buy a big flashy Rolex.

Secondly, the final three reward items for the generous folks who backed me finally went out. I had three packages heading to international destinations (two to Australia and one to some hip cat named Kim The Lawyer up in Vancouver) and I didn’t have all the customs forms filled out in time to ship them from Minnesota last week. So, I brought them back here with me and then Monday was a holiday and the Post Office was closed. Tuesday was too rainy and full of too much writing, so yesterday I finally got them out. But not before I found out the packaging I’d used for one of them was going to double the shipping cost to Down Under. After a quick trip back home (and fortunately, here in cozy Liberty Lake we live about a mile from the Post Office and no more than two miles from anywhere else in this town) I repacked the item (a vintage embroidered crew shirt from the CSK days) and now everything is on its way.

My final bit of rambling here today is about something else that showed up in the mail this week, and when I opened the envelope I had a tinge of both sadness and relief. I got my Delta credential and bag tags as a Diamond Medallion member of the Sky Miles program. You have to fly 125,000 miles in a calendar year to accomplish that, and I’m sure that does a guy’s neck and back no favors either, but the upgrades are fantastic and the service is outstanding when you’re Diamond, so it’s always been worth shooting for.

As much as the backbreaking travel was a motivation to get off the road, it was still a privilege to be Diamond and it was something I always worked toward attaining every year. I get to be Diamond again, for the next 12 months, but I’d be quite shocked and astonished if I’m ever Diamond again. I’d be stunned if I’m ever Platinum again. From next year on out, I’m just another schlub on an airplane…  But I am officially a Million Miler now, so I’m at least Silver for life. That and a dollar will get you something off the McDonald’s “Dollar Menu”.

So… I guess that’s it for today. Chapter 7 will be completed tomorrow, and after that we’ll be nearing the halfway point in this writing process. That’s a pretty cool thing to contemplate.

See you here next week.

Bob Wilber, at your service!

Greetings from snowy and single-digit Minnesota! It’s great to be here for almost an entire week, and now it’s time for the fun stuff. Kickstarter is over, all of my backers have paid, and it’s time to get to work shipping these rewards out to people. Since all of the rewards were kept here, instead of bringing the mountain to me I’ve come to the mountain to pack them up and ship them out. I should be continuing that right now, actually, but this particular Thursday is getting away from me so blogging comes first.

I dropped by the Woodbury post office yesterday to pick up some Flat-Rate Priority Mail boxes, which offer you the challenge of seeing just exactly how much material you can stuff into the smallest box, and today it’s time to actually do that. They didn’t have a size that would easily hold a die-cast car that’s still new and in the box though, so I had to make a side trip to the UPS store to buy some of those. And here’s where we stand…  All of the die-casts are boxed and ready. All of the jackets are boxed and ready. All of the embroidered CSK starting-line shirts (are you following me here, with this trend?) are boxed and ready!

Now it’s time to transition to the printed crew shirts, which take up much less space so I’m trying to fold and cajole them into going into the smallest possible fixed-rate boxes. See the little box on the counter? That has a shirt in it! It’s a tedious process, and it might work better if I had three hands, so maybe it is better that I take a break and write a little here. Plus, I’m already dreading the trip to the post office when it comes time to march these stacks of packages in for shipping. I’m not going to be a popular guy in the eyes of anyone behind me in line. Yes, they do have automated kiosks but I think the process will go more quickly if I work with a human, especially for the boxes that are going to Australia and Canada. Do you think I could hire someone to take all of these to the post office tomorrow? Anyone want a job for a day? I can’t promise it will pay well, but it will look snazzy on your resume’ under the heading of “Shipping and Logistics Specialist at RJW Communications”.

(Remember, you can click on the photos to make them larger)

As for the writing of “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” it continues to come along rather swimmingly. I’m now at about 80 pages, which means we’re getting dangerously close to approaching the 25% mark in terms of anticipated length. The only trouble is, Chapter 6 is the one I wrote this week, and it was a 30,000-foot overview look back at just what it was like to grow up in the Wilber family as a kid. When I take on Chapter 7 next week, it finally gets me to college. I still have college, minor league baseball, sports marketing, and indoor soccer to get through before I get to the part where I see my first drag race. Drag racing, then, will be the entire focus of the rest of the book, so I better get there by the 200th page or so. Just keep writing, Wilber!

This morning, I got Chapter 5 back from my esteemed editor, Greg Halling, and I continue to marvel at his ability to see through the clutter of my wordy style in order to trim just the fat away and make it all more coherent. Gee, can you tell he doesn’t edit this blog?

When I look at his edits and changes, and read his comments in the margins, I try not to let that be just a moment where I think “Yeah, that’s better” but also a moment where I become aware of the “why it’s better” side of it. If I can absorb some of that writing skill by osmosis, my hope is that Greg will have less and less to snip, trim, or change as we move forward. I can hope, anyway. No promises!

His view of this process is also impressive because, as he said in the beginning, “It’s your book. I’ll just be here to fix problems and offer solutions, but it’s your story to tell.”  He’s able to do that at every turn of a sentence, and I’m getting to the point where I’m damn proud if two paragraphs in a row come back with no edits or corrections. I feel like I’m getting better, and I hope that’s the case. I am still the guy who, when this blog was on NHRA’s website, would have to sheepishly send corrections to Phil Burgess and Candida Benson after the blog was posted, under my pseudonym of “Mr. Typo.”

When I finished Chapter 6 this morning, I was on such a roll I thought I could even dive into those college years and Chapter 7 today, but with this mountain of packages already waiting, and 20-some more shirts to be wedged into those small flat-rate boxes, followed by schlepping all of this stuff to the post office, I think I better concentrate on this fulfillment process. I won’t be back here for a couple of more weeks, and that trip will be with Barbara, her brother Tim, and his wife Kelly, to see the Bruce Springsteen tour when it makes its way to Xcel Energy Arena at the end of the month.

My original ticket to fly here had me coming in when I did, on Monday, and then not flying home to Spokane until Sunday. I did that because the Saturday night stay-over lopped about $100 off the fare. Once I got here, that started to seem more and more silly, so I gave that discount back to Delta by changing my ticket to Saturday afternoon. And now I’m feeling like I’m up against a wall getting all of this stuff out and in the mail. Time to focus! What? Hey look, a squirrel!

The added bonus for flying home Saturday is that I’ll now be home on Sunday when the first-ever NHRA and Fox Sports 1 telecast goes out to the world live. I am really looking forward to that, although this week has been kind of surreal and uncomfortable in that regard. The sportsman teams are racing right now in Pomona, as I write this. Tomorrow, Team Wilk and all the other Funny Car and Top Fuel teams will hit the track for their first qualifying sessions of the season, and I’ll be right here cramming more shirts into more tiny little boxes.

All this week, my former PR colleagues have been on Facebook and Twitter, documenting their travels and their anticipation for the season to begin. I’m as excited as anyone about the season, and I’m over-the-moon fired up about the new TV deal, but I have to be brutally honest in one regard. I’m not very sad that I don’t have tales of airports, airplanes, rental cars, and hotels to tweet about. I figured it out for sure this week, when everyone was traveling to get there and all I did was come back here to Minnesota to handle some business and get this shipping done.

And my friend Kelly Topolinski, who also walked away from the sport we love after last year, just tweeted this:

It’s a small boat, but we’re in it together.

For 20 years I loved my job. I got better as a PR person, I made friends who are the most inspiring group I’ve ever known, and I went through all of the ups and downs of being a part of the team. But when this week rolled around I knew I had made the right choice.

I’m loving the process of writing this book. It’s what I was meant to do. And I was even more “over” the grind of the travel than I let myself realize, at the time. 20 years of it was enough. I like having something approximating a more “normal” life right now. And I’ll get my NHRA fix at a few races and on FS1 and FOX.

And it’s not just the fact that I had to travel so much for so many years. I’m a stressful traveler. I can’t help it, and every week when I’d go to a race it was the same long series of things I had to worry about and couldn’t help worrying about. Would the TSA lines be long? Would the plane leave on time? Would I get upgraded? Would I make my connection? Would my bag meet me at the other end? Would my rental car be there, and would it smell like a dead body was in the trunk? Would the hotel have my reservation, and would a gymnastics team be in the room above me? Would traffic to the track be bad in the morning? Would we qualify? Would the traffic heading out of the track be bad each night? Would I sleep okay? Would we lose in the first round? Would my flight home be on time?  And on, and on, and on. Do that for 20 years and it wears you down. It’s just how I’m wired, and I know I got all of this from my dad, who got to airports two hours early back in the days where there wasn’t any security.

My travel now is far less stressful. If my flight is two hours late, no biggie. I’ll get where I’m going and I won’t be late to the track because of it.

As I’ve been writing about the various years of my youth, two of the more entertaining summers were 1971 and 1972, when I spent a few months with my dad as one of the batboys for the Denver Bears, the Triple-A minor league team he managed. In doing a little research, I found this classic old photo from 1971. By my recollection, from left to right that’s Big Del, Norm McRae, Charley “Shooter” Walters, and Garland “Shifty” Shifflett, on the field at Mile-High Stadium, staring at a clipboard that no doubt contained the secrets to the baseball universe. They were great guys on that team, and they treated me very well despite the fact I was the dorkiest 15-year-old in North America.

But, what really struck me about this photo was my dad. How old do you think he looks? To me, as a kid, he was always an older-looking guy, and by the time I spent these summers in Denver with him, I considered him an old man. But was that just the perspective of youth?

Amazingly, my father was 52 when this photo was taken. I’m 59 right now. How can that be?

Time is a strange thing. It’s linear, and it never stops, but our perspectives certainly do. And I think men of my dad’s generation did look older. They’d come through the Depression, they’d fought in a World War, and they’d worked hard to support their families. We have so many luxuries and benefits now, I think my peers and I look far younger than my father and his peers did at the same point in our lives.

That was deep!

Time to get this posted and cram some more shirts into boxes. Lots-O-Fun!!!

Bob Wilber, at your service!

The Kickstarter campaign is over, and I actually miss the stress and the thrill of it. Our final numbers were incredible, as the alert chime started to pull me back to the computer hour after hour over the weekend. In the end, we attracted 99 backers and 112% of the goal, and to me both of those numbers are beyond heartwarming. They’re stunning and mind-boggling. And as for coming up one short of 100 backers, I posted a tweet on that by saying “Final count 99 backers. If 99 was a good enough number for Wayne Gretzky, it’s good enough for me.”  It’s actually more than good enough for me.

There’s a lot of divisiveness and hate in the world, and people do things every day that make you question the sanity of the planet. But people can do just the opposite as well, being so supportive and generous it can make your brain spin with disbelief. This Kickstarter thing started off as something I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do, not because I was afraid it would fail (I was a little concerned, but it wasn’t fear) but more because I just didn’t want anyone’s help to make this dream a reality. It was the startling realization of just how much of our savings I would be risking to do this all on my own, and how that wasn’t fair to my incredible wife, that tipped me over the edge, thinking “Okay, well we’ll just give it a shot and see how it goes.”  It went well.

It seems awfully quiet here in my office this week. The campaign had crossed the finish line early, but it continued to run right through Sunday night and it kept me glued to the computer, keeping track of it. Kickstarter provides all the records and lists you need, but just to be sure I kept my own spreadsheet of rewards people had chosen, and every time I’d hear that chime I’d click over to my email program hoping to see the subject line “New Backer Alert!” and the routine of seeing that and then entering the data on my spreadsheet was one that had me continually smiling. As the weekend progressed, the pledges got smaller but the pace picked up, with so many generous people adding in whatever they could spare. I was humbled by it, but also so motivated.

Now, with the working capital raised (Step 1 of this process) there’s only one thing left for me to focus on, and that’s to continue writing “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” to the very best of my ability. Step 2, underway! To be technical, the working capital may well be raised but it won’t be in my bank account for two weeks. That’s how long it takes Kickstarter to collect all the funds and wire them to a successful campaigner. I’m not sure why it takes that long, but that’s the caveat they go by and who am I to argue? I’ll be frugal until then.

When the campaign officially ended, oddly in the middle of the night last Sunday night, Kickstarter sent me another alert with explanations of how this will all happen and what I can expect in the next couple of weeks. One important thing they noted is that once you get up to a certain number of backers, you can almost certainly expect “a few” of the pledges to be declined when the credit card numbers are run. Remember, no one paid a penny until the program was over and we had reached our goal. Some of those pledges were six weeks old when the charges were finally sent early in the a.m. hours of Monday morning.

As it turned out, eight of our 99 pledges were declined, but not because of a lack of funds. As far as I can tell, they were all hung up in the bank or credit card company’s “Fraud Protection Department.”  Kickstarter uses a third-party payment company, called Stripe, to actually collect the funds and apparently the combination of having the charges run around 3:00 a.m. and having them all be online charges triggered a few warnings out there. I had two emails and one voice mail waiting for me when I got up Monday morning, from people I know who got the alert that their pledge had failed to go through.

One by one, we’ve been working through that and getting them resolved, but it unfortunately requires a two-step process for the backer. First they have to confirm with the credit card company that the charges are legit and real, and then they have to go back to the Kickstarter campaign page and resubmit the payment. I can’t apologize enough for that, although I had nothing to do with it and wasn’t expecting it. I just hate for people who have been so kind and generous to then have to deal with a hassle like this. It’s asking enough of people to simply back me, but it’s asking way too much for them to have to chase down problems that had nothing to do with them. I guess, though, that I’d rather have my credit card company be a little too vigilant on my behalf, rather than the opposite.

As for the writing, it’s really going well (I think and hope). I’m getting solidly into the routine I need to get the targeted number of words written each week, and Chapter 5 is now “in the can” at least in first-draft status. I also find I can’t help having new memories pop into my head and then think “Well, that’s got to be in the book.”  So far that’s happened about a dozen times where the memory or the moment is in the era of a chapter I’ve already written and edited, so I go back in there and find the right spot to add it in. It’s, therefore, a very fluid and ongoing thing. It doesn’t just flow directly forward in a linear way. There’s a lot of rewriting and editing going on in the earlier stuff, while I’m also writing a new chapter each week. It’s a bit like juggling, but instead of bowling pins or fine china plates, I’m juggling words. The good news is, they don’t seem to break if I drop them.

Right now, with about 80 pages written, I suspect I’m maybe one-fifth of the way done, and that’s a pretty good chunk of the writing, in my mind. It’s pretty clear that my biggest problem is going to be length, as in “too long” as opposed to “too short.” If I write everything I’d like to have in the book, it would be at least 600 pages and that’s, at the very least, about 150 pages too long. I don’t want to burden readers with something as hefty as “War And Peace” here.

It occurred to me this morning that it might also be fun to share a snippet from the book here, just to give you all a preview taste of what’s to come. First though, here’s the setting:

Junior year in college at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville. The final game of the NCAA Regional baseball tournament, on our home field against Northern Kentucky. It was a winner-take-all single game to see which team would advance to the NCAA Div. II World Series. We’d been there the year before, so we were trying to make it two seasons in a row. My mom had not been well for a while, but she insisted on being at the game. It goes like this…

———————————

My first time up, I singled with a solid line drive to left and then scored the lead run from third, on a sacrifice fly. Later in the game I came up with the bases empty but with the game hanging in the balance. I’d seen the pitcher once already, and when he threw me a fastball right down the middle he made the critical mistake of throwing it exactly where my bat happened to be. Home run. 

As I rounded second, heading toward third and the small grandstand behind the home dugout, I saw my mother standing, clapping, and crying. I came close to matching that last piece of the equation, but I held it together, we won the game, and we advanced to the World Series again.

Taffy was exhausted and she was driven home after the game. My teammates and I were somewhere beyond elated, and we gathered at one of our rental houses (affectionately known as “The Pink Palace” because it was pink and it was not a palace) for an impromptu party. Much like the dinner in Millington, this was one of joy, not craziness.

As I stood on the lawn drinking a beer pulled from a kiddie pool filled with ice, I had the conscious thought that I had never in my life, to that point, felt such sheer, unfiltered happiness.  It was flowing out of me through every pore. There was no nagging doubt, no questioning the feeling, no wondering if I deserved it. It felt both calming and exhilarating. It was electric, and I went through a sort of out-of-body experience as I watched my teammates celebrating while I focused on the feeling. I recall thinking that I wished everyone on the planet could feel that at least once. Everyone deserves to.

——————————

So that’s just one rich moment that will be in the book. And as much as I fiddle with this thing on my non-writing days, the final version may not look like that at all, but in whatever form it ends up being, it will be in the book. Because, in case you hadn’t heard, I’m writing one! Isn’t that amazing?

So, you ask, what’s new in Liberty Lake or Woodbury? You did ask that, right? Well someone did, I just know it.

Barbara and I both refuse to give up on this upper respiratory crud we’ve had since we were in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago. We just love it so much we won’t let it go. We both only felt sick (as in fever, chills, that sort of stuff) for a few days, but the coughing and the hacking goes on forever. I’ve heard some people here in Liberty Lake say they had the congestion and cough for six weeks!  Wow. I’m getting better, though, and Barb is a few days ahead of me with this thing, so pretty soon we’ll be back to just our normal coughing and hacking, induced by the crappy winter air we have here thanks to temperature inversions that stagnate the atmosphere around Liberty Lake. It’s hard to breath smog.

Barb’s not able to get enough rest, either, because she’s neck-deep in preparation for the next quarterly earnings call for her company and she’s been at work until late at night for days on end now, then up before dawn to get back to her office. I don’t know how she does it.

I’m heading to Minnesota next week, for the full week. Almost all of the rewards for my Kickstarter are in storage there, and I need to start shipping them out to the people who so kindly signed up for them. By my records, that means I’ll be shipping out the following:

8 die-cast cars

11 Wally Trophies

4 Winner’s Jackets

25 race-worn crew shirts

It’s a good thing shipping costs are covered by the pledge.  The shirts will be easy to ship, the jackets pretty easy, and the die-casts won’t be hard. The Wally trophies are heavy though, and they’re a tougher deal. I think I’ll take all of them to my local UPS Store and have them professionally packed and shipped.

Back in Minny, they just got a bunch of snow in the Twin Cities (close to a foot according to our neighbors in the old neighborhood) so hopefully everything will be cleared off the roads by the time I get there, on Monday night. I don’t mind the snow, except when it’s snowing and you need to get somewhere. From inside, with a fire going, it’s quite nice!

And in case you’re wondering, yes we are still determined to get back there permanently at some point in the near future. It’s home.

And speaking of that, do you remember how three of my college teammates and I went to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and then down to Washington, D.C. last summer, for a guys weekend away? Well, when we did that we had so much fun we made a pact to try to do it every summer, in a different location each time. I offered up the Twin Cities, with the trip being based around good fun, good drink, good hotels, and a Twins game, and the guys unanimously approved that suggestion/

Lance McCord, my partner in crime to make these things happen, began the process last night by offering up a few potential dates. I got online to check the Twins schedule, and I think we have it narrowed down to two particular weekends. Once Radar and Oscar (our other musketeers) add in their thoughts, we’ll figure out which weekend and will be. And the better news is that the St. Paul Saints minor league team, who play in a marvelous new ballpark right in downtown St. Paul, are also home both weekends. We’ll have fun in both Minneapolis and St. Paul, we’ll get together with our former neighbors, we’ll most likely spend a few hours at Mall of America, and we’ll overdose on baseball, both the Major League variety and the minor league type. Can’t wait… And no, we will not be in uniform or asking for any tryouts.

So I guess that’s it for this Thursday Blog Day. I’ll be back here next week, from Minnesota, and hopefully my writing muse gets on the plane with me and Chapter 6 will be rounding into shape.

Oh, and apparently there is some sort of football game on Sunday. Hmmm. All the best to both teams and the half-time performers! And if you’re like me and don’t have a horse in this race, here’s hoping for an entertaining and well-played football game. On the football field. Played by football players running football plays. With a football.

Bob Wilber, at your service!

Six and a half weeks ago, on December 14 (I had to look that up) I launched my Kickstarter campaign to see if it would be possible to cover  a portion of the hard costs that come with self-publishing. And, I hadn’t even started officially writing “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” yet at the time. The first hurdle, for me, was getting over my trepidation about even doing a crowdfunding deal. I got past that by realizing that while my wife Barbara is the most amazing and supportive person in the world, by allowing me to walk away from my 20-year NHRA career to take on the challenge of writing my book, she did not necessarily sign up for me to cease having any income while also spending years worth of savings to get the thing printed. The next question was “How much can we raise?”

That was a hard question to answer, and I still don’t think there was any real formula for it. It had nothing to do with how much it’s going to cost to write, edit, publish, and print the book. It had only to do with what friends, readers, colleagues, and family members might be willing to pledge, and how do you know that number? Racers make this mistake all the time, and throughout my career I’ve seen it enough to be well aware of the pitfall. They’ll write down all the expenses involved with running their race car for a year, come up with a total, and decide “Well there you go. That’s how much I need in sponsor funding.”

It doesn’t work that way. Sponsorships aren’t based on what it costs to operate. They are based on what the value is in return for the investment. That value can be assessed through marketing research, and in most cases the sponsor can look at the cash outlay and make a case for why the sponsorship made marketing sense. But a Kickstarter campaign is not about return on investment in the monetary sense. You can only hope the return is emotional and personal. So what would my target be? Who would my backers be? What in the world was I getting into?

I simply picked a number I thought was realistic. I didn’t do any math or analysis. I think I was afraid to do that because the numbers would be too daunting. I simply picked $20,000. It will cost more than that, in the end, to get this book published, but it just sounded right. Barbara thought I was reaching far too high, and her thought was that the target should be roughly half that much, or even less than that. I still don’t know why, but I thought my number was the right one, and off we went.

It wasn’t until we were up and running that I realized I really had chosen a fairly lofty number. I could see the first wave of backers coming on board, and their average pledge was immediately well above the average amount across all of Kickstarter’s campaigns (which is about $30 per backer). And yet, even with these overly generous pledges by a large number of people, the finish line was still so far away. I’ll admit that in late December, when we got back from Kauai, there was some nagging doubt in my brain about whether we could pull this off.

And then the new year happened and people went back to work after spending a lot of money over the holidays, and I got to work on actually writing the book, and in the end I figured out a comfortable way to promote the Kickstarter and, at the same time, promote myself and the book. I needed help.

As a PR guy for 20 years I knew most of the tricks of the trade when it came to promoting my drivers and sponsors. That stuff was easy. Promoting myself was more difficult, for reasons ranging from writing press releases in the third-person (Bob Wilber thought he could never do that but Bob Wilber was wrong) to simply only being able to reach X number of people out there in the social media universe. Like I said, I needed help.

So, I reached out to a large number of NHRA drivers, writers, PR reps, and blog readers. I simply flat-out asked for that help, via tweets and Facebook posts, to help me spread the word. Just like how we got Tim Wilkerson into the Traxxas Shootout (via the social-media fan vote) two years in a row, the secret was spreading the word. And when guys like Antron Brown, Ron Capps, Jeff Arend, Del Worsham, Doug Herbert and many (like VERY many) others started reaching out to everyone they knew, things started to take off.

But social media is a fleeting thing, so I had to come to grips with two more facts. I was going to have to promote this thing myself on a daily basis, because not everyone is on Facebook all the time and tweets on Twitter disappear below the horizon in a hurry. If I lost a few followers due to my incessant promotion, then so be it. I’d also need to circle back to the drivers who had helped me to see if I could get them to do the same, one more time.

I’m not sure I can quantify exactly how much all of those drivers helped the effort, but I know it’s a real number and I know we would still not be at the target without them. When Antron or Ron would post something, almost without fail I’d ring up a couple of new backers whose names I was completely and utterly unfamiliar with. That’s how this thing works.  And that’s exactly how it did work. And a lot of the drivers stepped up to actually back the project. Every time that happened I marveled at their largesse.

As we got into mid-January I ramped it up even more, while still taking time to “go to work” each day to write. And day by day the backers kept coming and the percentage of the target we had attained grew bigger. It seemed like all I had to do was post something on Facebook about what a great day we’d just had and that we were now 71% of the way to the target, and before I could even check back to see if anyone “liked” the post, one or two new backers would immediately come onboard and make that number obsolete. It was fascinating and thrilling all at the same time, yet we still had a long way to go.

But the backers still kept coming and the big names who had helped me so much kept assisting the effort. And the numbers grew. For the last two weeks, there were only one or two days when nothing happened. Every other day, the list got larger and the numbers got bigger.

And then, this week happened. We were still short of $19,000 when a certain actor buddy of mine (rhymes with dollar, no sorry, rhymes with buck, or maybe it just is Buck) made his pledge, to get me over that milestone. As he said “I wanted to get you to the finish line, but I had a feeling it was going to go crazy at the end, and I might miss out if I was at the theater, so I decided to get you over that final barrier before the finish line.” He had no idea what avalanche he’d just created, but I know in my heart he understands how I feel about everything he has done.

Literally, within about two hours we went from thinking we were pretty sure we’d make the target by Sunday night, which is the end of the campaign, but that it might go right to the wire, to thinking “Well gosh, this could happen by Friday, or maybe even Thursday.” And then a certain famous NHRA personality took it into his hands to get me there, with an overly generous pledge I never saw coming and never anticipated.

Every time I get a new backer, I get an alert from Kickstarter via email, and I have the notifications set up to ring a chime every time that happens. I was just marveling at how we’d gotten into the final stretch and I was allowing myself to actually think “Okay, we’re going to do this” when I heard two chimes from my email program go off almost at once.

I clicked over there and saw two new emails from Kickstarter. The second one down the list was the standard “New Backer Alert” but the one on top of that had a subject line that stated “You made it!”  I made what? I had no idea what that was about and I was a little stunned and confused. If real life was the Saturday morning cartoons, I was the character sitting at his desk with animated question marks flying around his head. Then I opened the “New Backer Alert” email and saw that one particular gentleman, who I have known in the NHRA world for a long time, had done it single-handedly.

He doesn’t want the public recognition (as he said “I didn’t do it for that”) so I won’t betray his trust. I was simply blown away.

I sent him an email and his line was “I think what you’re doing is really bad-ass and I wanted to help.”

We all flippantly talk about “having chills” when something momentous happens, but right then and there I felt the real thing. I’d been working on this deal for a month and a half, day in and day out, wondering if we’d make it to the finish line in time or end up being totally embarrassed. And then… BAM. There we were. Barbara was traveling across the country that day, but I caught her on the phone and via email to let her know. And she said “You knew all along. You had to know. Deep down inside you had to know. I wasn’t sure I knew this would work, but now I can tell that you did all along.”

I don’t know if that’s true. I launched this deal at a tough time, right before the holidays, but I felt I had to do it then before everyone forgot who I was. And then I had to get over the nervousness and embarrassment of promoting myself. And then I had to ask some famous people with large hearts to spread the word and help me out. And friends came through. Strangers came through, Celebrities came through. And the chills shot right down my spine.

And what’s amazing is that it’s still happening. The campaign doesn’t end until midnight Sunday night, but the chimes are still chiming (one just came in right now, with a new backer alert from an esteemed PR and Media Relations person I’ve known in the sport for a long time).

As I started this blog, we were up to 88 total backers and 106% of the target. Now we’re at 107% of the total and 89 generous backers. That 107% figure is really important, and it’s the one milestone I really didn’t think we’d make. You see, Kickstarter exists and makes its money by charging a fee for all successful campaigns, and that fee is 7%. Now, at 107% we’re within just a few dollars of netting the goal, instead of grossing it. In effect, we’re “in the money” now.

And here’s the most humbling part of this. It’s incredible that the average pledge is still up around $240, but the most heartfelt ones and the ones I appreciated at a whole separate level were many of the smaller pledges. On the morning when it all happened, one longtime blog reader and huge NHRA fan, who I know works so hard to make a living but she is by no means rich, went back and increased her initial pledge by $15. A wave of positive karma came over me when I saw that, and within hours it all exploded and we shot right past the target. Things like that make you realize that people out there believe in this. I have earned their trust and they believe in what I’m doing. And they want to be a part of this.

Ron Capps is hilarious, and when we reached the target he tweeted something along the lines of “Hey you’ve made it! Now you don’t have to tell that one story. Nah, go ahead. Tell ’em all!”

I’m not sure I can possibly tell ’em all, but I’m enjoying the writing process far more than I thought I would, and I think (hope) the stories that do make the book will be enjoyable.

Right now, I’m four chapters in and I allowed myself to take the blinders off for a moment yesterday, because after four chapters I knew I was about 60 pages and 28,000 words into this. When I started, I knew I’d have to just focus on each word and paragraph, and not allow myself to stare up at the mountain top, because it would always be too daunting and too far away. But yesterday, when I got to where I thought Chapter 4 should end (it’s about those awkward high-school years) I let myself add up my progress. I think I’m about 10% done with the initial writing, and maybe I’m a little further than even that. It would be a 600 page book if I’m truly 10% done, and that’s a lot to ask people to read.

But the stories need to be told. Heck, the stories I’ve written so far are rich and full of characters I really knew, and at this point in the book I’m still a teenager and I’m still 20 years away from seeing my first drag race. There’s a lot of ground yet to cover.

So, thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Every one of you. And if you know anyone who wants to be a part of this adventure, there are still a few days left to participate. It would be very cool and a huge honor to hear that chime and see another “New Backer Alert” before the weekend is over.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2085148939/bob-wilber-bats-balls-and-burnouts

Now it’s time to wrap this up and send it out to the world. Before you know it, we’re going to have a book in our hands.

Bob Wilber, at your service.

I was actually not born to run. As I’ve been writing about lately in my book “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” I grew up as a pretty sickly kid, to the point where the fact I actually did grow up (and grow out of a bunch of maladies) was kind of surprising, especially in retrospect. I guess you could say I was born to sniffle, wheeze, hack, and cough. What a calling!

But, as you’ve probably already surmised in reference to today’s title, Bruce Springsteen was apparently born to run and he was born to play the epic song “Born To Run” in front of tens of thousands of devoted fans all around the world. Last Saturday night, at Consol Energy Center in downtown Pittsburgh, Bruce and the E Street Band closed a raucous and energetic show with “Born To Run” as the de facto encore (they never actually totally left the stage, but it was clearly reserved as an encore song). My wife Barbara, her brother Tim, his wife Kelly, and yours truly were there to witness this extravaganza and I can just about guarantee that all three Doyles in the party are still buzzing and still talking about it.

And here’s an important disclaimer and an admission of guilt. All my life, since my mid-teens anyway, I’ve over-analyzed music and over-dissected what makes it tick, rather than just enjoying it as a package. It’s just how I am and how I’m wired. I almost never have “vanilla” music on in the background, because to me music is an active immersion thing and it’s very common for me to listen to music and have that active listening be the entire focus of what I’m doing. In college, other guys would just have something on the stereo, but I sat at my desk with the lyric sheets and the liner notes and I blocked everything else out to really “listen” and figure out why certain songs were getting to me (and it was almost never the lyrics). I love that about bands and artists who challenge the listener to pick it apart and see that the individual parts are there for a reason, and not just to create a rhythm, or grab you with a catchy hook, or keep the beat. Heck, I like it when the rhythm surprises me, or takes an unexpected turn when I least expect it (see “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin – an absolutely ground-breaking rock song that is under-appreciated for it’s creative use of missing beats and extra beats.) I’m just like that. I can’t help it, and I doubt I’ll ever change. So that’s why this blog is what it is. It’s my perspective. I’m a nerd. My musical tastes completely reflect that. Not saying I’m proud of it, or wouldn’t want to be able to flip a switch and hear things differently without parsing every note and beat, but it’s who I am. So there. Just ask my college roommates. Talk about often not “getting it.” That was their view of their crazy roommate playing that weird crap.

Springsteen’s fans are, I think, very unique and incredibly special. There don’t seem to be too many people who are “middle of the road” when it comes to being a Bruce fan. Most of his fans are avidly devoted, earnestly enamored, and in complete awe of him and the band, and they consider the concerts to be exercises in utter joy and immersed interaction. It’s really something to be a part of, and it’s an experience unlike almost any other concert I’ve ever attended, and I’ve attend many hundreds of shows, with my first concert being The Who at the Mississippi River Festival amphitheater on August 16, 1971 (I looked that up.) I was 15 and there were about 30,000 people there. What a way to kick off your concert history!

As for Bruce’s fans, I think it’s more about the man and the impact he’s had on so many people from all walks of life, rather than being immersed in the actual playing. He really MEANS something to them. He’s had an impact on them. They love him, and his work, and they burn a thousand calories at the show, rocking and dancing and singing along all through the night. I’ve heard Barbara and many others say “His songs speak to me” or “His songs got me through some tough times” and there can hardly be any higher praise for a musician. There is an unbroken connection between Bruce and his fans that’s unlike any I’ve ever witnessed, and as the demographics of the Pittsburgh crowd would attest, this connection has been going on for decades. That’s something very special. I marvel at it.

My favorite band (a little trio from Toronto) is pretty much the polar opposite in terms of their connection to their rabid fans. For Rush nerds like me, it actually is about the playing, and the technical prowess, and the power of the music, and the geeky quality of the lyrics, and the absolute devotion those three guys have to making the most complicated and challenging songs they can write and play, while still making it something you can rock-out to and play air-drums with. But, I totally get why Springsteen fans are as nuts about their hero as Rush fans are about Geddy, Neil, and Alex. Both fan groups end up at the exact same place, focusing on every line in every song, and going crazy watching and participating in the events, which are easily among the most collaborative in music, in terms of the fans and the bands getting through the show together, pushing each other further. But, they come at it from different directions while caring about different aspects of the music.

To get all analogous with you, try this. Imagine a big round room that represents the concert “experience” and it has about two dozen long hallways connecting to it like spokes on a wheel hub. Every fan in the room is having the same basic exhilarating experience, but they came to that point from different long hallways featuring different artwork on the walls. They’re all (hopefully) having a great time, but they’ve come to that point with vastly different expectations and backgrounds and while the experience is the same the music would likely be completely different. It’s fascinating for me to have finally figured this out and put it all together, and because I’m not as emotionally attached to Springsteen’s music I come at it from a very analytical approach (hallway), trying to understand just what it is that makes it what it is.

Whoa. Okay, that was a little “off the deep end” in terms of an analogy, right? I told you I was a little geeky about this subject. I can’t help myself.

Back to the point. For a long time, I just didn’t “get” Bruce and I didn’t really get why so many people were so over-the-top fanatical about his music and his shows. I really like a bunch of his songs and have for a very long time, but oddly my favorite Springsteen song is “Tunnel Of Love” and while a lot of Bruce fans dig that piece a lot as well, I don’t ever recall hearing any of them echo my thoughts that it’s his best single tune. And I think that’s just me coming at it from a different direction. The abstract and very clever lyrics, the moodiness and depth of the playing, and the creative bent that makes it more than just a rock song. That’s more like me and what I like.

So, after Barbara and I got married on New Year’s Eve in 1997, I began to hear her stories about Bruce concerts and Bruce albums, and it was all sort of in a foreign language to me. I knew it was good. I knew how uber-popular he was, but it just wasn’t up my musical alley. When Barb was first discovering Bruce (and yes, it was her brother Tim who introduced her long before we met) I was into bands like Genesis, Yes, Supertramp, Queen, The Police, and (of course) Rush, all “progressive” bands in that the structure and the technicality of the playing was really important. About as mainstream as I got was the Moody Blues, Traffic, The Who, and Jethro Tull. So that was my background and my perspective. That’s my hallway to get to the room. When I first started going to Springsteen concerts with my bride, they almost seemed like country shows to me. And it wasn’t loud enough!

But that’s all just perspective. It’s the view with which I arrived, coming down a hall on the other side of the musical universe (room). Slowly, over time, I began to absorb what was making Springsteen so popular among so many people. They simply come to that point from their unique and different angle, cherishing and admiring totally different things and wanting an experience that’s much more inclusive and encompassing. It’s not a show, it’s a gathering and a shared bit of humanity and art. You’re PART of it, not just a fan there to watch. I realize I’m finally starting to “get” that and the show in Pittsburgh was the next step in that evolution. Rush shows are exactly like that too, but they are simultaneously completely different in the approach. (Okay, and in the volume level, too.)

I’ll always be a Rush fan, I still play Yes and Genesis quite often, and I have a remastered Jethro Tull playlist on my iPad that remains some of my favorite music ever, but I’m starting to get what it’s about and I’ve totally gotten to the place where I understand it. It’s not my inherent “style” of music, but I at least completely get its allure and attraction. The “Why it is” reasoning that makes the dynamic happen. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s special, and it’s unique.

The show was the first stop on this new tour, in which Bruce and the band play the entire album “The River” not only in its entirety, but in the correct play order from start to finish. That’s cool. “The River” was released in late 1980 and when Springsteen came to Pittsburgh to play at the old Civic Arena (the Igloo!) Tim asked his sister Barbara to go with him to the show. Her life, at least in terms of what music means to her, has never been the same. That’s even cooler.

This year, almost 36 years later, Bruce again kicked off his tour in the friendly confines of the Pittsburgh arena, this time the Consol Energy building, the new home of the Penguins. And…  It. Was. PACKED! No curtains behind the stage, no upper level seats in the nosebleeds blocked off. Every seat sold, and on the floor the General Admission area was wall-to-wall. The name of the venue was coincidental, but man there was a lot of energy in that place. And the same little brother was there with his same big sister. That was as cool as it gets.

(And remember, you can click on these photos to enlarge them!)

Tim’s wife Kelly is in a wheelchair, so they had seats in a special section up at the top of the 200 level, pretty much next to the side of the stage. Barbara and I had seats two sections over, further from the stage but with a better angle and down in the third row of the upper level. It was remarkable how different the experience was between the two locations, and I know this because about 12 songs in we arranged for a brother and his sister to sit in those seats while I moved over and sat with Kelly.

Okay, here’s something that cracked me up so much I had to put it on Facebook and Twitter from the arena. The aisle where Tim and Kelly’s seats were was perfectly numbered for any fan of early Michael Keaton movies. If this photo means nothing to you, that’s why. If you get it, you’ll possibly giggle out loud a little.

The sound was completely different next to Kelly, with the instruments being more impactful and the sound being (yay!) a little louder. But the vocals were a little muddier over there. In our original seats, the vocals were sharper but the instruments sounded a little buried. Such are the vagaries of trying to do the impossible at the sound-mixing board: Play an “intimate” show in front of 20,000 people in an enormous building. But, in both spots it was great. A really amazing experience.

After “The River” portion of the show concluded, Bruce finished up with some longtime favorites and hits, but then he stopped the show to remember David Bowie, who had just passed away. He recalled how even back in 1973 Bowie had seen him, and encouraged him, and he’d always been a big proponent of what Bruce was doing (and keep in mind my earlier points about perspective, because Bowie’s early music was also about 180-degrees out from where Bruce was coming from, but artists that are truly artists can relate to each other). And then Bruce and the band played Bowie’s hit “Rebel Rebel” and I thought the house was going to come down.

I honestly had some tears in my eyes as I watched this one legend salute another in such a proper and fitting way. I was a huge Bowie fan, all the way back to the Ziggy Stardust days, and “Panic In Detroit” is on one of my go-to playlists for long flights. It was a very special and emotional moment in a very special and emotional show. Sadly, just a few nights later in Chicago, Bruce had to do this same sort of thing again, playing an acoustic version of “Take It Easy” to say goodbye to Glenn Frey. We are simply losing too many great artists in too short a period of time.

When the show was nearly complete and it was time for the encore, they brought the houselights up to full and illuminated the whole rollicking place, allowing Bruce and the band to rip through “Born To Run” with something close to religious fervor. Once again, the word is “amazing.”

And for the record (pun intended) and coming from this self-admitted music dweeb, “Born To Run” simply has to rate as one of the all-time greatest rock songs ever recorded. Period. It’s a masterpiece, and boy does it bring the house to a fevered pitch, myself very much included. There’s no doubt that I “get” that. Epic describes it.

And guess what. In late February we’ll be meeting Tim and Kelly in the Twin Cities and we’ll see this show again, at Xcel Energy Center. Funny how the word “energy” is once again involved. There will be plenty of it on display, I guarantee it.

We flew back on Monday morning and the only downside to the whole trip was the fact Barb came down with a head & chest thing that really knocked her for a loop. I just about thought I was getting away free, but on the flight home Monday I could feel those germs attacking me, minute by minute. I never got it nearly as badly as she did, but we’ve both been plenty miserable all week. Achoo!  Cough!  Hack!  Ouch!

So what else do we have? Well, there’s that book thing I’m tackling! Being sick as a writer is one thing, but having a plague like this nasty deal is a legitimate cause for a delay. As my editor Greg Halling said “You might as well take the week off from writing. If you’re feeling that crappy you’ll probably hate what you wrote and completely do it over again, so just get some rest.” I agreed.

We did have a good update phone call last night, talking about the editing process and how he’s approaching it and being a valued part of this endeavor. Working with a guy as professional and talented as Greg means I have an editor in my corner who has my back. He sees the the big picture and he sees it from a journalistic angle, plus he also spots where I tend to veer off course from time to time (hard to believe, I know). It cracked me up (and should crack many of you up) when he wrote me after looking at the first couple of chapters and he said “You like to stack a lot of adjectives and you sure like to use parentheses!” (Really?)  He’s right, of course, and after he gets into my work and he shines up some of the crazy parts, it’s the old “palm to the forehead” for me as I think “Well, yeah. Duh! Why didn’t I write it that way in the first place?”

That’s what you call a good synergy and it’s why I asked Greg to be my editor on this project. It’s a fantastic thing, and it’s all going to make me a better writer. I’ve always looked for good mentoring, and I have no idea where I’d be without Phil Burgess steering me ever so gently for so many years. Greg is the latest to make such a big impact.

As for the Kickstarter campaign, we’re really getting down to the nitty gritty now. Just 10 days to go and we’re at 83% of the goal, We’re so close to the target I can almost see it from here, but we have to finish strong and not let up. If you dig my writing and want this book to be a reality, I hope you’ll consider joining in at any level. And if you can continue to spread the word, that’s fantastic as well.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2085148939/bob-wilber-bats-balls-and-burnouts?ref=nav_search

So, here we go. Thanks for all your help and thanks for all of the support. We can do this, and I’m confident we will. See you next week!

Bob Wilber, at your service

So I’m a writer now. For almost two whole weeks! I was before, of course, but now it’s basically all I’m doing and I’m learning as I go. The most important thing I’ve learned is that there is indeed a process and it needs to be followed.

When I’d write 25 to 30 press release-style features per year (over the last couple of decades) that was a lot of writing, but each one was about 1,000 words and they were all self-contained. Each a different story, and each a new subject altogether. A typical pre-race feature would take me about an hour to write, unless I was late or in a huge hurry. At best, I could crank one out in 30-minutes, although that increased the chance of typos or other horrible mistakes by a quotient of, well, I don’t know how much but it was a lot! So, I always took the same hour or so and that was my rhythm, week in and week out, year after year.

Now, I’m writing a book and it’s all one story. In the end, I suspect it will be somewhere north of 190,000 words, all in a specific order to tell a specific tale. I rarely needed an outline for PR work, but there’s definitely a need for one now and it’s my road map to keep me on task, on the path, and on target. Heck, my working outline is close to 20 pages itself!

But, the bottom line is I’m thrilled to be doing this and I can already feel the growth in my writing chops and my style. I’m just two weeks into this but I can feel the flow and the style starting to materialize and develop, and that’s a really cool thing. Plus, I now have three (count ’em, 3!) chapters done, and that means I’m ahead of even my most optimistic schedule. I was in unknown territory the first day I sat down to get started, so I really didn’t know how much output I could create each week, but a full chapter (which can be anywhere from 6,500 to 10,000 words) feels about right, so far. And, more than anything else, what I find most refreshing and exciting is that it’s really fun. I wrote last week that it was fun, and I’m already starting to appreciate the joy this brings to me, even more. It’s definitely “work” and it takes a ton of focus and dedication to make it happen, but it’s fun.

I’m juggling quite a bit to do this, because I have to write the actual book, I still need to promote it and promote the Kickstarter campaign that will help support it, I have this blog to write, and then there’s social media, emails, and other “stuff” (like paying these bills that are stacked up next to my laptop). So, I can’t just get up in the morning and sit down here, blocking everything else out. There’s a process!

As for Kickstarter, I knew going in that launching it right before Christmas was not the best timing, but as I’ve described before I felt like I needed to strike while people still remembered who I was. And, other people who have first-hand knowledge of how it works were quick to inform me that a typical Kickstarter deal has a burst of activity in the beginning, a lull in the middle, and another burst at the end. That definitely held true for my project.

The lull happened during the last week. All of the avid “Let me know when you launch this and I’ll jump on board” backers were quick to get in and quick to help promote it, and for that I can’t express how grateful I am. I also heard from a number of people that they’d be waiting until near the end, and I’m thankful for that. In the middle, all of a sudden we slowed to maybe one new backer a day. And then last weekend and yesterday happened.

Over the weekend, when I was still struggling to get up to the 50% mark with my targeted goal, someone by the name of “A Friend” jumpstarted my Kickstarter with a huge anonymous contribution. And what a jumpstart that was!

Yesterday, we added five new backers in mere hours, and it has continued today. We’re now all the way up to 76% of the goal with 57 backers (it was 56 when I started writing this blog, so stay tuned!) and those numbers are really telling.

When I launched the deal, a number of people were quick to inform me that my reward levels were too lofty and that I’d never (absolutely NEVER) make it to the goal expecting people to contribute as much as I was hoping to land. A typical Kickstarter project averages about a $25 to $30 pledge per backer, so if your target is up there in four figures you’re going to need a ton of people to support you. That actually works for a lot of people and a lot of projects, and I’m as appreciative for a $20 pledge as I am for a larger one, but my gut feeling, going in, was that my longtime blog readers and my friends in the sports business would be much more generous, loyal, and supportive. I didn’t know that for a fact, and I’ll admit to a little bit of fear and trepidation, but I had a feeling and I wanted to go with it. Right now the average backer pledge is an astronomical $276, and even if we deduct that one enormous pledge from the anonymous donor, you’re still talking somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 per pledge. That is stunning, and I’m not sure what the word is for how that makes me feel, because “grateful” and “thankful” and “humbled” aren’t quite good enough. I’m all of those things and much more.

And now we have about two weeks to go and we still need to close that gap and get to 100% of the goal, because at 99% of the goal you get zero. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. It’s an all-or-nothing deal on Kickstarter.

I love all the support, especially the social media posts and the kindness of so many people who are helping me make this thing a reality. I’ve got goosebumps right now, just writing that sentence.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2085148939/bob-wilber-bats-balls-and-burnouts

And, in case you didn’t notice, you can see that Todd Myers, my esteemed and uber-talented graphic artist, has continued to tweak and improve the look of the cover. It’s awesome.

So what else is going on around here? Well, tonight I’ll be packing for a quick trip to Pittsburgh for the weekend, with a (gasp!) 7:00 a.m. flight in the morning, first to MSP and then to PIT. The lovely Barbara Doyle is already in the Twin Cities, so we’ll meet up at the airport and then fly to the Steel City together, where her nephew Colin will pick us up and escort us to his house (Colin was my intern for a couple of races a few years ago, so you may remember him.) We’re headed there to see the first show on the new Bruce Springsteen tour, in which The Boss will play the entire album “The River” for his avid fans. Should be FANTASTIC! And it will be great to spend a few days with Barb’s brother Tim and his family, who are really fun people. I’m hoping there will be bowling! There’s a very cool old-school bowling alley near their house, and it’s not just fun it’s also like stepping back in time to the 1960s to bowl there.

We’ve had some warm days here in Liberty Lake, if by “warm” you mean “above freezing” and that’s exactly what it’s been, which is a good thing because our neighborhood street should’ve had two blue lines and red line painted on it for the last 10 days. It was sheer ice for a good long time. Getting better now, though.

Boofus and Buster have been missing their mom, who has been gone all week, but that just means more snuggles for me all night and the joy of having both boyz with me in my office all day. They’re good boyz and good assistants.

So far, no elephants have stormed the house, my printer hasn’t levitated and flown away, and they’ve done a great job of eating the treats I gave them for breakfast. All in all, I’d have to say they’re right on top of their game.

It can’t be all that easy to sleep 16 or so hours a day and then “head to work” and stay as focused and determined as they are. Buster, for the record, is now snoring. Loudly. So much for focus and determination, although Boofus is doing a bang-up job right now, trimming his own claws on his back paws. Attaboy, Boofie.

My mom’s birthday was just a few days ago, and she would’ve been 91. She’s in a much better place, though, and those last few years with Alzheimer’s were really tough. I’m glad she’s at peace.

My dad afforded me enough baseball talent and enough guidance to get a free college education from the game, and a lot of fun along the way, but my mother’s writing and communications skills were basically a priceless part of my DNA. Without Taffy Wilber’s talent, there would be no blog and there would be no book. I’m truly eternally grateful, and I still have moments when I want to call her and tell her all about this. We were very close, and she’s awfully easy to miss.

Whew, just had a big scare right there. For some reason I lost my internet connection and the WordPress blog writing platform here just totally seized up. I was lucky to not lose this whole thing, but that takes me directly into my next topic, as you will now see.

One thing I did last night was make a run to Best Buy to purchase a new external hard drive. The one I had was acting up and not always backing up my work, so I thought it was pretty critical to have one that actually, technically, really did its job. When you’re writing a book digitally like this, the very thought of a computer crash and a total loss of data is beyond zombie-apocalypse horrifying. This way, with the Apple Time Machine auto-backups, I’ll never be more than a few words away from having everything saved.

And with the new one being “blank” it’s doing its first backup now, and that means it’s copying the entire contents of my hard drive as I type. It’s a lengthy process. But, this was $99 extremely well spent.

Stop and imagine writing a book on a manual typewriter. It’s hard to fathom, but it was only done that way (or even by handwriting it) until just recently. I don’t think Earnest Hemingway worried too much about external hard drives, but he probably did concern himself with that 500-page manuscript. Wouldn’t have been too much fun if one of the cats knocked that off the desk and spread the pages all over the floor. Yikes.

And speaking of money, by the very fact that I’m writing this blog today and not huddling in closed-door meetings with financial advisors, lawyers, and bodyguards, you can figure out that I didn’t win the lottery. I suspect if you’re reading this, the same holds true for you, as well. Hard to believe, huh?

And here’s another thing that’s hard to believe: Those bills on my desk, next to my laptop, have not yet paid themselves. What kind of world do we live in where you actually have to send money to companies that provide you services? Hang on American Express, you’re next as soon as I finish this.

And before we do that, how about a little news and commentary about our favorite form of motorsports, the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series. I’ve been on record for quite some time with my view that 2016 will be a huge year of big growth for NHRA, and I’m please to say that not only do I still believe that, but I’m actually beginning to think it will be bigger and more epic than ever.

Everything I see right now, from the new TV production crew to the schedule (welcome back, Topeka!), the new series logo, and the new people who have been brought on-board is not just positive, it’s almost stunning in its structure.

Between the “live” TV and the promotional might of FOX Sports, combined with a totally new approach to bringing the action to TV viewers and online streamers, and with the talented group they’ve assembled for everything ranging from TV, to sales. to promotion, to social media, I have NEVER seen NHRA so poised for growth.

And, to be honest, a lot of the credit for all of this goes to NHRA President Peter Clifford, who hit the ground not just running but sprinting. Peter has been a revelation, and his decisive “take charge” leadership is beyond refreshing. He also knows he can’t micromanage, so he’s surrounding himself with top flight people who are just as dedicated to make the sport everything it can be.

In short: I CAN’T WAIT FOR POMONA!

My first race, in person, will be Gainesville, but I’ll be on pins and needles waiting to see that first weekend of televised coverage.

Time to pay these bills and do some laundry. At least I don’t feel the urge to be buying any lottery tickets this week. There’s that…

Bob Wilber, at your service.

On Monday morning I got up and went to work. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years as a Team Manager and PR Rep in the world on NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing, but this particular Monday was different. It even felt different. It was the start of a new week at the start of a new year, and for me it was the start of a new career. Now, I’m a writer.

I don’t know why I expected it to be vastly different. After all, a majority of what work I’ve done over the past two decades was centered on writing, whether it was press releases, feature stories, magazine columns, or simple social media. It’s not like I’ve just wrapped up 20 years as a pipe fitter and on Monday I joined a rock band. But, it was different.

After all that time writing about other people (and publicizing other people) I sat down at this computer and realized that in 2016 I’d only be writing about myself. And, after feeling quite squeamish about publicizing myself at first, I knew I had to get over that. Writing a book is one thing (a very big thing) but getting it edited, published, and printed is another entire universe of hefty expenses, despite how far self-publishing has come in recent years. I had also consciously chosen the classic “double-whammy” of quitting my job and therefore losing my salary while also undertaking this expensive proposition. Take that, bank account!

It’s impossible to overstate how wonderful my wife Barbara is, especially in terms of this endeavor. She’s backed me, prodded me, pushed me, and motivated me to make “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” a reality. She’s accepted the fact that I walked away from a dream job and its compensation, but like most dream jobs I was doing it for reasons other than money. Dream jobs don’t always pay that well in terms of massive amounts of dollars but they reward you richly with the experience. Still, my monthly check did go a long way in terms of pesky little details like the mortgage, insurance, and even an IRA (think ahead!).

So, to say goodbye to my friends at NHRA and Team Wilkerson, and to kiss my final paycheck goodbye, was a true turning point. At first, I had no desire to do any crowdfunding because it seemed an awful lot like asking for a handout with a cardboard sign on a cyber street corner, but just thinking of the largesse of my wife and then thinking “Okay, so I’m not making any money and now I’m going to spend a ton to print this book” made me realize that the Kickstarter campaign was the right thing to do. And that required me to get over my trepidation and to completely get over my fear of self-promotion.

The Kickstarter deal has to be promoted, and I can’t allow myself to hide in the corner and just hope other people do that for me. It’s going well, and we still have more than three weeks to go while we’re on the doorstep of being halfway to the goal, but I can’t let my foot off the gas now, and I’ll be pushing and prodding and pleading right to the finish line. I think we’ll make it. I’m an optimist who sees his glass is in the other room, but it’s two-thirds full wherever it is

So, if you’re active in social media and want to lend a hand through links and comments, you can send as many people as you want right here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2085148939/bob-wilber-bats-balls-and-burnouts

Meanwhile, I’ve now spent four entire days as a writer. It’s an interesting pursuit and I’m already feeling like I’ve been doing this my whole life. I have been doing this for much of my life, and I’ve been destined to do this since I was born. To be honest, it’s pretty fun. I’m two chapters into it, and have a mountain left to climb, but I think I’ll have the first draft of it done by midsummer, and then I’ll be on track to be holding a printed copy of it in my well-worn hands before 2016 is in the books (pun intended).

What’s going to take some additional discipline is this blog. I’m doing hours of writing every day now, but it’s important to take a day and stay focused on this. I’ve been blogging for more than 10 years and I owe it to my readers (all of you!) to keep it up. So maybe Thursday is the day, each week. I’ll write Monday through Wednesday, and I need to have what I’ve done each week into my editor’s hands (or more precisely, on his computer) every Friday, so Thursday seems like a good day to blog. And here I am.

Looking back over the last few weeks, it’s been a blur and a riot, all at the same time. First Kauai and all of that amazing fun, then we were home just a couple of nights before heading to Minnesota to spend New Year’s Eve with some of the best friends anyone could have. Plus, that’s our anniversary so it’s double the fun.

Terry and Lynn Blake hosted this year’s bash, and it will join the lengthy pantheon of other such soirees as an epic night of friendship, laughter, celebration, and (yes) some imbibing of various beverages. That’s why we walk from Dave and Nichol Jacobsen’s house for the party, and then walk back there after midnight. Barb and I get the great joy of having the Jacobsen’s lower level at our disposal (The Jacobsen’s Bed & Breakfast) as well, and much fun is had by all. Plus, we all managed to sleep in a little late the next morning. Yay for us.

After we watch the ball drop in Time’s Square, the party really ramps up and the merriment goes to a whole new level. Yes. We dance. And laugh. and have a time as great as any party provided in our youth, because for that night we’re all young again. This get-together was just as spectacular as any, and I actually think we get better at this party thing with each passing year.

Barb’s sister Kitty came up from Florida to join us, so that just added to the fun. I wasn’t sure how she’d take our adult goofiness, but Kitty has known most of our friends for a while and she fit right in. She’s now full-fledged member of the group.

It was pretty cold back there, but by the time we left at the end of the weekend it was warming up enough for us to take a great walk all around Powers Lake, a gorgeous body of water (currently in the form of ice) with a paved trail all the way around it. I’m guessing it’s a two-mile walk, and we bundled up and enjoyed every step of it. Kitty gets a special sort of joy out of being in Minnesota because she’s lived in Florida for a very long time and rarely gets the chance to enjoy the brisk crispy air and the snow. We provided that just for her. Because we’re givers.

On another front, two of my former PR colleagues and I have formed the “Writer’s Accountability Team” (yes, that’s WAT as in “WAT in the world have I gotten myself into?”) and we have been sharing notes over the past couple of days. Kelly Topolinski also hung up her PR spurs at the end of last year, and she’s diving into the authoring world just like I am. She’s absolutely brilliant, and I can’t wait to read what she produces (it’s a fiction novel!). Elon Werner, who works for John Force Racing and who is roundly considered a PR icon in the racing world, has plans to follow in our tiny footsteps in the future, even if he has to do it in what little spare time he has. He is also absolutely brilliant, and some of the outlines he’s shared with me make me want to kidnap him and lock him in a room until he’s done. Again, can’t wait to see what he produces and hands to the reading world. I’m incredibly lucky to have such talented friends. They’re inspiring.

We keep each other posted on what we’re doing, and let each other know what we’re planning. And, since we attack our work days independently while we’re all doing something very similar, it’s a benefit to share ideas on how we outline and how we write. Everyone is different, but we’re all trying to get to the same place.

One big thing I’ve noticed in this process is what might be my biggest weakness. I don’t have enough patience. I want to write 395 pages RIGHT NOW, but my capacity seems to be about 2,500 to 4,000 words in any given day. I just want my fingers to go on Auto-Pilot and see the words magically appear, but they don’t do that and it doesn’t work that way. So, I’m going to have to learn when to walk away from time to time, clear my head for a bit, and take on the writing in manageable chunks. Editing and fixing typos also counts as a head-clearing thing, but it isn’t the same as a walk around the golf course or a drive in the hills. Stay focused, Wilber. Stay on task. But be patient. It will all happen in due time.

Here in Liberty Lake, they had more snow while we were back in Minnesota and even though it’s been in the high 30s the last couple of days here, there’s still a lot of it on the ground. The boyz get cabin fever a little in the winter, because we can’t put their hut up outside or take them for walks in their stroller when there’s ice and snow everywhere, and we really can’t even open the sliding door for very long, just to give them some fresh air.

When we bought the stroller, we had been “training” Buster and Boofus to go for walks on a leash, and they were getting the hang of it in a cat sort of way. Unlike dogs, who get the whole concept of “going for a walk” and who enjoy just strolling around with their humans, the boyz really only see it as a way to escape the house, and they (in effect) see it as taking us for a walk. They lead and we follow. But where they want to go is totally based on things they want. They want grass.

We’ve taken Buster out twice this week (Boofus is not a big fan of the snow) and really all he does is make a beeline for a dried plant that’s still in a planter on the patio, and then he wants to go under the pine trees to see if there’s any green grass under there, away from the snow. Then he finds it but discovers it’s frozen into something along the lines of grass-cicles and he can’t eat it. At that point, with very little appreciation for walking through snow that’s up to his shoulders, he’s over it. We’ll all be happy when spring returns and they can go outside sans leash. Counting the days.

And finally…  This one had me speechless and I’m still shaking my head. Stunned, honored, flabbergasted, and humbled are words that come to mind.

Yesterday, the UPS guy knocked on the door and handed me a box. I noticed on the shipping label  that it was from “Mail Room – LRS, Inc” in good old Springfield, Illinois. Hmmm. I truly had no idea what was in this nondescript package. And then I opened it. And my jaw dropped open while my eyes grew big. It was the most beautiful clock I’d ever seen, with an inscription that reads “Bob Wilber – Thank You For Your Dedication to Team Wilkerson and to LRS”. Stunned. Frankly, no one has ever done anything like that for me in my entire career. Just wow.

I sent a note of huge thanks to both Dick Levi and Shannon Heisler (who heads up marketing for LRS) and Shannon said “We wanted you to have something pretty to look at while you write…”  Again, just wow.

So that’s a heck of a way to cap off my first few days as a writer. It will remain a treasured memento forever.

Back next week…  See you then.

Bob Wilber, at your service.

Well, that was spectacular. As much as Barbara and I both love Hawaii (as evidenced by the fact we got married there, 18 years ago) it has become clear that Kauai has taken its place atop the leader-board in the “Our Favorite Island” rankings. The Big Island of Hawaii ranks second. We love us some Oahu and Maui (which is the island that hosted our small wedding in 1997, on a beach near Kihei), but the rustic laid-back charms and the incredible scenery presented by Kauai make it both relaxing and breathtaking at the same time. Having a dear sister, her hubby, and a wonderful niece all living there doesn’t hurt, either.

We spent a week this time. It seems like it was either a year (based on the amount of things we did) or a day and a half (based on how quickly it passed), but the passage of time is like that. Remember math classes in high school? If you were like me, those 55-minute gatherings seemed to take half a day. Creative Writing?  Those classes seemed over before they started. How does subject matter alone contort the time/space continuum?

Here, in no particular order, are the wonderful things you do on Kauai:

You walk.

You hike.

You eat (very well).

You get to know the spirit of Aloha.

You stare (and blink) at unfathomable vistas of mountains, jungles, and waterfalls.

You walk on soft sands and hear the palm fronds crackle above you.

You get to know the local waiters, restaurant owners, and bartenders in the town of Kapaa as if you’ve lived there for a decade. It doesn’t hurt that your sister and brother-in-law are as popular as Norm from “Cheers”.

You soak up the sunshine and refuse to let the daily rain showers deter you. They go away. You won’t melt.

You spot whales out on the horizon.

You relax by the pool, day or night (especially at night, on a big round floppy chair, as the full moon rises).

You go coffee tasting at a real plantation in the morning and rum tasting at a real distillery in the afternoon. Wine tasting happens daily, with most meals.

You consume more Mai Tais in one week than you’ve had during your entire life (not counting other trips to Hawaii).

You discover that longtime friends from the NHRA world (the Evans family) have a beach home at the northern tip of the island, and you visit them to to have a fabulous home-cooked lunch, and learn the incredible tale of their family tree, finding out how it’s part of Kauai lore. (For reference, see the movie “The Descendants”).

You buy too many souvenirs, but you wouldn’t leave any of them behind.

You find your iPhone to be useful mostly only as a camera. It’s a good camera, and its lack of use as an actual telephone is a good thing.

You visit Hanalei Bay and marvel at not only its beauty and remote charm, but also that it was home to Puff The Magic Dragon.

You ford rivers in your rental car, which is a Chevy. (See what I did there?)

And, you embrace family and enjoy meeting and getting to know their friends in this tropical wonderland.

Then, on your final day you tread gingerly to make each moment important, in order to slow the clock. You somehow, though, refuse to spend the day in math class just to make it last longer.

Then, you head to Lihue Airport for a short 9:00 p.m. up-and-back-down flight over to Honolulu, after spending far too much of the day straightening out problems Hawaiian Airlines inflicted upon your Delta reservations. Once in Honolulu, it’s a short wait before you board your overnight red-eye flight to Seattle. You’d love to sleep the night away, but if your name is Bob Wilber you know better. It never happens when it needs to happen.

Instead, you watch the movie “The Man From U.N.C.L.E” and you marvel at how actor Henry Cavill not only plays a solid Napoleon Solo, but he also pays just enough of an homage to Robert Vaughn’s cadence and vocal inflection from the TV series of yesteryear. You also enjoy the movie.

Then you pass the last three hours of the flight watching “Apollo 13” for roughly the 10th time in your life. It’s that good.

You see the horizon brighten as you near Seattle.

You feel the cold embrace of a rainy 38-degree morning in the jetway, and you try not to shed a tear over the paradise you left behind just hours before.

You find you connecting gate, board your regional jet, and arrive in Spokane after finally sleeping for that entire flight over from Seattle. The only problem is, the “entire” Seattle to Spokane flight is roughly 40-minutes.

And there’s six inches of snow on the ground and more coming down.

And Kauai seems like a dream.

That’s kind of how it goes, right? But in this case, it hasn’t just been a vacation. We didn’t go to some faraway island to be alone and just be tourists. We spent it with my closest sibling (at 11-months apart, Mary and I are “Irish Twins” and we grew up together) and we were able to get another real taste of what it would be like to actually live there! It’s a pretty good taste. I’ll admit to checking into a few real-estate listings before we left.

Could we do what Mary and her husband Lonnie Smith did, and basically drop everything and move there?  (First of all, no he’s not the former Cardinal and Phillie Lonnie Smith. He’s the former SIU-Edwardsville Cougar by way of Jerseyville, Ill. Lonnie Smith, but he’s a heck of a Lonnie Smith in his own right.) As for whether or not Barbara Doyle and I could pack up the essentials and then sell or give away everything else before actually moving to Kauai, well…  I think we could. I don’t know if we will, and maybe some day we’ll split the difference and just buy a slice of a property, but this trip seemed to tell us both that we absolutely could live there.

With each passing day, you care a little less about what seemed so important “back home” on the mainland. And you remove another hunk of stress from your life. And you realize what’s really important. And no, the Mai Tais aren’t really that important, but they sure are good. And of all the Hawaiian islands, with their wonderful people, you begin to think that Kauai is quite special in that regard. There’s a measure of respect and friendliness that is so genuine, and so opposed to the petty differences we dream up here in “real life”. It’s a special place. It’s a good place. It has real heart.

Basically, I want to go back.

The one thing I did keep track of while over there, was my Kickstarter campaign. I rationalized that by describing it as a prudent use of very little of my time, to keep the campaign on track in order to reach the goal that will allow me to focus strictly on writing, and not on going broke or cutting corners in order to self-publish this project.

How goes it? It goes well. We’re almost at 40% of the goal and still have more than four weeks to go. Once it’s officially 2016 and the Christmas / New Year’s holiday season is behind us, I’ll ramp up the social media promotion again and try to finish strong. We still have more than half-way to go, but I have confidence that we’ll make it. I think this book is simply meant to be, and it will happen, and it’s heartwarming to know that so many people have faith in me to do this. I will not let them down.

“Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” will be written, edited, and published before the year is out, and the day upon which I am holding a physical copy of it in my hands will be one of the most important days of my life.

If you haven’t checked it out, you can do that here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2085148939/bob-wilber-bats-balls-and-burnouts

And remember, I’m @BobWilber5 on Twitter and you can also follow my progress with the book on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/batsballsandburnouts/

Happy New Year, everyone! Enjoy, and be careful. We’re off tomorrow to spend the holiday (and our anniversary!) with dear friends in Minnesota, and upon our return I think I’ll finally feel like my “job” and my full-time profession will be writing this book. I have the help of some amazing professionals, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out. It’ll be a “job” that requires dedication, focus, and a lot of patience. I can do this.

Bob Wilber, at your service.

I’m still getting accustomed to the fact that I can sit down, open my laptop, and write this blog without having to go through the step of writing and then sending it as an email, to the NHRA.com staff. And then I would have to send the photos, in a specific size, in another email. This way is what you’d call “one-stop shopping” and I dig it, but it is taking some getting used to.

As I start this installment, I’m sitting in the American Express Centurion Lounge at SEA (Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, often referred to as Sea-Tac). My longtime blog buddy STP (Scott The Pilot) knows this airport all too well, since he lives in Gig Harbor but is based out of LAX and has to “commute to work” down there whenever he starts a trip. At least that was the scenario when we met at a local bar not too far from here during the Seattle race last summer.

Barbara and I have just completed Leg 1 of our journey to Kauai, having made the short hop from Spokane over here. This morning, in Spokane, the weather was lovely. If by lovely you mean hideous. It started snowing late yesterday but it tapered off just after midnight. Still, I had heard that the forecast was for it to pick back up again just before dawn so my brain automatically woke me up at 2:45, as it tends to do whenever I know I have to get up early. Drives me nuts, basically, because on the nights when I have the iPhone alarm set for 5:00 a.m., I almost always wake up an hour or two early and then just lay there awake watching the phone.

When 2:45 rolled around, I figured I should at least get up and check the weather, so I walked out to the dining room and peered out into the Liberty Lake darkness, and after my eyes adjusted I realized I could still see the front walk so there really hadn’t been any more snow. That realization didn’t allow me to fall back asleep, but Buster and Boofus were still happy to see me come back to bed. One Barbara J. Doyle never knew I had left.

Finally, with a plan that had us set to be rolling out of the neighborhood no later than 7:15, I went ahead and got up at 5:45 so that I wouldn’t be thrashing. And it was snowing. Hard. Little flakes, but lots of them and with the temperature right around 32 degrees it was a prime blast for making the streets very slippery, as a snow/ice mix. Splendiferous!

And, although GEG has improved their snow removal efforts since we moved there it’s still not exactly MSP when it comes to moving the white stuff off the runways and taxiways, so there was that to worry about (because when it comes to travel, I worry. Really. You knew that…)

I logged onto Delta.com and all three of our flights were listed as On-Time, so that helped a little, but first we had to actually make the 20-mile trek from Liberty Lake out to GEG, and my last drive there in similar conditions featured a bumper-cars mentality by a large percentage of the folks (nuts) on I-90, who figured “Aw heck, I got me some four-wheel drive so I ain’t got nuthin’ to worry about and these other idiots ought to speed up and git outta my way” while conveniently forgetting that ice is slippery and while four-wheel drive is really cool there’s no such thing as four-wheel stopping on roads like that.

This morning, it was just as slick but apparently some of the aforementioned folks got the message last week. There were still a few spinouts in the ditch, but by and large the majority slowed down and we got to GEG unscathed.

The planes that fly the SEA-GEG route all day, back and forth, are little regional jets, so then there’s the worry about the flights being delayed with the lousy weather, but the incoming aircraft landed on time and, even with the expected stop at the de-icing pad, we got out of there basically on time. But, if you were a first-time flyer really looking forward to seeing the sights from the window seat of a commercial airliner, that would not have been the best flight for you. Right after wheels up, we were in the clouds almost immediately, and never got out of said clouds all the way across the state. We descended in them, made the hard left turn over downtown Seattle in them (no Space Needle view for me) and didn’t come down out of them until we were almost on the runway. Instrument landings are pretty amazing.

Now, we head to LAX because Delta doesn’t have a nonstop from SEA to LIH. Okay, who knows what LIH stands for???  (Theme music from Jeopardy plays…) Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? The airport on Kauai is in the village of Lihue (Lih-Hooey) and so the airport is known as Lihue and the code is LIH. You’re welcome. I’m a fountain of this stuff.

So here’s hoping the flight to LAX is on-time, smooth, and maybe (just maybe) even a little worthy of sightseeing from seat 1-D. Then, a one-hour layover at LAX until our nonstop to LIH departs and guess what? Really, guess what? Have you guessed? Well, ladies and gents, boys and berries, that flight has lay-flat seats in the front cabin, where we will be seated. That’s the way it’s listed, anyway, so I’m hoping it’s true. With millions of miles of air travel under my belt, including many long trans-Atlantic flights and many flights to Hawaii, I’ve never had the pleasure of a lay-flat seat. If it’s true, I’m going to try it in every possible configuration. Whee…

We’ll get to LIH around 9:00 pm, pick up our car, and drive over to the Marriott on the beach by my sister Mary’s place. Then… An entire week on the Garden Isle. Beaching, hiking, driving, eating (and yes, drinking), and sleeping with the sounds of the surf taking us to la-la land.

Time to wrap this segment up now. It’s not the prettiest day in the history of Seattle, but on the same account I can venture a guess that it’s also not the sort of day to which Seattleites are unaccustomed. It does rain here. One summer during college, when I played for a month and a half with the Cheney Studs, based out of Edmonds, Wash. just up the road on the other side of downtown, I think it rained every day. And we played through it. On July 4th, we had a fire built in a metal trash can, right in the dugout, just to keep warm. And when I peered in toward the plate from centerfield, I had a hard time seeing the hitter because of the drops of water cascading off the brim of my hat. It was special…

I’ll get back at this on the flight down to LAX, and hopefully get it posted from there. Aloha!

———————

Somewhere over Northern California…

Other than a short moment of broken clouds over Oregon, this one is going much the way the first leg went. Solid clouds, and now we’re probably somewhere just west of Reno, but on the California side.  On FlightAware, one of my favorite apps for my iPad because it’s more accurate than most flight tracking deals, they include weather radar on the map image and there appears to be a be a big storm around San Francisco, Sacramento, and that whole part of the state, so I could see that our route of flight had been altered to the east to miss that. Kind of bumpy again.

So here’s the noteworthy thing about the transition to this blog. I’ve found it a little difficult to simply slide back into the relaxed conversational “stream of consciousness” style I used so easily for 10+ years at NHRA.com, and at first I wasn’t sure why that was the case. And then it hit me that I’ve been blogging here for a long time as well, but this blog formerly known as “Bob On Baseball” was much more formal story telling, in a real journalistic sense. So, when I’d open the page to start writing “Bob’s Blog” here my brain would apparently decide that I was still writing in the previous style here. Interesting, to say the least. I gotta loosen up!

Here’s an update on the Kickstarter campaign: About a week in now, with (I think) 41 days left to go and we’re just around 1/3 of the way there. Probably about 30% to be accurate. I think that’s fantastic, and now while I’m in Hawaii for a week I think I’ll just let it cruise for a bit and then ramp up the promotion of it again as we get closer to the finish line.

I was thrilled, the other day, to see that Ron Capps, Antron Brown, Jeff Arend, and Doug Herbert all jumped in to post a link to my “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” Kickstarter page, on Twitter. That was fabulous, and that So Cal cat named Del (he of the two World Championships) sent me a text yesterday saying he was going to try to give me a boost as well, on social media, but AB, Ron, Jeff, and Doug had beat him to the punch so he wanted to let things settle again before he went for it. Friends and colleagues, but mostly friends. Thanks, guys!

And remember, if you’re interested in helping me bring this book to life (it’s not cheap to write and publish a book!) and you can spare a dime, the Kickstarter campaign is here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2085148939/bob-wilber-bats-balls-and-burnouts?ref=card

We don’t have that long of a layover at LAX, so I probably should get this posted while I have the in-flight WiFi service up and running. We have zero plans for the week, but we’ve been to see Mary and Lonnie on Kauai before so we know what we’re in for. Eat terrible food, stay in our room a lot, never touch those evil Mai Tais, dress formally, watch a lot of TV, that sort of stuff. Not!

Whale-watching season is just kicking off in the islands, so we’ll definitely be hitting a few of the prime beaches, looking for those incredible behemoths of the deep. Seeing whales for the first time, during our trip a year ago, was a highlight of my life. I can guarantee Barbara would say the same thing. If you’ve never experienced it, put it on your bucket list!

Oh yeah, we are working on getting a photo gallery function here, so look forward to that. Right now, all I can do is post stand-alone pics, but we’re on it.

Oh, and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter. Did you forget? Well, don’t!  @BobWilber5

Back at ya with tales of adventures on Kauai as soon as possible.

Did I mention the Kickstarter thing?

Bob Wilber, at your service.

Welcome! Most of you have been with me at NHRA.com for a long time, and now we begin the next chapter (pun fully intended).

Today seems like the right day to start blogging here in a legit fashion. Last night, with the support and help of my wonderful wife, I dove headlong into the building of a Kickstarter campaign to hopefully raise not only some funding, but also awareness for my upcoming book “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” and in less than 12 hours my campaign was approved and launched.

The key to Kickstarter, of course, is to give folks a compelling reason to jump in an be involved, at even the tiniest level. But, you can also add in some rewards that just might make a few people step it up a little, in order to possibly get in a return something rare and authentic. With that in mind, I’ve put quite a few race-worn (but cleaned!) crew shirts on the page, dating all the way back to the start of the CSK days with Worsham Racing, both embroidered and printed, right up to the past seven seasons with the LRS Funny Car and Team Wilkerson.

Don’t need a shirt? How about a real-live “Winner’s Jacket”? It will have my name stitched on the front, but maybe you can see that as some sort of provenance or added value? If not, embroidery can be removed. Each one was purchased after a race victory.

No need or desire for a jacket? Well, did you ever think you could have a real 100% authentic Wally trophy in your possession? I’m willing to part with up to 20 of them. You can have one.

The Kickstarter page is right here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2085148939/bob-wilber-bats-balls-and-burnouts

But really, the goal is to get the word out there about the book, and this blog is the place where you can stay totally up to speed (again, pun fully intended) on my progress during 2016. I’ve already gotten a lot of work done, including photography, graphic design, and the Kickstarter page, and during the rest of December I have some very important and pressing plans. As in Hawaii. Or more precisely, Kauai. So there’s that to focus on.

Then we’ll travel back to what we still consider our “real” hometown, Woodbury, Minn., to enjoy New Year’s Eve and our anniversary with our dearest and best friends. Lynn and Terry Blake will be hosting our raucous group this year, while Neighbor Dave and Nichol Jacobsen will once again be providing “safe haven” from drunk drivers by offering us our standard room at their house. We call it the Jacobsen’s Bed & Breakfast. And, one more bonus, it sounds like Barbara’s sister Kitty will be coming up from Florida to spend the holiday with us, as well. Woo Hoo! That’s awesome.

So, once January rolls around I’ll clear away the last vestiges of my reports and files from the 2015 NHRA Mello Yello season, and become a full-time writer. I’m thinking a Fedora might make me feel more the part. And an old manual typewriter!

So much so, on the typewriter, that I actually put an image of one on my new business cards. Hey, a writer has to socialize and spread the word about what he’s up to, so I’ll be handing these out all over the place. I already started doing that at a local Christmas party we attended a few nights ago, out here in Spokane. They were a hit!

Gotta admit, I’m a little nervous. If by “a little nervous” you mean pretty darned nervous. Not about writing the book. Heck, with my NHRA blog and the former “Bob On Baseball” (the archives from which still live here) I’ve done enough test drives to have nearly written it many times before, but more about the process and belief that I can not only do it, but do it well. I’ll be writing about so many rich characters and vivid unbelievable stories, I have to do it all justice.

If it all works, that will be a legacy. Not just for me, but for my parents, who instilled in me everything I’m about. And for my wife, who quite literally changed my life the day we met and who supports me wholeheartedly in this endeavor.

This new “Bob’s Blog” resides here at The Perfect Game Foundation®, which my brother Del Jr. and my sisters Cindy and Mary, along with myself, founded to honor the memory of Del and Taffy Wilber, our late parents. They were special, and they instilled so much of what they were in all of us. Please, feel free to nose around the main site to check out some of the pages like “About Us” and “The Team” to see the fine group of folks who work hard to give aspiring young people a chance to get a foot in the door for a career in sports. They often say it’s who you know, not what you know, and in our cases that had to be true. For our applicants, TPGF tries to be that someone they know, and my brother Del Jr. does an amazing job here. I just write a blog… And “They often say…”  Well, who’s “they” anyway?

My NHRA blog was supposed to last a whole month, way back in 2005. Instead, it lasted close to 10 and a half years. Many thousands of installments, many millions of words, and many millions of hits. But the most impressive thing was the friendships and the support, encouragement, and loyalty that developed from a little blog about just about anything. Life changed. Life better.

And now we kick things off here. Come back often. I’ll try to write as often as possible and provide updates and stories, facts and fiction, laughs and groans, and oh so many characters. Two of which are named Buster and Boofus. We can’t blog without those two!

And I thought about changing my tag line at the bottom of each one of these. The ubiquitous “Wilber, out!” closed out every single NHRA blog I ever wrote, so I think it is time for a change, and I think I stumbled onto it with the first “Bob’s Blog” here, when I more or less simply wrote “Hey, check back often. My new blog will be right here…” Then I signed off with the first thing that came to mind. And it works.

So check back often! And check out Kickstarter if you have a chance.

Bob Wilber, at your service

It would not be inappropriate for there to be a yellow sign on this blog, with the wording “Under Construction” upon it. I’ve been writing “Bob On Baseball” here for more than four and a half years, while simultaneously also writing a completely different blog over at NHRA.com, all while doing a ton of writing for my real job as a team PR rep on the NHRA Mello Yello tour, and to put the cherry on top in 2016 I’ll be stepping away from drag racing in order to write a book. That’s a lot of writing, and something had to give, so here’s the plan…

Starting soon, hopefully in just a few weeks, I’ll be ending my 10+ year tenure with my NHRA blog and I will shift all of that writing, musing, rambling, and just plain wondering to this site, hopefully bringing many thousands of readers with me. With that in mind, and considering baseball will only be a part of this blog in the future, the title will get a little shorter and a little more far-reaching.

This will be, simply, “Bob’s Blog” and those of you who have followed me on NHRA.com know you’ll be seeing an ongoing tale of life, love, travel, cats, humor (hopefully), drag racing (of course), family, and yes… baseball. And other sports. And other adventures. And lots and lots of nonsense. Plus music. Oh, and updates on the book I’ll be writing. All of that, and more…

As opposed to the more structured journalistic style I’ve utilized here since “Bob On Baseball” was launched in early 2011, I’ll also make the transition to the more relaxed, conversational, and “stream of consciousness” style that has made my NHRA blog very popular. I know those of you who have been with me know exactly what I’m writing about. I’m pleased and honored every time I meet a reader who happily tells me “When I read your blog, I feel like you’re an old friend in the room with me, just talking.” That’s always been my goal. Touchdown!

If you remember Shasta the cat, or our dearly departed Hawaiian friend Adam Vincent, and a cruise into the Panama Canal, Team CSK, Team Wilk, and other characters like Scott The Pilot, Kim the Lawyer, Crazy Jane, and some actor guy named Buck Hujabre (if that’s ACTUALLY his real name), then in you’re in the right place. If not, welcome to the neighborhood and pull up a chair. We’re a friendly bunch.

Stay tuned and check back often. We’ll be packing up the NHRA blog and moving it into this house very soon. You bring the chips and guacamole!

-Bob Wilber (at your service).

TPGF: Jay – could you tell us a bit about where you grew up/went to school and got started in the golf business?

I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. My father was an avid golfer, and like many people in North Dakota, we were forced to play as much golf as possible in our short window of summer.  Fargo has produced a lot of talented players and I was fortunate to grow up with friends that went on to play college golf.  I began working at Moorhead Country Club in high school under PGA Professional Larry Murphy.  Larry was a great mentor and peaked my interest about making golf my career.  I attended New Mexico State University and enrolled in their Professional Golf Management Program.  It’s been a fun journey traveling the country and meeting great people.  I have now worked for the PGA Tour and the TPC Network for 15 years.

TPGF: As the Head Golf Professional at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm how do you spend a typical day?

No day is typical.  The neat part of this job is variety of what my days brings.  The consistent part of my day is managing staff and executing our strategic plan for the next day/week/month.  I have become more involved in my PGA Section and with The First Tee of Montgomery County so my time management has become heightened so I don’t miss a beat with my members and staff.

TPGF: What is the most rewarding part of your job?

The relationships I have developed with staff, members, and people within the golf industry.  My passion is developing staff and it is great to watch people that have been a part of your team become successful.

TPGF: You are a Board Member of The First Tee – tell us about The First Tee and the great work it does?

The First Tee is a great platform using golf to teach essential core values to our young people.  The values of golf are very transcendent to life.  It’s also very important that we make golf accessible and exciting for kids.  The First Tee has made stride in many communities through the hard work of volunteers and people dedicated to its mission.

TPGF: In addition to a love of golf what other sports do you follow? Do you have a favorite team and a favorite athlete?

I am a fan of many sports and many teams.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am waiting patiently for my Chicago Cubs to become World Champions, or at least relevant.  In Theo Epstein I trust!  Greg Maddux was my favorite player.  Now, I love watching the Stanley Cup finals.

TPGF:  What is in your golf bag (what equipment do you use?)

I have been on Callaway staff for 5 years.  Callaway received new leadership approximately a year ago and I am very pleased with their new product offerings and quality of the equipment.

TPGF:  Given the sports business responsibilities you have how do you balance family and work?

It’s a challenge.  My wife is 3 times more successful than I am and works just as hard.  Raising two kids under the age of 6 is challenging.  I ask a lot of my wife because of my job and the time required. (I work 6 days a week in the summer)  She understands the passion I have for my job which makes it tolerable.  Like any successful man, I have a great wife who runs our household with expertise.

TPGF: What was your very best round of golf and where did you play?

I shot 64 at a course where I was previously a Head Professional in Minnesota called Blueberry Pines Golf Club.  I shot 30 on the back 9.

TPGF:  Do you have any advice for those who would like a career working in golf?

Yes.  I always suggest speaking with a PGA Professional or someone in the industry to get a better understanding of the golf business. It’s just important to understand the expectation required. It is a fantastic industry, composed of wonderful people, but I think the general sense is that I am playing golf every day which is clearly not the case.  Like any profession, it’s hard work and very competitive, but also very rewarding.