Catchfence

In the week or two since my last addition to the blog, I have been fairly busy, running around with the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and NASCAR Nationwide Series schedule. I’ve been to Darlington and helped out with a hospitality event there, as well as Bristol for Food City. It’s been busier than I am used to, but it has been a blast!

When I drove down to Darlington on Thursday, I wasn’t going down to watch the race more importantly I was going down for the Wounded Warriors program. I was asked by American Marketing Group to come down and give garage tours for the Wounded Warriors and give them a different side of the sport, from a driver’s perspective. We had about fifty individuals with us at the event and I spoke with almost every one of them, talking about the trucks, the haulers, pit crews, pit boxes, and also asking them about themselves. It was really interesting hearing their stories and about their lives. I have a lot of respect for what they do for us, and I’m really glad I got to do the event with them. Hopefully down the road I can meet some more Wounded Warriors and continue to give back to them at some more events.

I returned home from Darlington around lunch time on Sunday, and sort of relaxed for the day and thought back to the event. Monday morning I was back in the shop with the guys, getting some of our cars ready to be sent either to the chassis shop, the body hangers or the paint shop. We have a total of six cars and at one point we had only two left in the shop that week. I left for Bristol on Thursday on Food City’s corporate plane, which was a pretty neat experience. I had never been in a plane other than a commercial jet.

I want to thank Food City for the opportunity and the invitation to be on the flight. On the plane I heard a lot of great stories from Chocolate Myers, Sam Bass and Kerry Earnhardt. There was a lot of history and untold stories between those three. When we landed in Knoxville for Food City’s race night event I made sure and handed everyone on the plane a chocolate covered apple from my sponsor, Tastee Apple. At the event in Knoxville I got introduced on stage and then from there we all signed autographs for the fans for two hours. Some of the fans there had been waiting in line for over five hours to get our autographs which I think is pretty awesome.

After the Knoxville event, I had a two hour drive to the hotel in Johnson City. I hadn’t eaten all day since lunch eight hours ago, so I was pretty hungry and extremely happy when we stopped and ate! The following day, Friday, I left the hotel and headed to Bristol Motor Speedway for the day. When I got to the track I didn’t have too much lined up for the day leading up to the event that night besides hanging out and meeting some people. At five o’clock the flood gates opened on Food City’s Family Night at the track and al the fans came in and got samples from sponsors and autographs. This event was not laid out where the fans lined up for autographs, so I got to spend a little more time with each fan which was pretty sweet.

Saturday was race day for the Nationwide Series cars, and I was planned to show around some folks from the Pinnacle Foods Group. I got to meet quite a few guys, and really enjoyed showing them around and giving them a tour of everything involved at the race track. We took them to meet their driver Elliott Sadler, and also on a hauler tour, showing them just how involved the hauler is and how many parts they carry with them every weekend. Once the race began we were all hanging out around the pit box and watching the race. For a little while we thought maybe they were going to get to experience victory lane with Elliott Sadler. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen but they still had a great showing coming in fourth place.

All in all I’ve had a great two week. Next up for me and the CGH Motorsports team is the open test at Talladega Superspeedway. I’m looking forward to the test with my new crew chief Rob Torrey, and our new director of competition Kevin Reed working together. I really feel that with these two motor heads working together we are going to have a great season!

Thanks for reading and don’t forget Mother’s Day is coming up. A BIG Tastee Chocolate Apple will go a long way!!