The pilgrimage to the Virginia oval so steeped in Modified lore began at 4 AM Friday. Departing at that time might have gotten me to Martinsville between 1 and 2 PM were I to have driven. Fortunately I had chosen to arrange for air travel in advance. I left the death trap on the roof of a rental car company parking lot across from LaGuardia Airport and headed out on my quest.

I would be quite remiss not to mention the tragedies of the past week. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of those in the Gulf coast communities who have suffered the wrath of Hurricane Katrina. It will be many months before we know the full extent of damage that this natural disaster has created. The Martinsville Speedway folks did their share to raise awareness to this situation and held fund raisers for disaster relief.

My flight from New York was quite smooth. There were a number of folks from the Hillbilly Racing team that were on my flight including Harry “H2O” Salt. Harry water is not the Harry of team 48 fame. He is better known as one of the largest providers of lead ballast in the northeast. The #79 gang was catching the same plane as I as a connecting flight. They had flown in from Providence.

My girlfriend Vicki flew in from Fort Lauderdale to go to her first Modified race. She had some trepidation of flying on a smaller plane like the one that brought her to Greensboro. Both of our flights were quite smooth. Vicki may be over her worries of flying on smaller planes and might plan to take advantage of direct flights to her hometown of Columbus, OH in the future.

I rented a car from the guys who will “pick you up”. There is no truth to the rumor that I held up the line at the counter insisting that I got a vehicle with an oversized cup holder. In fact the car that we got was the same model that we used in Florida last year when we traveled to the Hooters Cup finale.

We checked in to the hotel where you are supposed to be smarter for staying there. Howie and Mary Hodge happened upon us in the parking lot. The first couple of Modified photography had some shots of the track lighting from Thursday night. The images were spectacular.

Neither of us had gotten much sleep Thursday night. Vicki was probably a little apprehensive about her flight, I was probably more worried about over sleeping. We got about an hour of sleep before we left for the track. One of the hotel staff once again proved that the smart anomaly does not have a cumulative effect on the employees. A hotel staffer just opened up the door and walked into the room. Thanks.

We arrived at the track before practice began. Howie had told me that Musco was using four trucks to provide the portable lighting at the track. When I walked into the infield I only saw two of those trucks. Later I realized that the other two trucks were stationed outside of the track with their lights poised over the main grandstands.

Howie told me that watching the whole process of setting up these portable lights was amazing. Apparently the folks from Musco parked the trucks, extended the stabilizers, raised the booms, and adjusted the different lights by remote control. The view of the track from the front stretch was stunning.

Practice came and went. We stood at the entrance to turn three for a while during the session. Speeds may have varied but it was quite obvious to me that Tony Hirschman, Eric Beers and Chuck Hossfeld had cars that held very good attitudes. The Jerry Marquis and Donny Lia had cars were worthy of honorable mention.

Jim Storace brought a new car to Martinsville. It was actually a former Earl Paules, Jr. car as I understand it. The team suffered through numerous mechanical woes associated with that car and failed to make the feature.

Brian Pack, who has been known for having interesting sponsorship schemes, had a “Dukes of Hazzard” General Lee livery for his #81 Modified. Officials nixed the rebel flag on the roof. I think they should have let them race with it on there. When I think of the rebel flag it just reminds me who won the civil war. I think of it as a symbol of a losing effort. I figure it is about as intelligent to display that image as to put George McGovern for President bumper stickers on a street car.

All kidding aside, if Pack did get money from the folks at Warner Brothers to promote the “Dukes of Hazzard” movie, they may have gotten a raw deal from the sanctioning body. That’s okay too. Warner Bros. spent millions of dollars producing and promoting a movie that is less interesting and less entertaining than charting time trials. Warner Bros. would have made more money making a movie about Johnny Knoxville falling down the stairs in the crossover tunnel at Martinsville.

The cars got in line for time trials and the media vermin got fed. Some of those who rode the gravy train wanted to see the cup, they were not disappointed. Meanwhile, I was playing poker online. I was even asked why I didn’t play a real card game like solitaire. Second out of forty-five wasn’t bad, especially for an old tire guy.

The cars headed out to take time under the lights. Normally I sit down and chart the times in qualifying. With Shopgirl there to watch her first Modified race, we sat out on the pit wall and took the time trial laps in one at a time.

It was great to see Todd Szegedy behind the wheel again. Todd drove the Brady Bunch #00 in the Whelen 300. Szegedy continues to work for Robert Yates Racing.

Chuck Hossfeld took down the pole. He was quite disappointed to hear that there would be a redraw. He was typically understated in his post-qualifying interview.

We departed as the autograph session was getting underway. There were pillows calling for me. At least we got a little sleep.

Whenever I stay at the hotel where one is supposed to be smarter for staying there, I tend to get woken about six in the morning. I know it has nothing to do with a wake up call and I am fairly certain it has nothing to do with any kind of biological clock. For some reason I believe that the cinnamon rolls in the lobby call out to me. I ran down there and picked up a couple and brought Vicki her morning coffee.

We got a late start and went shopping before breakfast. Clarence’s Steak House beckoned and we got there about seven minutes after eleven. That’s about seven minutes after the folks there stop taking breakfast orders. We had to watch all of the breakfast orders come out while we waited for our sandwiches.

The staff there was quite excited to see racing people. We had not donned racing attire and thus felt cast as tourists. This is a hot spot for all of the racing public. I had heard nothing but great things about this place. Thanks to Clarence’s for sponsoring the Halfway Leader Award at the Whelen 300.

I brought Vicki on a drive through of the competitor campgrounds and stopped to talk to Dick Houlihan. Dick had planned on racing at Martinsville but engine troubles and a recent wreck led to the decision to not bring the #46 car to Virginia. The team couldn’t afford to come to Martinsville and not qualify for the event. The projected field of sixty or more cars probably added to those reasons not to go. In hindsight, with only forty-six cars showing up for this event, Dick knew that probably was a mistake.

Once in the Media Center, we prepared for the event. Rick Allen and Phil Parsons from SPEED Channel showed up to prepare for the ‘Tape as Live’ of the event for future broadcast. Rick burst onto the broadcast scene with SPEED’s coverage of the Craftsman Truck Series several years ago. He has always been a good broadcaster but I hadn’t been in Rick’s corner at the beginning. To face facts, he didn’t know much about racing at the time. His quest to gain additional knowledge of the sport has turned him into a top notch racing anchor. I am sure that he and Phil did a great job with the taping of this event.

Gary Danko, who’s Speedway Line Report, can be heard Mondays between 6 and 7:30 PM on WATR 1320 AM in Connecticut got a part of the SPEED gig. Gary worked as a pit reporter for the show. Those who are not from the WATR broadcast area can listen to a rebroadcast of Gary’s show online at 10 PM Mondays on www.thespeedwaylinereport.com.

If there was anyone who was disappointed by the amount of teams present, they were probably encouraged by the spectator turnout. We stood by the main gate and watched the fans enter in droves. The one difference between these fans and the ones we typically have seen throughout the season at other tracks was the excitement level. Everyone seemed to be happy and approached the race with great anticipation.

The reason that Vicki and I were in that location was to meet MSS’s faithful Forum participants. We got our ‘surprise’ shirts from Alex. Too bad Ted Baxter wasn’t there. The Eno Lirpasti fan club was out in force. They were all decked out in 9D Vespa Scooters T-shirts. Alex had done it all for TBax.

Alex, Chris and uticamike got to hoist the Cup. Once again it was obvious who the celebrity was and it weren’t I. Amie and Howie didn’t get a chance to go to the meet and greet. Howie was tied up with the group photo that NASCAR wanted of the event competitors and I think Amie was just getting situated in the press box. The Message Forum regulars were probably happiest to get a chance to hang out with Shopgirl.

There were some concerns as the start of the race began to beckon that there was a problem with the turn four lights. We had witnessed the Musco folks struggling to get the diesel generator started on that truck. It appeared that a spare generator was being towed out from the infield about the time that trucks lights began to come alive.

Reggie Ruggiero dominated the last chance qualifying race. That was kind of expected, Ruggiero has won four times on the Tour at Martinsville previously and gets around that place really well. How ironic was it that the Dick Barney #41 was renumbered #44, the number that The Reg had won with previously at Martinsville driving for Mario Fiore? Arguably, the feel good story of the last chance race was that Wade Cole raced his way into the final starting position.

Originally, when we first arrived in the press box, Shopgirl and I had taken position in the top row between Dave Meredith and Bob Barney. When it became apparent that the lights would not be extinguished inside of the press box, we moved to the front row where the colors of the background didn’t reflect as harshly off of the glass. Once we did, the lights were turned off.

The feature event was great; at least that was what most people told me. It is quite difficult to soak in a race while trying to gather all of the information and post it. I hope that everyone enjoyed them and thank everyone who looked us up.

A couple of notes on the event; Although there were fourteen cautions I thought that the officials and the track workers did an excellent job of getting those incidents sorted out quickly and getting back to green as soon as possible. With a field of forty-three on a track that small it wouldn’t have surprised me if we had had twice as many cautions.

Those who have a problem with the officials might just want to listen to them. Several drivers were penalized for infractions that could have been easily averted if someone on their team had been listening to the NASCAR frequency. As it is a requirement for all team’s spotters to me monitoring that frequency, I would put the blame for inconsistencies squarely on their shoulders.

I am sure that there are plenty of people who think that the #13 car bulldozed his way to the front. I didn’t see any excessive use of the chrome horn by the event victor. Then again I didn’t get to see a lot. One thing for sure, Ted had position on Mike Stefanik as they entered turn one at the point of contact between the two. Mike tried to cut him down as low as he could and forced Christopher over the curb. That was what brought about that contact between those two. The #16 slid up the track and the #13, with fresher tires drove off to the lead that would not be relinquished.

John Blewett, III drove a great race and brought home a podium finish driving his #66 car. Blewett waxed philosophical in his post-race interview. He proudly feels that his young team is gaining experience and that they will only get better.

Ted got the clock. We had discussed the importance of the Grandfather clock at the Whelen press conference back in July. One of Christopher’s comments related to the clock being a wedding gift that he would no longer have to purchase. “Now I just need a house to put it in.” said the winner.

Before I get back to weaving the tales of the weekend past, allow me to thank some folks. Clay Campbell and Mike Smith were incredibly accommodating hosts. These guys worked really hard to pull off a very successful event. Perhaps the reason that it was so successful was how hard they worked to make us media vermin happy. Thanks for making us feel so at home.

Phil Kurze from Whelen showed no favoritism. He donned a shirt that he had made custom for the event. The shirt had the Whelen Modified Tour logo on one side of the front and the Whelen Southern Modified Tour logo on the other. Thanks to Phil and all of the Whelen family for making this weekend possible.

We got our share of Whelen Weather in Virginia and North Carolina this weekend. I didn’t speak to Phil about that. Clay Campbell told us that he had put an order in for the great weather several months ago. Regardless of who got the credit for the beautiful conditions, the weather couldn’t have been much nicer.

Mark Mockovak, Jeremy Davidson and Paul Schaefer kept us all up to date as possible. Sometimes these guys get taken for granted but they do a lot of work that makes our lives easy. Mark is quite well known in circles around the Tour. Jeremy and Paul are generally not.

Davidson works in the NASCAR offices in Daytona pumping out press releases and writing stories for the sanctioning body. Jeremy keeps the lines of communication open between NASCAR and all of us media vermin. Thanks to Jeremy for all that he does for us little people.

Paul Schaefer might be recognized from his caricature in the NASCAR newsletter. Paul is one of those guys who yearn for the racing from years gone by. That makes him instantly one of my buddies. Thanks for the support that Paul has demonstrated towards the Tour as this was not the first race of ours he has blessed with his presence this season.

All of the staff at Martinsville treated us so nicely. There was ground transportation available that came in handy several times. The high-speed internet that was recently installed facilitated us with the hardware we needed to do the Live Updates.

Shopgirl and I departed Martinsville for Thomasville, NC to stay the next two nights at my favorite discount hotel chain. They are the ones that put the television on top of the closet. This hotel also added wireless Internet access recently chain wide.

I introduced Vicki to Biscuitville. This is a chain of breakfast restaurants that have our number. If I were to move to North Carolina I would probably grow to the size of Walter Hudson if one of those places were in my neighborhood.

Vicki got the 25¢ tour of Thomasville, High Point, Concord and the Lowe’s Motor Speedway. We drove around for a couple of hours and she really enjoyed the countryside. Then we stopped for dinner.

One would think that one could get a good steak at a well known national chain with a reputation for such. I won’t name the place but here’s a clue; University of Texas. I had steak tidbits that were as hard as bluestone. Vicki had a steak that was as tougher than John Wayne’s saddle. I hadn’t tried to bite something that was that overcooked since I left a steak on my barbeque grille and fell asleep.

We didn’t ask for the items to be removed from our bill. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. I let out a LONG burst from the rental car HORN as we departed.

We got back the hotel in time to watch the pre-race festivities from California. One of the drawbacks of this particular location was that SPEED was not one of the near hundred channels available. This afforded me the opportunity to catch a nap before the start of the race.

We got an early start and were off to the Piedmont Triad airport Monday morning. One of the things that were a major concern to travelers this weekend was the cost of fuel. We found regular in Concord for $2.99 per gallon Sunday and topped off outside the airport at $3.19.

Something was really interesting. Usually when one sees a bag on a pump handle in New York, that means that station is out of regular gasoline and that location is pulling the old bait and switch on the consumer. What we found at nearly every station that we visited was that the stations were out of supreme or weren’t buying any of it. Consequently some of our friends who might have thought that stations were out of low priced gasoline because there were bags on the pump handles missed out on a good deal.

We breezed through the rental return, check in and security screening and sat in the back of a restaurant inside the terminal. My flight had been delayed. No kidding? Imagine that? A flight into LaGuardia Airport delayed? I strode out to look at the flight information monitors and get the latest info.

Hey Walt! It was Jackie Ziegler and her mom waiting for their flight. I invited them to come along with me and meet Vicki. They had gone to Lowe’s the day before as well and went shopping at a mall of some consequence. It amazed me that they would now have to fly to Charlotte to be able to catch a connecting flight to Hartford.

Jackie and mom left to catch their flight and shortly so did I. My flight was great, except for the fact that the lavatory in that plane was smaller than the overhead bins. Someone call a chiropractor. Shopgirl on the other hand had a very rough flight into Fort Lauderdale. Who knows whether I will be able to convince her to fly on a small jet again?

The death trap was waiting. As I backed it out of the stall in the parking lot I noticed that it probably leaked enough ATF for the EPA to be in hot pursuit. Why did it cost as much to rent a new car in Greensboro for the weekend as it did to park my piece of (expletive deleted) car in New York for about the same amount of time?

Other notes; When I got home I was able to read a release that Fred Neergaard sent from NHIS Friday. The SYLVANIA 300 weekend will feature a live broadcast of the “Imus in the Morning” show on Friday, September 16 from 5:30 AM to 10:00 AM. The nationally syndicated radio program hosted by Don Imus will be on location in the Hospitality Courtyard at the “Magic Mile.” “Imus in the Morning” is also simulcast daily on the MSNBC cable television network.

A limited number of tickets for this live broadcast are available through NHIS Guest Services at (603) 783-4931 or through The Wolf 93.3 FM at (603) 228-9036. Tickets are $20.00 per person with all proceeds being donated to the Imus Ranch. The Imus Ranch is a 3,000-acre working cattle ranch located in New Mexico, fifty miles northeast of Santa Fe. The ranch provides children with serious illnesses the opportunity to enjoy the great American cowboy experience.

The Thompson 300 looms on the horizon this coming weekend. There will be no competition cautions or breaks in this 300-lap event. I look forward to a great race and a great picnic Saturday night at the Thompson Rod & Gun club. I hope to see everyone there.