Open All Night

Many apologies for the lack of posts.  I’ve been burning the candle at both ends.  Nationals is always like this for me - I run into people I haven’t seen for a while, I meet new people, there are all sorts of cars I want to watch, extra-curricular activities in the evenings, etc…when you are having so much fun. it’s hard to find the time to write about it all.

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This is absolute torture. I am sitting here at my desk while 1,000 plus of my brethren are partaking in events at the “Big Show.” Luckily, in this age of the Internet, I am able to follow along (at least somewhat anyway). However, this advancement seriously undermines my ability to get things done.
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Franson and I slept in and then treated ourselves to breakfast at Denny’s. Today is a pretty relaxed day for those of us running on Thursday/Friday. We are heading over to walk the courses this afternoon - hopefully the crowd will thin out in the middle of the day.

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After running the warmup, I just sort of wandered around the paddock visiting various people I haven’t seen in a while. I had a beer with Rob Carpenter and the Tennessee mafia, spent some time with Jonathon Roberts and Eric Peterson, and unsuccessfully tried to find Team BlenderBlaster. I was afraid HPT had shut them down, but I found out this morning that they are ok, I just must have missed them.

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Sorry for the absence of posts - I actually wrote a pretty long entry last night, tried to save it as a draft, and then found that it had disappeared into the ether.  It was a fairly crabby post, so maybe that’s for the best.

I ran the warmup event yesterday.  It’s always an slightly scary experience jumping into a new car - you don’t want to embarrass yourself yet you want to push the car hard enough to find out what it does at the limit.

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A good time was had by all (except for Karen Kraus, who did not seem to enjoy being the first player knocked out).  We had a full field of 45 players, and the tournament ran pretty smoothly - kudos to Erik and Beth.

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Pulled into Heartland at 3pm today.  Met David (Hedderick, the owner of my ride) briefly, then headed to the hotel to check in.  Time is of the essence as it’s an hour to Poker Tournament time, so this will be brief.

The buzz in the paddock is of course all about the impending arrival of Team Neon.  Last reports put the Dream Machine somewhere in Missouri, heading west.  Mike O. and special guest star Jeff Hurst will be arriving in the early evening.
More later, after poker.