June 30 & July 1, 2001

Greetings from the Pacific Northwest! We had a great time with the AHDRA this last weekend and are looking forward to the next event which will be the Northwest Nationals in Woodburn (Portland, Oregon), September 8th and 9th, 2001. I hope to see more of you at the Oregon event. We have some awesome west coast racers and it would be a shame if you missed it.

I must admit I was a little busier than usual this weekend as I was juggling the tasks of female drag racer as well as fund- raiser. I woke up one morning last week and thought it would be a nice gesture if we (the west coast racers) did a 50/50 raffle to help raise money for Dale Nungesser and Rocky Mann. For those of you who are following this story, Rocky & Dale were involved in a very bad accident in Denver back in June and both riders received life-threatening injuries. Dale is still in ICU as I write this and Rocky has been moved to a care facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, near his home- town of Cave Creek. Information can be found on www.ahdra.com for the latest updates on both riders.

So I made a few phone calls and talked to a few people and felt pretty comfortable that I made the right decision. I had no idea how hard it is to coordinate a fund-raiser but I got lucky because Rami & Roberta came to the call and sold tickets all day Saturday and all day Sunday. They enlisted the help of their own friends who were at the track and between the four of them collected a ton of cash to go to the injured riders' fund. Very special thanks from me to Rami, Roberta, Karen and Casey for your hard work this weekend.

I was also asked to talk at the riders meeting both Saturday and Sunday. I told the riders that we were doing a 50/50 raffle and also encouraged people to join DRAW (Drag Racing Association of Women) which is involved in helping injured drag racers whether in a car or on a motorcycle. Check out www.drawfasthelp.org for more information on how to help this wonderful organization. They are currently helping Rocky and Dale and will continue to do so until the injured riders do not need the assistance.

We had a winner for the 50/50 drawing on Saturday. The team is from the Idaho Racing Company from Boise, Idaho. From their winnings they donated half of it back to the fund. Of course my notes went back to the AHDRA so I can't say what the dollar amount was, but it was something around 200 for the 50% we kept, plus another 100 thrown back in from the winners.

A short while after the drawing Dave Boss from Rose City Cycles gave me 100.00 to put in the fund. Later in the afternoon as I was saying to another racer how cool it was that Dave had put in the extra money and my idea was to challenge the riders by showing that 100.00 from Rose City Cycles and seeing what would happen. Well, Mr. Al Hogan of Wild West Racing gave me a hundred and then raised it another hundred. My mind was spinning like crazy by this time. I didn't know if I could wait til Sunday, but somehow I managed to keep my surprise and excitement to myself, I was very pleased by the responses from the racers and the crew- members.

Finally, it was Sunday, the riders' meeting was fast approaching.

I must digress a little bit by telling you that I did not qualify in the top 8 in Top Fuel. It is always disappointing when this happens, especially at my home-track in front of all my sponsors but I knew I was doing something more important and that was trying to get some financial aid for our injured friends.

So, at the riders meeting I explained what Dave Boss (Rose City Cycles) and Al Hogan (Wild West Racing) had done, and the fact that Idaho Racing Company donated money back to the 50/50 drawing and the next thing I knew a bunch of race teams were putting money on the table. I know I am going to forget some of you (my list went back to the AHDRA), but here I go any way: Jim and Liz Flower (Flower Racing), Ron Houniet (Fast Lane Custom Cycles), Joe Timmons (Salt Lake City HD), Liberty Machine (Steve Heidner), Johnny Bryce (Highway Choppers), Marc Augustine, Greg Coen (Greg Coen Motor Works) and there goes my brain. I knew I needed to copy that list! You folks know who you are and I will put your names up on this site when I can get the list back from the AHDRA. What it boils down to is we raised 1200.00 from the riders who were at the meeting on Sunday. I shook for about 15 minutes after that. I am so sorry I've forgotten some of you; it certainly was not intentional, so please try to forgive me on that. We did a really good thing this weekend for Dale & Rocky and I think each of you knows that I wouldn't exclude you unless I have just flat got too much nitro in my brain and can't remember.

A very special thank you goes to Steve Dorn who put in a single donation so big that I can't even mention the amount here. Needless to say it was the biggest single donation of the weekend. Steve: thank you so much.

Tom Bradford donated his t-shirt sales money from the weekend and I'm putting in t-shirt money as well. Maybe this trend will continue for the remainder of races. What do you all think of that idea?

So, enough of the fund-raising efforts. It was a hard task which was made so much easier because of the people who put all this money in a big bucket for Rocky & Dale. I didn't do this by myself. YOU are the winners as far as I'm concerned. They will put it to good use, of that you can be sure.

Oh, the winner of the 50/50 drawing on Sunday was the same team who won it on Saturday (The Idaho Racing Company). We are parking next to this team in Las Vegas in an effort to get some luck thrown our way. And special thanks to you guys for putting half of your winning money back in the fund. All in all, over the two days we collected close to three thousand dollars. I believe when the final amount is tallied it will be well over that amount.

AWESOME.

But I didn't qualify. Did I mention that?

Arlie got this great idea to run a CAN-AM CHALLENGE when we looked at the non-qualifiers and saw we had three U.S. teams and 2 Canadian teams. We knew that Bucky Varrone was first alternate so I talked to them first because I didn't want to include them in our challenge if they were needed as alternates, but I didn't want to exclude him if he could make a pass with us. It was determined that all qualified racers were present and accounted for so Bucky would be available for our gamblers race. At least we thought. It turned out that Steve Huff had hurt his T/F entry and was not able to make the call so Bucky was needed as first alternate. It was kind of confusing but we didn't want to mess up his chances of advancing in Top Fuel if he was wrapped up in another event.

We ran the two Canadians (Johnny Bryce & Brain Hall) and the two Americans (Kris Becker & Jeff Carney) and the winner of each run would face off in the final. Brian took his round against a tire smoking Johnny and I took the round between Jeff & me when he got a bit close to the wall and may have dusted the tire. I quite happily cranked out a 7.88 at 178 mph for the win. Brian Hall representing Canada and Kris Becker representing the United States for the final.

The CAN-AM CHALLENGE brought the stands to their feet and set the stage for the finals in all the classes. Full results can be found on the AHDRA web page, although I do want to congratulate Ron Houniet for yet another Top Fuel Win.

All in all it was a very successful weekend. The Reality Motorsports/Thunderbikes team was pleased to have Eastside Harley-Davidson on board as a major sponsor for this event, as well as Vanson Leathers, S&S, Delkron, Kirkland Life Chiropractic, The Woodinville Athletic Club, and www.krisbecker.com .

Thanks to my friends, family and fans for making this another great weekend.