School bus . . . racing!

Saturday was a loooong day for me, but a great one. The day began with a speech at the ribbon cutting ceremony for Butler Public Library in Butler, Indiana. When I lived in Butler I was President of the library board when we embarked upon a facility expansion. I helped raise some of the money and got the ball rolling on the project, and then I left town. The new President, Larry Moore, together with Library Director Ellen Stuckey and his fellow board members picked up the project and saw it through to completion. And they did an amazing job! What a great way to start the day.

Then I headed back to Lansing where I performed two weddings. They were beautiful and went off without a hitch. I stopped in at both wedding receptions before heading over to I-96 Speedway where I drove in an 8 lap school bus race on their eighth mile dirt track. It was a blast! I started on the inside of the first row. When the flag dropped, my friend Fred Lab, who was positioned just outside of me, tried to cut me off in turn one. I hammered him. By the time we made it around turn two I had about half of my paint on the side of his bus and was clearly in the lead.

I maintained the lead for most of the race, but on lap seven things began to get interesting. Chris Rice, who is Kenny Wallace's crew chief was driving one of the other buses. Apparently he didn't hear track owner Mike Mouch's talk about sparing the radiators. He started banging into Fred's back end, and then into me! That pushed me up high on the back stretch enabling Rice and Freddo to come in underneath me.

Naturally, Rice and I made a Fred Sandwich. All down the back stretch we were hammering Fred. We went three wide into turn three with buses scraping and rubber burning. It was intense!

Chris Rice ended up winning the race with Fred a close second and me third. We finished with a length of each other, I think. We got the thing on film and, when I figure out how to download it, I'll post it up on Facebook.