Dear Mr. Observer,

Now that you've been in the heat of battle (for more than 2 miles ), give us your impressions of your first real co-dog experience.

Was it rougher/smoother than you imagined? Did you find yourself a little behind in calling corners and dangers? Most people do their first time out (Boyscout Steve is a notable exception). Was it tense? Exciting?

Sincerely,
Me

Since I joined the team, my place has always been in the pits. I have been asked if I wanted to co-dawg before, but I always told the guys if they could fill the spot for monetary gain for the team then so be it. I like being in the pits.

Well, I will tell you how I was feeling at Wendover. I was sooo excited to see that the truck was running awesome and working like a true race machine, everything that I had always hoped would happen, was happening. We were in the top of our class and that just thrilled me, all the late nites, and hard work was finally working in our favor.

When the call came in that John couldn't continue and Jim had told alex that he was going back out, I had to chime up and volunteer to jump in the right seat. I was nervous, since I've never had that title of co-dawg before. Here just hours before I was chanting to alex as to what he needs to pay attention to, and now it was my turn to prove that I somewhat knew what I was talking about.

So I jumped in, Jim strapped me in hooked me up and Jose gave me a friendly greeting. Well you know the phrase "puke in the helmet". We hadn't left the pits yet, I sooo could've done it. Haha
I just needed to calm my mind which came pretty quickly, and we were off. As we were exiting the pit area, Jose said we were going to prerun again just at race speed. I agreed and prceeded to run through my job in my head, we were going to finish this race and we were in first place which really got me excited. The truck worked and felt smooth. We just had to stay ahead of that yellow ranger. I think I did an ok job calling corners and rocks, dangers and birds... haha. There we times where I found myself lagging and calling a left when it was a right. We were haulin the mail, and if anyone thinks changing a tire when you have the pressure of being in the lead is easy, well they are lying to themselves. The job of codriver is tough and thank you to jose for getting out and helping with that, since the jack was failing we really needed two people, one to stablize the jack. That damn yellow truck passed us while we were changing the tire. Now my adrenaline was really pumping so that we could hopefully regain the reigns of first place. Just changing that tire exhausted me and I had dry mouth sooo bad I couldnt even swallow. We had to catch him, but driving at nite is a totally different ballgame. I found myself way behind on calling corners and trying to slow jose just a touch over the hills of unknown. All in all, we are true winners, even though we came in second the truck ran superb and it was an experience of a lifetime. I thank you Jim and Jose for giving me the right seat for a few hours, I had a blast. The JAFO.

Ya know. . .the 7312 may have past us for 1st place, but you guys were able to hold off the 707 and KEEP second place even with the jack issues. We only beat him by 4 minutes!!

So, nice job!!! Grace under fire!! No puke in the helmet!!!