Another Year Has Passed

December 20, 2023

Another Year Has Passed

As another year comes to an end, I can honestly say this has been a year of firsts, drastic changes, changed goals, and one of the happiest years of my life.

Even though the year turned out nothing like what I anticipated, I am thankful for all of the blessings God has given us.

The best thing about this year has been all of the time Traci and I have together at our home. She is still and has always been my best friend after nearly 43 years of marriage. We have healthy kids, grandkids, family, and one another. We have the best business partner you could ever ask for. We have a wonderful business and employees. We have the best friends imaginable.

It has been somewhat of a crazy world and year that we just experienced! We lost some customers that have been with us a long time and we gained new customers that will be with us a long time. The kinds of things our customers want has changed drastically!

At times our world seems upside down. Things that were important are perceived as not good. Things that were perceived as not good are now the “in” thing. Traci and I are blessed to have our faith in God so these changes are easier to deal with because we know God is in charge, period. HE will prevail!

Now to summarize the racing year!!! Even crazier!

We lost our local racetrack and were so heartbroken. Our friend (Austin Hayward) reopened a track only 45 minutes away from our house. It is so nice to have a track so close. Thanks Austin for your hard work!

We totally redid the Blue Banana, change the fuel and ignition system, and went through a lot of growing pains to learn to get it right again. With God’s help, we got it done.

We decided to build a new world class ProMod car built so we could compete in NHRA national events but decided that we had bitten off more than we could handle in a reasonable amount of time. We then decided to “pay it forward” to our friends, the Janis’s. This has enabled Mike Janis Sr. to race again after a two year hiatus because of heart issues. We are so happy with our decision! They will do the car justice and it will be very competitive. The construction of the car is well under way and it is going to be awesome.

We decided to continued to resurrect the old car and make it NHRA legal so we could at least make an appearance at an NHRA race. After complying with all of their rules during the fabrication process, NHRA changed the rules in a way that took us out of the picture! This was very disappointing after trying so hard to make it NHRA legal.

Now we have refocussed our efforts on 1/8th mile racing at local events and the Midwest ProMod Series. This is a much more realistic pathway for us and we are looking forward to getting the car back on the track.

We are very close to starting final assembly on it! Once we have it assembled, we will do some dyno pulls on the hub dynomometer to get the car set up and get me some full throttle seat time before going to the track. We have lost 150 plus pounds off of the car and it is a much safer car as well. I feel good about getting into it again.

It will have a new name for the car that I will reveal later. I have called it “The Resurrection Project” in the interim but it will have a ‘track name” soon. New colors, new name, new supercharger, and a significant weight loss. We are excited to debut it for the second time. It has been over 4 years since we ran the car! Wow, how time flies!

We plan on running “The Blue Banana” as often as we can. Run the ProMod 2-4 times this year. We also want to go watch the Janis’s run their car whenever we can. It will be fun to see Mike Sr. doing his thing again. It will also be exciting to see the car that once belonged to us, ‘hauling the mail” with the Janis’s tuning and driving it!!!

All in all, it was a great year! Different, educational, a little scary, but great. God’s plan is perfect!

Here are some updates for “The Resurrection Project”: