It has been too long since I put my fingers to the keyboard and pounded out a column. Time management has not exactly been my friend since the early Spring when both the automotive news cycle cranked into high gear but also my announcing schedule went nutso as well. Make no mistake, I am not complaining about that situation one bit, in fact I am very thankful every single day for the ability to feed my family working in an industry that I love and doing the stuff that I dreamed about doing as a kid. Like everything in life there are trade offs and for me it is mostly trading off sleep for getting our content finished, making sure I am prepared for the next race, or watching some goofy show with my wife to have some much needed quality time together.

The is going to be a collection of random thoughts, some fuzzy memories, and a look back at the first full six months of the year. A stroll through the mind of a mad man? A waltz through the valley of the weird? Whatever you feel like calling it is fine with me. Just let the truth be known that there are more than a couple of rocks bouncing around up inside my skull.

Bad days are going to happen – The last NHRA race I announced was the last one on the schedule, Bristol. Quite frankly I didn’t have a great weekend and it was interesting to experience that. Why? In my mind you need to know what a crummy weekend feels like so you can really enjoy a good one. It was not for lack of preparation or lack of effort, I just could never get on the program the way I like to and subsequently it was kind of a struggle from top to bottom. I did not receive any hate mail (yet), no fans threw their samples of Mello Yello at me as they were leaving but I know I was not at my best. In a couple of days I leave for Norwalk and I am really excited to go because the race is like a (slightly) smaller version of Indy. Many of the best cars in the country from the alcohol and sportsman ranks will be there and I’ll be armed to the teeth with the information necessary to help put on a good show. I cannot get drag racing out of my blood nor can I get that palpable feeling of excitement out of my brain when we get to the point of being about 48 hours ahead of a race starting. You either love it or you don’t…even when the sport kicks you square in the yam bag sometimes.

Where am I and where are you taking me? – An example of how the early part of the year went is as follows. My wife and I drove to Ohio for the first meet of the ECTA season in May. We got done after a long weekend of 16-18 hour days, woke up before dawn on Sunday and headed for home. She dropped me off at the Akron, Ohio airport where I hitched a flight to Denver, Colorado to host the 2015 Diesel Power Challenge which started (technically) that day and ran until Friday when I was able to get home again. She handled driving the last 600 miles home by herself because she rules. Anyway, at one point late in the night after getting to Denver I woke up in my hotel room, thought I was still in Ohio and freaked out because my wife was nowhere to be found. I was about 30 seconds from calling her and asking if she had taken off without me before I got with the program and remembered I was in Colorado. She would have lost her mind if I had called and woken her up in the middle of the night.

The things you find on a detour – Days off are hard to come by at this time of the year, but the good thing is that during the short stretches when I am home, I’m able to carve time out for us to do family stuff together. For instance, just last week we decided to hop in the car and take a cruise down to Plymouth, Massachusetts to walk around and then get some food. Plymouth is a fantastically historic place and anyone with any sort of affinity for how this country came to be needs to visit there and see some of the same things the Pilgrims saw when the floated up to shore. Anyway, we walked, we ate, and then we decided to head back to the homestead. As we were leaving town we were faced with a detour due to road construction. After having lived in this area for 35 years you could imagine my shock to turn down a side street and see this:

What is it? That happens to be the National Monument to the Forefathers and it is as impressive a thing as I have ever laid eyes on. Had we not been detoured I don’t think I ever would have seen it for the remainder of my life. Built in the late 1800s and standing 80 feet tall, it commemorates the “forefathers” of the country and by forefathers they mean the original passengers on the Mayflower. Every person on the ship has his or her name etched into the panels on the statue. We stayed and admired this creation for an hour. Supposedly it is one of the largest granite statues in the world and it took decades to go from final planning to a completed piece as you see it here.

He’s not drunk, he’s just holding down the Earth – I have largely abandoned the more wild days of my youth and while that may seem like some sad confession, it isn’t. I loves me some beers and when I am on the road I’ll do my best to try out the local flavors with dinner or if we have gotten stuck late, back at the hotel bar. I no longer get schnockered and the true value in this (other than being a responsible adult and getting all my work done on a daily basis) is seeing other (typically younger guys) go at it pretty hard. Now I am not talking about guys who I am working with or traveling with but rather fans and people spending the day at the races are the focus here. Here’s a little tale from an unnamed track this year with an unnamed crew person from an unnamed team. I happened to be cruising through the pits on the golf cart after one of our evening qualifying sessions looking for a driver to ask a question of when I noticed this folded heap of a person kind of sitting IN a used slick. I investigated further and saw that it was indeed someone who had enjoyed a little too much “mid-day sun”.  One of the crew guys came over and we were looking at this scene together and here’s how it went:

Me: Is this one of your guys?

Crew guy: Nah, he’d have been fired already if it was.

Me: Any idea who he is?

Crew guy: Nope

Me: Are you guys going to pull him out of the tire?

Crew guy: We’re leaving in like 20 minutes, we’ll probably beep the horn at him on the way out

The next morning, i went zipping over to the same spot. Tire was there, dude holding down the Earth had slithered away to some other location.

Variety is the spice of life and the bane of existence – Because I was going to be at home for the entire week, I agreed to take an electric car to drive and test out when I was offered one by a manufacturer. I am going to write the whole experience up this week but it is a decision that played out a couple ways differently than I expected. Some of the stuff worked out as I thought it would and those were the more practical things. I am not going to spill the beans here because I think the story is kind of interesting and I promise it will be written in the most even handed way possible, not as some sort of a hit piece on electric cars.

Some of you are already grinding your teeth in anticipation and are likely cursing my name for doing such a thing but here’s the reality, I love cars. I have never driven a fully electric one for any stretch of time, and when someone wants to give you the keys to a new experience that you can share with the readership, how do you turn it down? If I said no I would have been cheating myself and you out of an experience, one that is very relevant to the world right now. There are some things that ROYALLY suck about it and that would fall under the “bane” category, but committing the family to living the “electric car” life for a week was an eye opener of epic proportions. Stay tuned.

Home is where the happy is – Coming home each year to announce the NHRA New England Nationals at Epping, New Hampshire’s New England Dragway is my favorite thing. People who I have known for decades are competing, I know the back stories, I now know their kids, and it just is like a reunion each year. Jumping on the cart and heading to the pits to get information during the day or grab a cold one at the end of the evening always results in lots of smiles, handshakes, and story telling. I was late for everything that weekend but loved every second. Having the respect of your peers is one thing but having the respect of the people you literally knew when you were cutting your teeth is another.

In typical New England fashion, they’ll all let me know when I screw something up but everyone is quick with a smile (and a cold drink after racing is over). We thank the fans each week and I was able to do it at New England Dragway this year. I had to stop myself from breaking down in tears a couple of times when looking out at the crowd and thinking about how important the place is to me personally. Starting on Wednesday night test and tunes and ultimately being where I am today is a testament to that little strip in Epping and I adore every inch of it.

Lastly – As BangShift continues to grow and more people click on the site month to month to get automotive news, laugh, see cool cars, and watch nutty videos it continues to be a very humbling experience. I get to meet lots of people on the road who “know me” from BangShift and it is beyond fun when I am walking around a race with my NHRA shirt on and someone yells out, “BANGSHIFT!” That’s a dream come true on many levels. Seeing BangShift shirts in the crowd, catching a race car with a sticker on it, etc, all of this stuff is fantastic and it is confirmation that we continue to hammer down the right path here. Thanks for continuing to read, contribute, criticize, email, and support the people who make this site and our livelihood possible. I wake up raring to go every day because of you and that means everything.

Talk soon!

Brian Lohnes

@theLohnes (on Twitter!)