My trunk monkey Jeff had a great attitude up till about now. He is an invaluable helper. He knows racing, he knows how to wrench, has a good sense of humor, and he's a hard worker.




But today, after we left the track, I could tell something was bugging him. I didn't know if he was sick of me already, or if it was the prospect sitting in the car waiting out rainstorms all week (all because I was to stubborn to pull a trailer), or if it was the whole hurricane scare, not knowing what we were getting into. Probably the latter. He had told me that some of the racers were dropping out because of the hurricane warning, and his folks had phoned him because of all the dire predictions on the news. And we were right in its predicted path, driving towards it.





I didn’t want to force him to continue if he was concerned for his safety. So I said to him as we drove along “I spent 5 years working on this car to get to Drag Week, and I have no intention of dropping out. As long as the race is still on, I’m going to do everything in my power to stay in. We don’t know what this hurricane is going to do, so if you want out, I understand. I’ll drive you to the airport and buy you a ticket out of here, and there’ll be no hard feelings.”
He thought for a moment, and said, “Nope, I’m in.” I could see his outlook improve immediately.