On Saturday evening, as I stood behind the podium awaiting my introduction prior to the invocation, I looked across the audience at NASCAR’s Night of Champions Touring Awards attempting to capture mental pictures in my mind as I had been doing all day long. NASCAR’s Night of Champions Touring Awards has always been a special experience…
Earlier this week we took the boys to see the jolly man in the big red suit at Bass Pro Shop, one of our annual Christmastime traditions. Throughout our house you will find several ‘tips of the hat’ to Santa Claus, from ornaments and decorations to half a drawer of our entertainment center devoted to fun…
Nine years ago Michelle and I walked into a tiny oval in Asheboro, North Carolina to spend a day at the track with a group of complete strangers. It was an awkward, uncomfortable day in the hills of North Carolina that afternoon. The race cars were different than anything we knew and there was not…
It is early November and Christmas is already here. Shopping malls have decked their halls and stores are aglow with Christmas decor and trimmings. Inboxes and mailboxes are overflowing with holiday advertisements and the consumerism of Christmas is pushing forward. Yet, it is not even Thanksgiving. We haven’t even stuffed our turkeys or tasted our…
I want to introduce you to the story of a man named Horatio Spafford (b.1828 – d.1888). Horatio was a well-known, prominent lawyer in the Chicago area in the 1860’s. In 1870 a series of events began to unfold that sent Horatio into the darkest of days. In 1870 the Spafford’s experienced unspeakable tragedy when…
The other night my family and I went to our first NFL game, a pre-season matchup between the Tennessee Titans and the Minnesota Vikings. Dear friends of ours had tickets and invited us to come along with them. Three things really stuck out to me about our experience. For starters, it was pouring down rain for the…
Speed is the very fabric of competitive auto racing. Ever since the onset of gasoline-fueled automobiles racers have been trying to one-up each other competitively. The first recorded organized contest of speed took place on April 28, 1887. Just one competitor showed up for that first race, but he was there to go fast (relatively…
Hitting ‘enter’ on social media does not create change. It provokes thought, but not change. Change happens when we transition from talking to doing. The great danger of social media is that it ‘teases’ us to make us think we are making a difference by hitting enter, while in reality it is distracting us from…
For almost 9 years Michelle and I have been a part of an incredible community, the NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour. For almost 9 years this community of people has transitioned from strangers to friends, and from friends to our racing family. We are a diverse bunch of people, yet each person in our family is…
As a family, we spend a lot of time around those whose primary pursuit is to go FAST. In an environment that thrives on going fast, you really have to take control of everything that is happening around you. In a sport where 1st and 2nd can be separated by hundredths of a second, there is no room…
