November 5, Concord, NC--- When we packed up our computer Wednesday night preparing for our Thursday morning flight down to Charlotte, everything was working pretty well. Yup, that was Wednesday night.

Thursday, after landing in Charlotte, we attempted to fire up our laptop, and connect to that tricky internet. That’s when we had problems up the ‘ol wazzoo. We normally use our Blackberry as a Modem when we’re on the road. That was pretty useless. The Blackberry wouldn’t (or couldn’t) connect with our computer (or vise versa).

There followed some invective that came out of my mouth that even impressed myself!  I didn’t know I had it in me. Of course, my wife Lori didn’t know I had it in me either--- and she let me know about it too. I don’t care what Lori said, I really do think that I impressed her too.

So leaving for the track early Friday morning, I made a stop at Radio Shack, and finally obtained an “Air Card”. The card was free (that made me happy); however, the service for it runs $60 per month or $720 per year (now I’m not so happy).

Still, it gets me up and running on the ‘net.

As we’re sitting here writing this column, we noted that Earl Paules went up in a puff of smoke, tagging the backstretch wall in the afternoon warm-up session. Naturally, the red flew stopping the action. Hopefully, Earl will be able make it back on the track after needing the dreaded (and very expensive) double wrecker to get to the pits.

After using this space to vent a bit, we’ll be back later with more to write about. Hopefully, it will be on a more positive note.