Crikey, mate!

Howdy folks! First off, let's start with an HW update. From what we understand, she is inbound and will arrive sometime tomorrow morning...whew!

Today, the guys, and I guess I should introduce you to our 'Aussie' crew; Troy Fasching, Chris Butler, Tom Davis, Steve Watts, and Dave Griffiths, unloaded the canister and got the car and the rest of our stuff set up in our 'pit' area. Our pit space here in Sydney is not quite what we're used to, but it's cool. It's kinda like setting up a pit area inside of a hospitality tent (photo gallery for today should be posted by early afternoon (ET)). Everything was going pretty swimmingly until we tried to get Jim"O"'s computer up and going. For reasons no one really knows, the CPU in the computer just quit working. We tried several different avenues and nothing worked. Jim Read, our host and owner/operator of WSID, called in a few of his best lieutenants from the race track, Tony Beuk and Dean Neal (pictured here with Jim"O") to lend a hand. Low and behold and a few hours later they were able to get the hard drive out of the now lame machine and get it transferred to a suitable machine. I am pretty sure you could hear Jim"O"'s sigh of relief all the way to the Outback (not the steakhouse)! At the end of the day, the car, the pit space and Jim"O" were all at nominal levels, and we all went out for a drink with Jim, Bruce and Phil Read and some of there crew guys (Bruce and Phil are Jim's sons and a Top Fuel crew chief and driver respectively) and track workers afterwards. It's now 10:30 p.m. here and my roommate Troy is giving me the not so subtle hint that he is tired of hearing the pecking of these keyboard keys so I am headed for slumber. Please be sure to check for the latest photo gallery coming as soon as I can get set up in the morn. Take care and thanks for reading! - TM