Had a little more excitement than I'd hoped for this weekend. Seemingly innocuous enough, I had a flat front tire on Terry's Dart Sport after returning from Tech on Thursday. No biggie, I quickly found the offending puncture and plugged it. Fast-forward to Sunday... I got past 3rd round of Super Stock, and then past 3rd round of Stock. On the way back to the pits with the Dart, Terry flagged me down at the end of our pit road, indicating that we had a flat tire. The plug had somehow failed. By this time, the rounds were coming up fast, as all the 'show' stuff was out of the way. We hustled to get another plug and the air compressor. Aired it up, plugged it, and got it back to the pit. By this time, since we were parked out by the gate where we couldn't hear anything, I was worried about missing the call for Super Stock, so I jumped in the Volare and headed back up to the lanes. When I got to the ready line, I went into full panic mode -- my helmet was still in the Dart! I didn't know what to do. They backed me off as they should, but in an incredible display of sportsmanship, Larry Hodge pulled off to the side to wait. (We were first pair out). I drove the Volare all the way back to our pit, grabbed my helmet, and went directly back to the lanes, with just one car left to run. Larry proceeded to weld me with a .008 light, so karma did its job.
It was an incredibly stupid, embarrassing mistake, something I don't care to repeat! I'm usually overly conscious of "pants, jacket, helmet... pants, jacket, helmet" to the point of being paranoid when I'm bouncing back and forth between the two cars, but the flat tire debacle threw a wrench in my routine. Special thanks to Terry and Dusty for taking care of the tire while I was gone -- the plug wasn't working, but they were able to grab one of my spare front runners out of my truck and had it on the car by the time I got back, and ready for Rnd 4 of Stock (where Chris Stephenson schooled me at the stripe!)
Moral: Even if you get knocked out of your routine, stop, breathe, double-check everything, and then double-check it again. (and then one more time for good measure).
Thanks again to Larry for his great sportsmanship, and congrats on his well-deserved win.