THURSDAY, JANUARY 13, 2011 - The snows just keep coming here in the mountains of the great State of West Virginia.  The only problem is that I'm not even in the mountains and it is still dropping snow on us anyway.  As you can see in the photo, we seem to get 1-2 inches of new snow each night and the latest band last night resulted in our decision to stay home from the Piedmont Racing Expo in Raleigh, NC where we planned to spend the weekend.

The roads aren't all that bad, but if you have ever been to our shop it is at the top of a hill with about 1,500 feet of hilly driveway leading to it.  The drive is completely snow covered and packed on top of ice which makes it pretty tricky even in a four wheel drive or an ATV right now.  The opportunity to steer an 80,000-pound semi down the hill just isn't something that I was thrilled about.  Reflections of Daytona last February keep entering my mind as we got stuck up on our own property twice on our return trip from Florida, resulting one new tire and two tow bills.  That was the result of attempting to come up the hill.  I don't want to think of what the result of going down could include.  Anyway, we'll sit out the Expo this year and hope to get to go and show the boat and promote the team next January.

In other news, Dan Schwartz is back home in California and will continue his rehabilitation at a local facility later this week.  He is walking on his own with some assistance and while his recovery is going very slow, it is progressing steadily.  It is such a blessing just to hear that he has done as well as he is doing.  Flash back four months ago and I was one that was fearful that the next update we got from the hospital was going to be one that we were dreading to hear.  Thankfully, he will recover, a great accomplishment from where he started.

The phones are pretty quiet this week as just about everyone in our area is home from school and most are home from work so we'll probably spent most of the day today continuing our marketing efforts and planning some upgrades to the website.  We will be changing the main site at www.herdracing.com to more of a boating theme from our current NASCAR stock car them.  You will see these changes slowly over the next couple of weeks.

We will begin making some sponsor announcements soon as partnership and trade agreements are in the works with several who are either renewing or coming aboard for the first time.

Stay warm!

Dana Tomes