Well, Tony’s Daytona trip didn’t turn out exactly as he would have planned. Thrusday saw him shut out of the main event again. But all the effort was not in vain. Tony learned quite a bit riding the short tracks in addition to the fact that he had a lot of fun. If we thought that the trip east was bad, we had another thing coming when Tony tried to come home.

On Sunday morning, he flew from St. Louis to Chicago and from there was supposed to fly back to San Francisco. It was not to be. His flight from St. Louis was 2 hours late causing them to miss their connecting flight home to San Francisco. From that point things only got worse. They were booked on the next available flight which also ended up being cancelled. They were booked on a later flight again which was cancelled as well. Finally they were booked on the third flight in their effort to get home from Chicago which alas was also cancelled. The first two cancellations were due to weather (an act of God as they called it). The final flight was cancelled because the pilots had logged too many hours for the day. So Tony & Gary had the big adventure of spending the night at O’Hare where Tony amused himself by learning to do wheelies in an unattended wheel chair. Finally, this morning the boy got a flight from Chicago to San Francisco.

Upon arriving home, Tony had just enough time to take a much needed shower before heading off to his afternoon classes. He’s now back at home resting. I think flying to and from the races took far more out of him than actually racing.

Tony’s Daytona experience has taught him a lot and left him more determined than ever to perform well at Sprigfield (and fly Southwest, he adds). He’ll spend the next few months training hard in preparation. He’s fortunate enough to have Johnny Murphree (Former National #20) in his corner and Johnny will be helping to train him for Springfeild.

As always, it is with the help of his sponsors that make living his dream possible: A & A Racing, Weirbach Racing, Motion Pro, Rod Lake Racing, Digger Helm, Top 1 Oil, Slideways Racing, Hlebo Bros. Racing Suspension, AGV Helmets, Dainese Leathers, MDK Motorsports, RaceImage, JG Photowerx, Eddie Mulder, D’s Leathers, JD Cahill Electric, Calco Fence & Reinhard Racing.

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