Thursday September 6, 2007…Relaxation, and a few good Edheads Support…Tony Raines????

My plane had arrived in Richmond late Wednesday night, I’d come early on the off chance that perhaps Carl would be doing a signing somewhere Thursday, as he had last year. Sadly, with his crazy schedule, there was none, although I can’t begrudge him a little down time, if he got any that day.

After catching up on my sleep (working nights meant I had had to stay up all day Wednesday, when I should have been sleeping, in order to get a flight to Richmond that day, the OTHER reason why I flew in Wednesday instead of Thursday…gotta get my beauty sleep before I sweat off pounds on pit lane Friday!!) and picking up my rental car (when they said they were out of Ford Fusions, I said “Anything but a Chevy!” in support of my Ford guys…and was given…a TOYOTA!!! Oh well!!) I did a bit of shopping, and then met up with Brandi and Pam at the Short Pump Mall to attend Tony Raines’ signing.

We felt, as good Edheads concerned with the betterment of society, that it was our duty to try to cheer up this man who had just been told he would NOT be in the 96 car next season, making room for JJ Yeley, that he MIGHT be a bit blue at still having to support a sponsor that didn’t want him. So we went to his signing “incognito”, as he didn’t need to know that we weren’t particularly fans of his.

The first time through the line, we got some pics with him, then it occurred to us we should see about getting a pic with the 3 of us with him. As the line wasn’t very long, we got into line again, and then asked him if this would be o-kay. He said sure, so we went around the table and one of the workers took our cameras to get pics.

By the second pic, it was obvious to us that he WASN’T a happy man, so Pam decided to do something about it…she said “Come on, SMILE!!” and tickled him, saying “Coochie, coochie, coo!!” which busted up ALL present up, even Tony.

Mission accomplished!!!

After taking some pics with the show car outside (and talking to a lady there who we suspected after the fact might have been Tony’s wife…and we had related that Pam had “Coochie cooed” him inside, to which she responded “I do that all the time!!” LOL), we headed off to dinner. BTW, the fact that my “Incognito” shirt actually perfectly matched the 96 car paint scheme was purely unplanned.

Then we hunted Kristina down, who was chatting with some co-workers, and split up, intending on meeting up on pit lane Friday.