Paulie's Blog: Four cities in a week packs schedule

I'm continuing to rack up the frequent flier miles! This week, I trekked between home in New Jersey, meetings in Daytona Beach, and racing in Los Angeles. The week was capped off with a third-place finish at Toyota Speedway in Irwindale, Calif., which moved us up to fifth in the NASCAR Camping World West Series point standings.

King Taco 200

Results

Pos.	Driver	Make
1.	Jason Bowles	Ford
2.	Jeff Barkshire	Dodge
3.	Paulie Harraka	Toyota
4.	Patrick Long	Ford
5.	Greg Pursley	Chevrolet
6.	Eric Holmes	Toyota
7.	David Mayhew	Chevrolet
8.	Blake Koch	Chevrolet
9.	Moses Smith	Toyota
10.	Chris Johnson	Chevrolet

• Complete Results

As usual, most of Monday was spent working on personal stuff and school work. As I mentioned a few weeks back, I'm taking more classes than required at Duke this semester so that I can lighten up my course load my senior year. The textbooks that I ordered have begun to arrive, so I've started reading them, in an effort to get as far ahead as possible. The first book that came was In the Name of Identity by Amin Maalouf. Since the book was only 163 pages, I spent a lot of the day sitting outside reading it (we finally had some sunshine in Jersey).

At about lunchtime on Monday, things got really hectic, as I was asked to fly down to Daytona Beach for some meetings leading up to the Sprint Cup race there. This meant that everything I had planned for Wednesday and Thursday would have to be squeezed into Tuesday.

Before he passed away, my grandfather was a barber, meaning that my hair always had to look neat as a kid. Since I hate combing it or using hair products, the first thing on my list on Tuesday morning was a haircut. Following the haircut, I spent the better part of my day in front of the laptop, planning the things I would be doing while in Daytona, moving the items I had planned for Wednesday and Thursday, and getting the necessary materials ready.

Before I knew that I would be leaving on Wednesday morning for Daytona, I had planned to go to a Yankee game with three of my best friends on Tuesday night. Fortunately, I was able to get enough done during the day that we could still go to the 7:05 game. The four of us have been best friends since first grade and this was the first time we've all been back together since returning home for the summer. We had a blast, and the Yankees defeated the Mariners. After grabbing some milkshakes and waffles at a diner after the game, we didn't end up getting home until around 2 a.m.

I flew out of Newark Airport early on Wednesday morning, meaning that I didn't get much sleep at all. Upon arriving in Daytona, I grabbed a quick lunch with a close friend of mine. The entire afternoon was spent in meetings and the evening was spent at an awesome cookout at another friend's house. There were homemade barbecue ribs that were amazing! (Continued)