Paulie's Blog: A busy week and more rough racing luck

This week was, like so many others you've heard about, extremely busy. It included a road trip to North Carolina, with stops in the Charlotte area and at Duke, and a trip out west to race at the Portland International Raceway.

Unfortunately, we lost an engine in practice at Portland, putting us a bit behind for the weekend. Still, we fought our way as high as second before cutting a right-front tire down.

Paulie Harraka finished 16th at Portland and remains fifth in points.

As you may be noticing, the insanity that I call life does have a bit of a pattern. Mondays are usually spent at home working on e-mails and paperwork, Tuesday through Thursday are usually spent in meetings or traveling somewhere, and Friday through Sunday is the race weekend.

This week was no different. On Monday, we announced a special program on my Web site. Over the next 13 weeks, I'm going to give away pieces of my racing memorabilia, ranging from signed Victory Lane NAPA Hats to race-used visors and gloves. To enter, all you need to do is visit PaulieHarraka.com and enter your name and e-mail address. Everyone can enter. This is a really exciting way for me to give back to the fans, so enter now!

I got to grab a few hours of sleep on Monday night before jumping in my car to start driving down to North Carolina. I left at 1 am so that I would be able to get to the Charlotte area by lunchtime. The drive down, about 9 hours, wasn't all that bad. I've kind of gotten used to it. I loaded up my MP3 player with plenty of music, as my car has a nice factory sound system to listen to. Cruising down I-95 with the sunroof open and music playing is a nice reprieve, especially when it's 3 in the morning and you're the only one on the road. I'm one for all kinds of music, and the Eagles and Third Eye Blind were the groups of choice for this trip.

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent in meetings. As I mentioned last time I wrote about driving to Charlotte, I've got a lot of friends in the area that I enjoy catching up with. Plus, I had a few meetings scheduled. I'm always working whatever angle I can to claw my way up the ladder.

I had planned on heading up to Duke on Thursday morning. However, I got done in Mooresville [just north of Charlotte] before dinner on Wednesday and decided to drive straight up to Duke. It's about a two-hour drive. Once I got on campus, I couldn't believe how much it felt like coming home. I expected the Perkins Library, the main library at Duke, to be open all night, just like it is during the semester, so I was dismayed when I got kicked out at 10 pm. I was enjoying sitting there getting work done on my laptop.

After grabbing a few hours sleep at a friend's apartment, I was up early on Thursday morning for a day at Duke. I was able to catch breakfast with a good friend of mine from the Catholic Center. He is going for his PhD in finance, so he is one busy guy. After that, I had meetings with one professor and one administrator for some things I'm working on, then stopped in the Catholic Center before lunch. I had lunch with a really good friend of mine who just graduated from Duke with his degree in Public Policy. He now works with two non-profit [organizations] in Durham, so he lives near campus. He is an extremely inspirational human being, as he has dedicated his life to service. (Continued)