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.

After one final meeting, I headed to the library in the Duke Fuqua School of Business to pick up some reading materials. There are some things that I've been wondering about in the advertising and marketing industry, so I decided to read up on them. One of the books I found is all about corporate endorsements programs in athletics. It's all part of being an up-and-coming race car driver and a Duke student. Having access to the resources at Duke can really be used to enhance my racing career, and that's exactly what I'm trying to do.

• West: News, Results, Schedule

The seven-hour drive from Durham home wasn't bad, as it was actually daylight and I was able to talk to people on the phone. Once I got home, I took a shower and sat down on the couch with a nice bowl of ice cream. My mom recorded the Irwindale race for me, which had aired earlier that day, and I wanted to watch it before I went to bed for the night. We got great coverage in the race, and I enjoy watching what other guys are doing and what's working for them.

Friday was a short day of unpacking, catching up and packing, as I headed to the airport that evening for our race in Portland. I spent most of my time on the plane reading the books I had gotten from Duke and working on my shock plan for the weekend. I built most of what I needed while in Irwindale, but I decided that I wanted to have one more option for rear shocks. My crew chief picked me up from the airport and we headed for the hotel to get some good rest.

Portland is one of the events on our schedule that's a two-day show, meaning we practiced on Saturday and qualified and raced on Sunday. First off, Duane [Knorr, crew chief] and I headed to the driver/crew chief meeting, where we were briefed on a few details about the way the weekend would go. Off of the trailer, I wasn't very happy with the car. We made a few adjustments during the practice session and picked up a little bit of speed. Between practice sessions, we decided to make some significant changes, swapping out three of the four springs in the car. About three laps into that session, the engine let go in a big way. Right in the middle of the frontstretch, a rod shot out of the side of the block, creating one hell of a smoke show.

Fortunately, we had all afternoon on Saturday to get the engine changes, so the guys didn't have to rush and were able to be very thorough in their inspection of all of the pieces of the oiling system. We're also lucky to have it happen on the frontstretch, as I could have spun in my own oil and wrecked the car if it had happened in a corner somewhere. The big downside to this was that we missed almost the entire second practice session.

After grabbing dinner with the team, Duane and I sorted out our progress and decided to make a few changes before qualifying.

When Sunday morning came, the guys got right back to work making the final changes and getting the car through inspection for qualifying. I didn't want to push the envelope too hard, as qualifying doesn't mean much at the road courses and we ended up qualifying ninth.

Once the race got going, we gradually marched to the front. We had a great car, and I only asked for a minor adjustment on our stop for fuel. With about 20 to go, we were passing for second when the caution flew. When we went back green with about 15 to go, a competitor turned into me entering Turn 1 and we ended up with a flat tire. We had a car that could have won the race, and undoubtedly would have finished in the top three, but Lady Luck relegated us to 16th. Oh well, you'll have days like that. I'd rather run third and finish 16th than run in the back all day and finish 16th.

It was a rough end to the weekend, but at least we know we had a fast race car. Our next race is at Miller Motorsports Park, which is just outside of Salt Lake City, on Aug. 1.

Just a reminder to visit my Web site, PaulieHarraka.com, and sign up for the drawing!

Paulie Harraka, a native of Fairlawn, N.J., is a student at Duke University. He is a member of the Drive for Diversity program and races in the Camping World West Series for Bill McAnally Racing. Harraka won the 2008 track championship at All American Speedway.