My first intention was to post a bunch of photos from the NASCAR Champions Week in New York. But the majority of the photos are basically Jimmie Johnson around the city — Hey there’s Jimmie and Chad Knaus hanging off a light post! — and who really wants to see that? Exactly. So I picked just the photos that featured Jimmie’s wife Chandra. Why? Because the woman is always so stylish and put together. She looked great the entire week and in every photo so I wanted to give her props for making the best of her situation. I’m sure she adores her husband and is incredibly proud of him, but I bet that whole going to New York and having to plan your wardrobe and probably buy new stuff just for the occasion is so tiring… Wait, what was I talking about? Who am I kidding, she’s so friggin lucky. Gah. Ok… Without further adieu the photos:

Chandra and Jimmie Johnson pose for a photo at the 2007 Champion’s Dinner at the Waldorf=Astoria. (Photo Credit: Chris Trotman/Getty Images for NASCAR)

New York Stock Exchange Chief Financial Officer Nelson Chai (left) talks with Chandra and Jimmie Johnson during their tour of the New York Stock Exchange. (Photo Credit: Chris Trotman/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Jimmie and Chandra Johnson pose for a photo in Times Square. (Photo Credit: Chris Trotman/Getty Images for NASCAR)

2007 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson and wife Chandra smile for the cameras on the yellow carpet at the Waldorf=Astoria for the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series Awards Ceremony. (Photo Credit: Brad Barket / Getty Images for NASCAR)

In other news…

– The Aussie take on Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s trip to Australia.

– The Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals are being televised for the first time ever, but there’s one little catch. It’s going to televised on Pay-Per-View with a suggested price of $24.95. 250 drivers will spend 4 days trying to qualify their 800-hp midgets for this race so I guess it’s worth the cost. Notable NASCAR Cup drivers participating this year include Tony Stewart, Kasey Kahne and JJ Yeley. Check out the commercial below:

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Now it’s just getting ridiculous. All of the things that can go wrong for Dale Jr. do go wrong for him it seems lately. Sunday I went to the Bridge School Benefit in Mountain View, Calif. John Mayer was performing so I had to skip watching the race live and rely on Tivo to catch the action of the race at Atlanta for me. I left the show immediately following Mayer’s performance to make sure I had enough time to zip through my recording of the race. Tivo makes it so tempting to skip everything and just get to the end but I wanted to make sure I caught all the accidents & incidents as they happened.

I was so excited, I mean there were only 3 laps left and he was this freaking close to winning it and then the wheel falls off?? Ugh. So lame. And poor Martin Truex Jr. getting caught behind Denny Hamlin and his watered down gas issue. This season is really starting to bug me. And if that’s not enough I tried to watch the Busch race on Saturday and I had to be subjected to Rusty Wallace. Why can’t they let Allen Bestwick do the Busch races??

Ya know I seriously contemplated creating a petition to get Rusty off the air, but I don’t know… is that mean?

Maybe it should be an all encompassing make NASCAR toss out their deal with ESPN petition?

Anywhoo… In other news…

– Next week I travel to my favorite place Las Vegas for the Blog World & New Media Expo. I am beyond excited. Is anyone else planning on attending? Any of my fellow sports bloggers?? Anyone? Anyone?

You be the judge, is this Kasey Kahne or Carl Edwards? The caption I have says it’s Kasey, but the uniform says Office Depot — which leads me to believe it’s Carl… What do you think?

Dale Earnhardt Jr., driver of the #8 Budweiser Chevrolet, stands in the garage, during practice for the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Pepboys Auto 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on October 27, 2007 in Hampton, Georgia. (Photo by Marc Serota/Getty Images)

I know that this is incredibly late to be writing about now, but I still wanted to share my thoughts on Clint Bowyer’s win at New Hampshire last weekend. I was so excited to see him win, finally! He and his team totally deserved it.

I guess the only thing that kinda made it subdued was that he didn’t get to drive into victory lane since his car clunked out after all his burnouts. But whatever, that’s minor — overall it was great to see him win, just awesome. I like that guy. And I liked the fact that it shook up the Chase points standings. I don’t think people were expecting that from him, so it’s a good thing. I hate it when everything is predictable.

In other news…

– Kasey Kahne will be the new face of Budweiser next year and I’m not sure what I think about that. When I think of Kasey I think of a doll. He’s got a total baby face; he doesn’t exactly project rough and tough masculinity. And he’s not classy & cool like George Clooney who does the voice-overs on some of the Budweiser commercials. So I don’t know, I look forward to a commercial with the Allstate girls getting drunk at a bar and then accosting Kasey with Buds in their hands. hehe.

– At the 7-Eleven down the street from my apartment there’s a Budweiser display that has a cardboard cutout of Dale Earnhardt Jr. I don’t know how many times I’ve said that I should go in there and see if I can get it when the promotion ends, but I never do. I think that might be a bit much. But apparently Allstate has a set of commercials dedicated to fans who love Kasey Kahne so much that they play ping-pong with their own cardboard Kasey, or eat dinner with their cardboard Kasey. Scarrrry.

– I am a fan of Aerosmith, but I am so tired of seeing that damn video of them singing “Back in the Saddle” before every race. I seriously change the channel when it comes on ’cause I can’t take it anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I loooove Aerosmith — Joe Perry is one of the hottest guitarists ever — but they gotta change that song. ugh.

Speaking of Aerosmith, here are some photos from last weekend (and last week):

Steven Tyler said that Clint Bowyer would win at New Hampshire and he did.
Aerosmith lead singer, Steven Tyler, rides around the media center at New Hampshire International Speedway. (Photo Credit: Robert Meggers/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Clint Bowyer celebrates with his team after winning at New Hampshire International Speedway. (Photo Credit: Al Bello/Getty Images)

I’m happy that he’s happy.
Hendrick Motorsports and Dale Earnhardt Jr. announced on Wednesday, Sept. 19 at the Dallas Convention Center in Dallas that he will pilot the No. 88 AMP Energy/National Guard Chevrolets in 2008. (Hendrick Motorsports/Autostock)

Don’t mess with Jeff Gordon.
Jeff Gordon takes a break during testing at Talladega Superspeedway. (Photo Credit: Chris Graythen/Getty Images for NASCAR)

While the Nextel Cup Series was on a break this past weekend so was I. Part of it was self-imposed and the other was thrust upon me by the not-that-helpful-at-all people at Comcast. For the fifth time I had to have a Comcast service person come out to fix my internet connection. They came out on Sunday when it started working again on its own, but it’s down again.

For me not having an internet connection, or an unreliable one, is the same as not having electricity. Even if I’m not going to use any of my appliances I like knowing that I could if I needed to. I seriously feel wrong/weird not knowing if my internet connection is going to be working when I get home today. Peace of mind is everything.

Anyway, while drivers were spending their weekend off heading here and there (see below) I spent mine at a conference called WordCamp in San Francisco. The two-day event brought together bloggers and developers from all over the country who use WordPress as their blogging software of choice, me included. I only attended the first day but it was really fun to be around other people (tons of dudes) that were doing cool things with their blogs. I learned a lot of cool ways that I could enhance my site and I hope to implement some of those things soon. I think a slight redesign is in my future.

I’m not sure how much interest there is in this kind of information but I figured I’d list what I could about what some of Cup drivers did over their free weekend:

Kevin Harvick — Spent time at home with his wife DeLana.

“You know everybody has these trips planned to go this place and that place,” said Kevin. “Man, we go every week. I don’t know why you would want to leave home if you had a week off.”

Kasey Kahne — Went down to Mexico

Elliott Sadler - Played some golf and visited family & friends in Virginia.

Denny Hamlin — Denny hit up Miami.

Jimmie Johnson — Spent some quality time with his wife Chandra in Europe

Jeff Gordon — Practiced changing diapers at home with his wife Ingrid and newborn daughter Ella.

In other news…

Reed Sorenson won the Busch Series race at Gateway International Raceway in IL this weekend. All I can say is good for him. Although it would have been cool if Carl Edwards could have made it to the front again with that insanely banged up car but alas it wasn’t meant to be.

I can’t believe Reed is just 21 years old. What were you doing when you were 21? I highly doubt you were winning a nationally televised stock-car race. I’m 26 and I keep asking myself where the last 6 years of my life went. I vividly remember turning 21 and now I’m soon to be 27 and I have no clue what I’ve done with my life since then (well not completely but ya know, I am quite proud of a few things that I’ve done). For those same 6 years I’ve been a NASCAR fan. I had to quiz myself the other day on all the winners of the Cup Championship to make sure that I haven’t been in some weird sub-conscious coma. I’m happy to report that I was able to accurately name all of them.

This is completely and truly a blog about motor sports but I feel like I’m not being true to myself when I don’t write about everything that’s exciting me at the moment.

So that being said, I must tell you about this amazingly talented singer, Sara Bareilles (pronounced bar-rell-is). She is awesome! I bought her CD “Little Voice” on Friday and I am so deeply hooked. She’s a little bit like Fiona Apple, Charlotte Martin or even Alicia Keys, but she’s different from them. She’s not a copycat she’s totally unique and you should check out her songs. I’ve had her CD on this entire weekend, I even drove around on Sunday just because I wanted to belt out the lyrics (I do all my best singing in the car). I’m a big fan of great lyrics in addition to great melodies, and this CD has it all. I like to think that music comes into your life when it does for a reason, and this music has been super inspirational to me. Not in a spiritual-ohm kind of way, but in a girls-kick-butt-and-never-doubt-yourself kind of way.

Ok… so now on to the race at Chicagoland. I’ll be completely honest with you, Tony Stewart was not on my short list of people I’d like to see win this race. After seeing that very nice pre-race piece on Clint Bowyer I would have liked it very much to see him in victory lane, but again it was not to be. At least he moved up in the points standings. Speaking of the pre-race interview with Clint, I was so glad they did something like that for once this year. It seems like it’s been forever since they’ve interviewed a current driver away from the track and talked a bit about his life before he was in the Cup series.

And despite his lack of power steering (and because of Jamie McMurrays bad luck) Dale Earnhardt Jr. was able to keep his 12th place spot in the points standings.

I know that Thanksgiving isn’t until November but I must say that I am very thankful for the fact that TNT’s coverage of NASCAR is now over! Woo-hoo! I love Larry Mac, Kyle Petty and Wally Dallenbach but I can’t take more of Marc Fein and Bill Weber. Weber’s attempts at sarcasm never seem to work out quite right. ESPN/ABC will be with us for the rest of the season and I feel like I can handle Brent Musberger — even though it still feels slightly weird for him to be calling NASCAR and not Basketball.

My wish for 2008 is that NASCAR will stick to one channel for the entire season. Imagine that? Not having to double check the schedule to figure out what channel the race will be on this weekend. I’d pick Fox only because that’s where Darrell Waltrip is and I just love that man, he makes the races that much more fun to watch. His passion is infectious and I don’t think NASCAR could ever dream up a better ambassador (if you will) for the sport.

Chicagoland eye candy to follow:

The kid cannot take a bad photo to save his life.

Kasey Kahne takes a break during practice at Chicagoland Speedway. (Photo Credit: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

Was that booing I heard when Hanson got ready to sing the national anthem? That was totally unjustified. I’m not ashamed to say that I own some of their CDs.

(L-R) American pop rock band The Hanson Brothers, Zachary, Jordan (aka Taylor) and Isaac Hanson, sing the National Anthem before the start of the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series USG Sheetrock 400 at Chicagoland Speedway on July 15, 2007 in Joliet, Illinois. (Photo by Chris Trotman/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Dale Earnhardt Jr. (left) and Martin Truex Jr. following qualifying at Chicagoland Speedway. (Photo Credit: Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

Casey Mears, driver of the #25 National Guard/GMAC Chevrolet, looks on after he qualified first for the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series USG Sheetrock 400 at Chicagoland Speedway on July 13, 2007 in Joliet, Illinois. (Photo Credit: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

Oh and don’t forget to take my survey!! I’m not too proud to beg.

I don’t care.

I don’t care that four crew chiefs were suspended for cheating this week. And you wanna know why I don’t care? Because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t do anything to their teams. Yes it sets them back in points and money, but they’ll find replacement chiefs and the team will still compete on Sunday.

The race is what matters and if NASCAR really wants to punish people for cheating they shouldn’t allow them to compete. It’s ridiculous.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. accidentally curses on national television (this was a couple years back if my memory serves me) and he’s docked points but a bunch of people cheat on purpose and they’re docked points too. It doesn’t match up in my eyes.

Kasey Kahne and Matt Kenseth are hot, big name drivers right now, but I think we could live without them in the Daytona 500 this year if that’s what it takes to get teams to realize that you can’t get away with this type of behavior anymore.