Dispatch: Topeka, KS

Another day of thrills and spills as the Fireball Run races across the USA. We spent an hour at a manufacturing plant and thirty seconds at the Eisenhower Presidential Museum. Nice statue!  At Heartland Park speedway in Topeka I rode in a special edition Lamborghini on the track and at dinner I talked about the changes that have occurred since Polly’s tragedy.

I broke in my new partner today. In January 2005, Rob McConnell’s two year old daughter Bianca Vaminik was kidnapped by her non-custodial mother Eva Vamanik and taken to Indonesia. He hasn’t spoken to Bianca since. In those few times that Eva contacts Rob she goads him about not sending presents to his daughter, but she refuses to provide an address. The FBI told Rob that if he can convince the mom to return to the United States they will serve her with an International Parental Kidnapping warrant. The high end penalty for international abduction is less than that for illegally copying a DVD. To that end Rob has resorted to using social networking to locate Bianca and her non-custodial mom somewhere amongst a population of 245,452,739 people.

This morning we staged at the Dodge City Speedway and raced school busses around the oval track. The bus I drove wasn’t nearly as fast as Valentino Balboni’s screaming orange Lambo. Valentino is a Lamborghini legend who has been with his company for more than 40-years. He personally test drives every Lambo that leaves the factory in the small Italian township of Sant’Agata Bolognese.  Valentino was calm, cool and collected as he screeched around corners and unloaded on the straight-aways at Topeka’s Heartland Park at speeds exceeding 175 mph. I may have put his consul in a white knuckle grip, but I have to admit that it was the most thrilling ten minutes of my life.

One of our challenges today was to take a picture at the Atomic Cannon. At 83-tons with an 84-foot barrel and a range of 20-miles, the Atomic Cannon was developed in the 1950’s to fire an Atomic artillery shell. Who comes up with this stuff, and did somebody really think that was a good idea?

Our evening reception was at Ed Bozarth Chevrolet in Topeka, Kansas. I talked about the changes that have occurred since Polly’s tragedy. I figure that I need to provide new, good information every evening as part, albeit a small part, of the reason the Fireballer’s signed up to learn about this issue of my life. After we checked into our hotel we hung around the Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka RV sipping bourbon and winding down from an intense day of competition.