::Leilani Munter.com::

This is a place for me to express my thoughts on racing, the environment, science, politics, and whatever else might cross my wandering mind. It will be an overflow of random ideas, reflections, notes and quotes to be enjoyed by those of you who take the time to read it. Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you down the road...

Peace,

3.27.07 planet earth

The Discovery Channel premiered it's new eleven part series Planet Earth tonight, and it is incredible. They have been filming it for 5 years at over 204 locations and have some of the most amazing footage. The first 3 parts aired tonight, but there is an encore presentation tomorrow on the Science Channel. Now THIS is what I call MUST SEE TV.

PS. If you missed it last Sunday, there is an encore presentation of the first 3 episodes next Sunday April 1st on Discovery Channel at 11am, 12pm, and 1pm. Then at 8pm and 9pm they will air episodes 4 and 5.

3.22.07 needed this in college

Just came across a great little gadget I had to share with you. This is Clocky-- the first alarm clock that will jump off your nightstand and roll away to hide from you after you hit snooze, insuring a game of hide and seek will get you out of bed! I am not a morning person and I am a snooze button addict. I always set my alarm a good 30 minutes before I actually need to be out of bed so that I have the chance to hit the snooze button a few times. I only wish that these had been available when I was in college studying for my structural biochemistry midterm. Instead I had to have my dorm-mates hide my alarm clock in one of my dresser drawers and then tie bungy cords in knots around my dresser so that I had to untie complicated knots in order to turn off my alarm clock. It would have been so much easier to have had one of these. Brilliant invention!

For those of you in North Carolina, my brother-in-law Bob Weir is in the area with his band Ratdog (most of you probably know him as singer and guitarist for the Grateful Dead). On Friday March 23 they are playing at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville, NC and on Saturday, March 24 they end their tour at the War Memorial Auditorium in Greensboro, NC. Should be a good show and a good party. If you are in the area and you were at all a fan of the Grateful Dead, or if you (*sigh*) never had the experience of going to a Dead show in your lifetime, or if you just want to take a trip down memory lane, or if you *NEED A MIRACLE* you should stop by. Ratdog is a really fun live band-- part Grateful Dead, part blues, part jazz, part rock... all Weir! (Photo above: my beautiful sister Natascha and Bobby on their wedding day in 1999)

I will be there with bells on both nights.

Some of you may remember a couple years ago when Bobby sang the anthemn at the NASCAR Nextel Cup race at Sonoma. FOX played "Shakedown Street" coming back from the commercial breaks. Seriously, how freaking cool is that?

We used to play for *silver*, now we play for *life*

3.6.07 a little slice of heaven they call vail

Picture this: 18 inches of fresh powder snow on top of 256 inches of packed powder on a 7 mile wide mountain that stretches 10,550 feet into the sky with 193 trails covering 5289 acres accessed by 32 chairlifts and one gondola. At the bottom of that looming snow covered giant, picture a charming village at the foot of that mountain filled with live music, gourmet restaurants, and swanky boutiques. Now add a boatload of adrenaline junkie skiiers and snowboarders and you've got Vail. It has been rated the number one ski resort by Skiing Magazine for 11 of the past 15 years, which no doubt has the tourist flocking. But because Vail is the largest single mountain ski resort in the United States, on an average day there are only two skiers per acre, and on a busy day, only four. If you have ever been snowboarding or skiing in fresh powder, you know that it is one of those experiences in life that makes you want to come back again and again. Outside of racing, snowboarding and scuba diving are my two favorite sports. I once was a bit of a amateur surfer when I lived on the beach in San Diego, but I haven't surfed for so long I don't know if I could do it anymore. That was one of those things that I left behind when I packed up my life and headed to North Carolina to pursue my dreams to race cars.

If you are ever in Vail, I highly recommend Larkspur for dinner, the food was fantastic. If you don't want to spend the $$$ that is costs to stay at the foot of the mountain, Beaver Creek is just up the road a few miles and the prices are much more affordable than Vail Village. I was home for a day and now I am off to San Francisco, then Vegas, back to San Francisco, and then I come home to Charlotte. Great stuff happening in the racing department, but I can't talk about any of it just yet so check back soon for exciting updates. I am going racing this year, and not where you might expect. Stay tuned. :)

2.26.07 going green

Congratulations to Al Gore for winning the Academy Award for "An Inconvenient Truth" in the Best Documentary category. Order your own copy of the dvd which benefits the bipartisan climate effort, the Alliance for Climate Protection, in Leilani's Amazon Store here. There were over one billion people watching on ABC, I hope that some of them go out and buy the dvd. And from some of the conversations I have had in the Nextel Cup garage lately, I'm not the only NASCAR member paying attention to this issue, thank god. As Gore said in his acceptance speech, "People all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis. It's not a political issue; it's a moral issue. We have everything we need to get started, with the possible exception of the will to act. That's a renewable resource -- let's renew it."

2.18.07 sweet home minnesota

After a week in Daytona working for NASCAR.com, I headed to Rochester, Minnesota- the town where I grew up. I gave a speech for the American Heart Association's Go Red for Women luncheon. It's a pretty cool gig for me because I was born and raised in Rochester, my father is a retired doctor from the Mayo Clinic and my mother is a retired hypertension nurse from there. I have done a few of these speeches now over the past couple years and I am really starting to enjoy it. I have been to Detroit to speak at General Motors, ABN-Amro Bank in Chicago and New York, and I am booked later this year to speak in Philidelphia and California. It's a lot of fun and I get to share my story with lots of people from all walks of life. The other great thing is that I get to come back to Rochester and spend time with my family, something I don't get to do nearly as often as I would like.

It's amazing how when you return to your hometown, so many things have changed, and yet so much of it has stayed exactly the same. The big old oak tree looks tired now, but it still waves it's branches in the breeze. The brick buildings are worn, but still stand tall. It reminds me of a story called The Velveteen Rabbit-- it is a story about an old toy, a skin horse, and a new toy, a rabbit:

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

So I guess you could say Rochester is where I learned to become Real-- where I "grew up." (I don't feel grown up?) My mom and I drove past the house where I spent the first 15 years of my life. I spent my childhood years in this small midwest town climbing trees, riding horses, skiing, and building igloos in the snow. I remember there being snowdrifts so high that they covered our front door completely. But when you are a Minnesota kid, nothing will stop you from going outside, even the below zero temperatures Minnesota is famous for. There's something special about going back to your childhood home, memories come rushing back to a time when life was simple -- happiness was running through a sprinkler on a hot summer day or a crackling fire on a cold winter night. Life seems so much more complicated when you grow up. I can remember those lazy days riding horseback in the woods through the falling autumn leaves, but then I turn my memories to my first lap at Daytona a couple months ago, and all the complications are worth it again.

Here's to hoping your complications are worth it too...

Leilani

PS. This just in from Down Under: Australia Changing Their Lightbulbs, cheers! Let's hope the rest of the world follows their lead!

2.03.07 who killed the electric car?

The car manufacturers? The oil companies? The government? What about the California Air Resources Board (C.A.R.B.)-- who, in a critical moment on April 24, 2003-- killed the zero emissions mandate under pressure from the automotive and oil companies? And what about the consumers? How did these cars disappear? Who Killed the Electric Car is a great who-done-it-mystery movie that you should see. Educate yourself.

There is a 100 trillion dollars of oil left in the crust of the Earth. That's a lot of business and a lot of money to be made. After undeniable proof in the global report that humans are the cause of global warming, it seems to me that there are tons of jobs waiting to be created in the alternative energy market-- hydogen fuel cell manufacturers, electric car and battery manufacturers, even solar and wind power need humans to produce and install the wind turbines and solar panels. Food for thought...