"I got on the NASCAR scale before and you're supposed to weigh 200 pounds so you don't have to put any more weight in the car. I weighed 193, so they told me I had to gain seven pounds in the next couple of weeks before we get back to Indy. That's why I'm eating these great chocolate chip cookies. As far as an update on the leg, it's doing great. The doctor has released me to get back testing and racing about two and a half weeks ago. During that time we were able to test down in Greenville (S.C.) and ran great in the car. It was nice to get back working with the team. I had no ill-effects from the leg. I went back and saw the doctor. He said everything looks good, so he's basically given me the green light to get back to racing. Unfortunately, we sat down and took a good hard look at what we wanted to do up here. From my reputation up here, this is really one of the laces I wanted to make my comeback to Winston Cup racing. But after a hard look at our team, and being a first-year team, we just didn't really have the equipment or people, the transporters and just about a little bit of everything to run a two-car team, which we'd need to do right now with Darrell in the car and trying to put me back in the car. We thought the effort trying to run a two-car team would make both teams suffer. We didn't want to do anything to set back this first-year team.

"I forgot about the accident. I've been putting more effort into trying to run this race here at New Hampshire. We've spent the last four weeks trying to figure out how we can do it. Dale (Earnhardt) knows how important it is to try to get back in the race car, especially when you're feeling better. As far as the crash, I haven't given it a second thought.

"I haven't really worked one-on-one with him (Darrell Waltrip) as if I was driving and he was coaching. With him driving and me paying close attention with what he's been feeling in the car and some of the different ways he works with the crew and the crew chief, I think I've learned some different things from. I think it would be an easier role if I was driving and he was coaching me along. Now I'm kind of on the sidelines and trying to learn by the changes he makes in the car. The learning curve hasn't been as strong, but when I have questions, Darrell has been more than happy to answer them just like Dale was last year in the Busch series.

"All my favorite cars are here, all the modified cars. It's hard. For me, the hardest part was working up to this race and making the decision we weren't going to be able to race. It has been probably the hardest part of my rehabilitation. I feel good. The leg is doing good. I'm healthy enough to race. I'm not racing. The last time I was up here, I ran three races and three qualifications. I ran almost every race they had available. Now I'm sitting here. It's a great weekend. It's not running. We're at New Hampshire. I'm still running from garage to garage, but just meeting up and talking with friends, just getting reacquainted with people I haven't seen in the past couple of years. It's been the most difficult thing emotionally. I was beating myself up. I wanted to race. It's the hardest thing to go through as a driver, but I'm tired of that. I'm tired of beating myself up over it. What's happening this weekend, I truly believe, everything happens for a reason. There's a reason I'm not racing this weekend, and maybe that's to shine some good luck on us down the road this year.

"We're leaving here Sunday and flying straight to Indianapolis. We're going to test Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at Indianapolis. We've got three cars going out there and five or six motors. We're taking it pretty seriously. We want to make that comeback race one that's memorable to all of us, especially myself.

"I was probably on crutches the longest part of my rehabilitation, probably a month and a half. I spent about four weeks off my feet, a month and a half on crutches and spent a good part of another three or four weeks on a cane. I went from two crutches to one crutch to a cane and it seemed like every time I went back to the doctor, every four weeks, I wanted to have some type of improvement, either walking in there from two crutches to one to a cane to nothing, so the doctor kind of thinks I'm crazy. He's a good friend of Rick Hendrick, too. He comes to a lot of these races. I was laughing at Talladega. I was supposed to be on two crutches. I got rid of one and was feeling pretty good and I heard someone behind me say 'man, it looks like your leg is feeling pretty good.' I thought it was a race fan, so I said, 'yeah, man I'm feeling great.' I turned around it was my doctor. He wasn't too pleased that I elected on myself to go down to one crutch. He said he's never seen anyone as determined as I am to get well, and I think with that state of mind it helps your rehabilitation and helps your body heal. I won't walk like an IndyCar driver for the rest of my life, I hope. The majority of the limp I have is because I work out three days a week with the leg. I've put it through some pretty good torture with each workout, and it's usually continually sore with the workouts. If I take it easy, from Thursday to Monday, the limp pretty much diminishes. Once I finish my rehabilitation and rest and let it get a good healing, the limp will go away.

"I broke three of my front teeth. That was really from the microphone inside the helmet. The helmet held up great. I ended up bending the steering wheel in the car where it made it dangerously close to the helmet. From being knocked out and not being able to support my head, it was resting on the steering wheel. When I hit it the second or third time, the helmet came back and the microphone inside the helmet actually chipped a couple of my front teeth.

"I don't see it (replay of accident) much anymore. When I first got hurt, I sat in the hospital and I think every news channel had it on. They just kept replaying it. I can watch it now. It doesn't bother me. I don't remember much of it. I remember hitting the wall the first time and I was knocked out. The only thing I remember about the accident is working with the safety crews getting me back out of the car to the hospital. I don't remember much about the wreck. I think that's your body's defense mechanism to protect you. I'm not too worried about it.

"We were real happy with the car. We had an extremely fast car in the first practice session. I think we had one of the fastest cars. We were seventh fastest right before we had the wreck. I was happy. I was thrilled with the way the car was handling. The car gave no indication of having a mechanical failure like we did. We were all pretty pumped up. In a split second it all went up in smoke. We kind of determined a shock mount broke in the car and it caused the shock to puncture the tire. It was just a mechanical failure that caused the car to hit the wall."