Epilogue Continued...
So the Valiant ended up at Darren's house, awaiting the trip to homecoming on the 30th of September. I had requested that Dale pull the 58 bucks worth of race gas out before Darren got the car, but a phone call to him only got a sheepish answer, "Yeah, I told Darren about that".
A couple days later, I heard from Darren, "Hey, I drove the Valiant down to the car wash, and I had to go to the QuickTrip to get change...And this girl was hitting on me, and wanted my phone number!! This Car's a real chick magnet, you need to sell it to me, it's only going to get you in trouble".
"Did you save the race gas"?
"What...no, it was just down to the car wash. This thing's got a bunch of overspray, I've really been cleaning it, it's gotta look great for Brittni"!
I called Dale the next day, "Darren's driving my car all around, what's the deal"?
"I don't know, Cody and I went to Tulsa last night. My Satellite ran 12.52 on the street tires! Can you beleive that? All that time jacking with those slicks...if we go next year, I'm doing it on one set of tires. Cody and I welded subframe connectors in the Aspen, he's solidly in the 12's now, 12.42 on one run, he want's me to hook up the Nitrous..."
"So when are you gonna work on the Valiant"?
"Well...Dad said he wants Darren to leave it in Fairland after homecoming so he can get it ready for the Mopar Race in November".
"Dale, that's the whole month of October it will be sitting at Dad's shop, and you won't touch it...it needs to go back to your house"!!
"Did you tell Dad he could race it at the Mopar race"?
"Yeah...but YOU need to prep it"!!
"OK, ok, I'll be in touch".

That was a blowoff, and here I was 1250 miles away from a Car that I'm excited to dig into, and I can't touch it. My brothers are not exactly motivated to cooperate, especially when they are reading my tales on Moparts!! Calls to Boone revealed he was completely back into footrace mode, as he prepared for a 100K jaunt at the Pumpkin Holler 100, I actually don't think he's even fired the Belvedere since our return.

Dale called me the next time to discuss the impending closing of Tulsa International Raceway, he was fairly distraught. After discussing that for a lengthy time, he abruptly changed the subject, "Have you heard from Darren"? he asked.
"Several calls about cleaning the car, overspray, the chrome, the engine compartment, blah, blah ,blah...why"?
"He drove it to Fairland last night"?
"What?...he was supposed to trailer it, that's 80 miles, on the Turnpike"!
"I had his trailer all week, took it back to him last night, and he was already gone".

"Why'd you drive it"? I had called Darren.
"It IS a street car right"?
"With 3.89 gears, a spool, a huge electric fuel pump, an agressive solid cam, not to mention it's not yours".
"Dale left me no choice, he had my trailer".
"Be carefull, dangit, no burnouts on the football field".

Arguing would do no good at this point, Darren has a history of breaking family racecars...he's a street car guy, and despite being around it for twenty years, he juat never paid attention to stuff like trans-brakes, electric fan/waterpump cars with out an alternator, cars that overheat at an idle, cars that start without a key...etc.