We slowly made our way up to the famous covered bleachers of Beech Bend Raceway Park for the driver's meeting, and I felt that tingle of excitement I get when visiting a track for the first time, this would be the only track on this year's Hot Rod Drag Week that I had never been to before. I walked by Mike (Mr P Body, Moparts), and he was in deep conversation with Mike Sporrong (Swede 4, BangShift), so I decided I'd introduce myself later, but that never materialized, I never saw him the rest of the event! The announcement was made that 230 cars was the final entry number, against my recorded prediction of 237, so I was pretty close. I also predicted that less than 215 would leave Bowling Green, and I missed low on that one. My third bold prediction was that the Daily Driver quick 32 bump would be 12:37...Just ask Ross (Ross, Moparts)how I did on that one!
Keith Turk broke away when going over the rules, and finally said over the microphone, "Guys, we believe 99.5% of you have integrity, so we are going to honor that integrity as a group", his eyes seem to lock on me (I'm sure it was my imagination), "and let that other .5% be out there, and if they get caught so be it, but we can't worry about them." I did the math quickly, .5% of 250...roughly 1! He was looking at me! Nah, I was sitting close to Darryl, he must've been looking at Darryl!
Once the meeting finished, we made our way back to our pit spot. The first session would be the class cars for an hour and a half, so I didn't need to worry about the Satellite just yet. I simply concentrated on helping everybody else get ready for their first try of Drag Week, it was crazy to think that Boone and Dale had never even done a burn-out in their respective rides! I grabbed my trusty Longacre tire guage and made my way through each vehicle, when I got to Darren's Charger, he already had the rear tires off! "What are you doing now", I asked him. "The traction bars and springs were still rubbing on the tires, so I have to loosen everything up and re-square it." "But you drove it 80 miles last night!" "That was night before last!" Dad interjected with a laugh, "You've already lost one!" "We had to take the traction bars off when we unloaded it", Darren continued, "That's why I wanted help last night!" "I had no idea", I apologized, "I thought the grilles and the N20 was all you had left to work on." Rachael came over to get me, "I'm ready to go up, so you have to come and help me. "I thought we settled this last year..." I started "And I haven't been in the car since then, so you need to help me for a pass or two!"
No sooner had we reached the lanes, than the track fell silent, and the clean-up crew went to work. Usually Drag Week carnage begins on Sunday T&T, and the weak links get sorted out before Monday's big start, but with that cancelled, well, we had made it exactly 5 sets in and we were already one boosted Fox body down! I glanced ahead, and realized that Boone, and James had already ushered Dale and the Gremlin into the fray ahead of us. "What do you think, Boone?" "10.50?, 10.60 would be a good start...", he tossed out as Dale completed his burn-out and jumped to the line. It left flat, and it didn't have that crisp sound it had just two days earlier. As the Gremlin labored downtrack I looked at Boone, "Not good!" "Nope", he shook his head as the announcer told us 11.67 at 117, "It's gonna be a long day huh?" "Yep, sure is!"
