As we pulled up to the second checkpoint, we noticed a large contingent of Drag Weekers gathered around Gilpin and Maschmeier, and they had the hood off the Camaro working on it. Kevin in the RX7, and Eric Yost were there as well, and right on cue a police officer rolled up as we were watching! Gilpin and I had joked at Indy earlier that we didn't want to see each other at 2:30 in the morning again, well, we were right on schedule! The local Arby's closed at 10:00pm, we rolled though their door at 9:23 and they didn't seem particularly happy to see us.

Dale and James pulled into the Effingham Pilot station, and bought gas, and a case of ATF. They made it another eight miles down the road to a State of Illinois public rest area where Dale, with no jack and only basic hand tools, burnt his arm on the exhaust, but managed to drain the black trans fluid from the powerglide.

Darryl called me while we were eating. He warned me that something wasn't quite right about the route, it was longer than what is on the sheet.
"There were eleven or so of us running in a pack, and only three of us took the turn-off on the route sheet, the others just kept going right down I-70 for St. Louis. After the jaunt they sent us through, I understand why now!"
Then he said he took a wrong turn at the race track and ended up in east St. Louis.
"Wow, that's a scary area, I totally blew two red lights to get back out on the freeway!"
"Did you find the Motel?" I asked.
"Yeah, we are on the third floor, rooms 301 and 303, call me when you get here."

With the benefit of google maps now, the Official Hot Rod Drag Week route sheet told us it was 46 miles from checkpoint 2 to Gateway Intl. Raceway. In truth, it was 65.8 if you drove straight down I-70, and a whopping 81.3 along the route they had chosen. This is a terrible trick to play on road weary hot rodders, far worse than just a simple mistake, it' s bordering on criminal, not as criminal as what Dale did to that rest area, but criminal nonetheless!