Darryl had already hit the road, the pits were thinning out, and Robert (6pak2go, Moparts) drove his black rental Charger over and parked by our area.
"Do you mind hanging out with us for a while today?" I asked him, "we may have a few passengers for you depending on what happens with the Gremlin!"
"I told you I was up for whatever", he grinned, "I wanted to find out what Drag Week is all about!"

Boone with the Truck, and Dale with the Satellite made it to the lanes just in time. Many of the faster cars were struggling for traction on the greasy, hot track, so they were calling to shut down for 30 minutes at 11:30 to allow the track crew time to prep it for a last ditch onslaught!

Dale got the Satellite through 1st and 2nd great, but when he hit drive it laid over badly and struggled to a 12.35 at only 101. Boone rolled up in the last pair before the shutdown, the big 508 cleaned all the road carbon out of the fender exit headers, and belched it out on the starting line as the front end clawed angrily at the air. The Barnyard Viper made a rare move toward the center line, as proof that traction wasn't at a premium, and meandered downtrack to an 11.54-115, not exactly stellar, but I knew Boone would take it and call his lone attempt good. We had already watched Mike Cox and his BBC powered Henry J make an ugly 11.03-108 with smoke trailing after him, and he was the Gasser class leader, if he couldn't continue Boone would move into third place, and have a chance to go home with some hardware, so survive and move on was the game at this point.

"Ran out of fuel?" I questioned Dale, as he parked the Satellite and handed me the slip.
"Nope...ran out of nitrous, need another bottle!"
"Well, crap! It was on a nice run", I shrugged as I looked at the early numbers.

40 minutes later, Dale went 11.79 at only 114 in Darren's Charger, and was shaking his head when he parked in our pits.
"What the heck is going on around here?" He put his hands in the air, "Both of you let me drive your cars, but only give me 1000ft. worth of nitrous to play with!"
"We know how to keep you from breaking stuff!" I laughed.
Once Darren removed the bottle from his trunk, I gave the two empties to Rachael and sent her off to get them re-filled at Monte's rig. I had spares, but they had been hanging out in the pits all day, in the heat, and sure enough, too much bottle pressure, and the nitrous solenoid couldn't overcome it, so we decided to call it a day.

I was walking around to the tower to turn in my time slip, when Tom Bailey pulled his Camaro into the water for the fourth time today, and up until now he only had a 7.95 to show for his effort. With an hour of track time left in the day, he finally got it right and went 6.97-212 to keep his Drag Week dream intact for another day. Dale, on the other hand idled into the beams with the Gremlin, then the car wouldn't even move when the tree came down, while that was good enough to allow him to take a twenty flat and move on, he had already decided his Drag Week dream for 2013 was done!