The Monday morning traffic snarl only affected us for about a half-mile before we made the exit for Gateway, and the left into the facility only took one light, but the newly working temp gauge under the dash of the Belvedere was sitting at 210 when we parked at our impound spot.
"That doesn't make any sense, it's really cool this morning."
"Yeah", Boone agreed, "it was running nice and smooth, shouldn't be that warm."
"Well, here's what I want to do...let's cram this car full of junk we are taking on the trip, then I'll take the Valiant and you follow me down to the pits, so we can start setting up our pit spot."

By the time we parked the Valiant, unloaded the Belvedere, and returned to the impound area for another load, the rest of the group had arrived, and were trying to put eight hundred pounds of junk in Boone's trailer. While he ran off to deal with that, Rachael walked up and punched me in the shoulder.
"You ran off and left us, you jerk!"
"I told your boyfriend we were leaving right now...I didn't say anything to him that would suggest we were going to sit around and wait on anybody!"
"That's just rude!"
"C'mon Jay, how many Drag Weeks have you been on? We got no time for diplomacy!"

We had our pit spot pretty well established, and most of the stuff out of the impound area by the time they started calling for everyone to report to the bleachers for the driver's meeting.
Darren already had the back of the Charger off the ground, and was removing the tires when we headed towards the meeting.
"You coming?" Boone asked him, as he grabbed a drink from the cooler.
"I'll be up in a little bit", Darren confirmed without looking up from his task.

We sat there on the bleachers listening to David Freiburger introduce new Hot Rod Editor in Chief, David Kennedy and I wondered how this would effect future such gatherings. With DF turning much of his attention on Road Kill, and other hands guiding the flagship, how long would Drag Week continue? I mean, we have been attending Nostalgia Drags for thirty years which basically celebrate a legendary 7 or 8 year period in our Automotive history. This is the 11th Drag Week, and Hot Rod has done twenty Pour Tours...how long can this keep going without losing impetus, or spinning out of control?
"Hey! What are you thinking?" John looked past Opal and chuckled at me, "thought we lost you for a minute there".
"Oh...nothing, I've heard it all before!" I smiled.
The mic passed from Kennedy to Lonnie Grimm, then Keith Turk, and finally we were ready to get to our cars.