While the first pairs of class cars were warming up the groove at Union Grove, the Gebharts were dragging themselves into the continental breakfast room at the Days Inn Sturtevant.
We plowed our way through assorted plates made up mostly of grains, pig parts, and high fructose corn syrup, as we planned our attack on Great Lakes Dragaway.

The Barnyard Viper's 440 block has a high fill in the water jackets, and the oil cooler is a little too small, so on hard drives it has a tendency to kill the oil. The first symptom is a 10lb. drop in pressure, the second is, it starts burning the oil. Boone had experienced both in the last fifty miles of the drive the night before, so he needed to find a parts store to get an oil change. Darren, James and Dale were trying to steal another thirty minutes or so of sleep, so that left Rachael and I to set up camp at the drag strip in advance.

There was a large amount of road construction around the motel, as well as the entrance to US-41. Apparently I was not quite as coherent as I hoped, and I screwed up our exit from the parking lot, by driving onto the wrong side of a divided road, with Rachael following along in the Belvedere blissfully unaware of the situation. I adopted an "If you're going through hell, keep on going" attitude, and promptly blew through the red light at the intersection while making a left turn, with Rachael in tow, to get us back where we were supposed to be, much to the chagrin of the trucker trying to make a right turn into the lane I just vacated!

We stopped at a convenience store a couple miles from the track, for ice, and drinks. We were about to head on over when I received a text from Opal explaining where John had pitted, and that they had saved us room for our eventual arrival. Upon entrance to the facility I was taken aback by the huge amount of spectator cars, and didn't realize right away which direction the track was running, luckily, the overzealous crowd just kept pointing further down the single track pit roads, and eventually I saw the white 67 Valiant pitted in the grass.

John had his car pretty much prepped, and ready to go to the lanes when we parked next to him. He was just waiting for the call to the lanes for Street Machine Eliminator.