When I was in the planning stages for Drag Week 2016, I decided to throw in one "fun" motel. Something a little off the beaten path, not corporate in any way. It was unfortunate that I chose it for Norwalk on Monday night, because the ambiance and experience was to be wasted on six weary travelers who didn't arrive until seven-thirty in the morning.
I had chosen the Willard Country Inn, because the town of Willard was almost directly between Columbus and Norwalk, but the Drag Week route planners weren't done pulling our chain. What should have been a 26.8 mile drive to the motel from checkpoint #2, was in fact 46.2 miles after they headed us out of Mansfield on an easterly path towards Ashland on US-42, before we went back north. We were running about forty-five down the congested little two lane when the driver's side front quicklatch let go, and the front of my hood started raising on that side every time the wind caught it just right.
"If that happened on the track at a buck-twenty, my new 'glass hood would be toast", I thought to myself.
We stopped to fasten it back down, but the nut was gone from the bottom of the pin, and the only way to fix it was to remove the grille, so it would have to wait until we arrived at the track.

Day 2 Summit Motorsports Park, Norwalk, OH

The motel was everything I had hoped for, a friendly family staff, spacious and well appointed rooms, one was done in a cowboy motif while the other was train themed. We managed to each steal about a hundred minutes of sleep and a shower in the two hours we stayed there. Little Billy was the lone exception, as he kept crawling back in bed at every attempt to get him to shower. Finally he was told we were leaving and was only given the option to change clothes, it was pretty pathetic considering Boone had informed us that he slept in the Duster from the first checkpoint on.

"I'm going to find a tire store", Dale announced, "if I switch to the 33-10.5 W slicks, the extra roll-out will help with the gear problem, since I'm obviously not going to get a chance to swap out the 4.10s for the 3.73's".
"What if we hit rain later on?" Boone questioned, rubbing his eyes.
"It's not going to rain this year", Dale laughed, "and do you really think those lines on the ET Streets make a difference?"
The truth is, the Gremlin has never been in the eights on the MT 31-14.5 ET Streets, every eight second run has happened on the 33" slicks.