I searched through my box in vain for my plug gapper, so I walked across the pit road to the yellow 72 Challenger with the New York plates. It wasn't that I hadn't noticed the car before, it just seemed to be on the periphery of what we had been doing the first three days, and this was the first time I had the chance to take a good look. The car was extremely nice and the trio working on it were Italians with strong accents. The one who had introduced himself as Paul quickly handed me a plug gapper and explained that he had just picked up an extra one at the parts store this morning.

When I returned to the Valiant, a fit gentleman in a black t-shirt was standing next to the fender, and he stuck his hand out as I approached.
"I'm Rod Bloomer, nice to finally meet you in person", he smiled.
"Likewise", I laughed, and shook the offered hand.
As I worked my way through changing all the plugs, Rod and I talked about his rotating assemblies, how BPE came to be, his Barracuda, my Valiant, and his new venture with the small block heads. He was engaging, intelligent, witty, funny, and exceeded what I had expected from our occasional exchanges on Moparts or the E-mails from when I ordered the parts for my engine. It felt like one of those Sunday afternoons when you are in the shop with friends, playing with cars, enjoying good conversation and time jut flies by...except it was at the track and we were running out of track time! Rod had tried to excuse himself several times, "So I could finish up with what I was doing", but the conversation had continued. Finally Rachael came over and implored me to get to the lanes because we were down to the last session to make runs. Rod used the intrusion to head for the bleachers and it occurred to me that he hadn't had a chance to see much since he had been talking to me the whole time. I asked Rachael to bring me my nitrous jets. She found the box and I started sorting through them.
"So the SME session is over, did you run?"
"Yes", Rachael shook her head, "You're just like Pops, once you start talking with someone you just zone out and ignore everything else!"
"Well, I am his son after all", I laughed, "so I came by it honest!"

When I looked up for a second, I noticed Dale was under the hood of the yellow Challenger, and Darren was in conversation with Joe, Paul's brother who had been following the route in a Peterbuilt.
I walked over and handed Paul back his spark plug tool, and asked if everything was OK.
"It will be after your brother puts a tune-up on this thing for us", Paul laughed and slapped me on the back, "I was ready to order a new carb and distributor, but he tells me we can make this work!"
Apparently, the Castiglione's had went from complete strangers to part of the group in an hour and a half, which shouldn't surprise me on Drag Week!

I walked back over and took the 67 jet out of the nitrous port and moved it to the fuel side, then put a 73 in the nitrous and tightened everything up. Boone fired up the Duster and headed for the lanes just as I was checking everything for leaks.