One of the last cars to enter the water box at Gateway and round out day two of track time was Finnegan's Blasphemi 55. His opening day 9.53-141 had him solidly in third place, but he had only mustered an 11.78-90 earlier in the day. The all aluminum blown Hemi would need at least a 10.90 or better to stay ahead of Forbes and Grabiak, who were fourth and fifth in the A Gas class, running in the 10.20 range both days.

His first burnout attempt resulted in very little tire smoke, and a few pops from the engine, so he backed the 55 up for another attempt. The wheel speed and engine speed were both higher on the second attempt, but the engine was once again breaking up, and as he rolled towards the staging beams, the tire smoke was replaced with thick blue oil smoke from the headers. He would turn in the 11.79, but the 55 was done, and Mike's first attempt at Drag Week came to an end.

Rachael and I headed the Valiant out of the Pilot Travel Center ahead of the rest of the gang, and started the drive to Byron as the scout team once again. Out on I-55, I put the tach on 2800, nervously watched the temp gauge climb to 210, and did my best to maintain a gap between the Valiant and the cars ahead to get as much clean air through the radiator as possible. Ten miles out, the traffic eased up, and my focus on the temp gauge eased. Rachael had barely looked up from our phones, as she was syncing the map on one and group texting on the other.
"Look to your left in that field, Rachael", I pointed out the window. "What do you see?"
Her face lit up with delight as she recognized the place.
"That's the Pink Elephant Antique store, checkpoint one on Drag Week 15!"
"That's it. How does it look in the daylight!"
"Awesome! We've been on the road for what? Twenty minutes? It took Dale and I like four hours from Gateway to there in 2015!"
"True, but they ran us about eighteen miles out of route that year just to that point, definitely not a straight shot!"

The traffic thinned out even more, the scenery was great, and the small block was purring along. I had the bit in my teeth was ready to chew up some miles, but Rachael shook her head about thirty minutes later, and turned her phone screen towards me.
"The natives are getting restless!"
"What do you mean?"
"The group text", she explained, "Since we are out in front, they have tasked us with finding a restaurant for dinner!"
"Well...kick it down the road if you can, I don't want to stop right away!"
she spent a little while looking at the map on one phone, with google opened up on the other.
"We're about thirty miles out of Springfield Illinois, and there is a Bob Evans just off the highway?"
"That'll work, I guess...they are a chain right? Never been in one."
"I'll put it on the group text, and see what they think", she decided.

We pulled into the parking lot and Rachael spotted Squirrel's red Chevy II A/FX already parked there.
"Hey! Jim and Dan are here!"
"Well, that sucks", I commented.
She looked at me like I was crazy, "I thought you liked those guys?"
"I definitely do, but I don't see Brian's coupe anywhere, and I'm sure they'd be traveling together, so I'm assuming they are out!"
"Oh...yeah, that would suck", she agreed as we walked towards the restaurant.