Hey James,Jake says Mustangs are ghey. Got to love sleep deprivation.

I know we all ran about 1500 miles, I think the colt ran 1550 with all the passes he made lol.

Nice read once again Billy, as always!

Great stuff! Waiting impatiently for the next installment!

We went back to the rooms,grabbed our bags, and prepared to leave. Rachael was in charge of loading up the coolers with motel ice. I had stocked up on drink sales over Labor Day, and had brought cases of Sobe Lifewater, Soda, and Gatorade with us, and it was working out great as long as the ice held up. This morning she seemed to be a bit overzealous, stealing the trash can liners from each room and filling them with ice as well.
We weren't 2 miles into our morning trek to Thunder Road Raceway Park when we began to pick up other Drag Weekers whose motel had likely been in the same area.Sean and Tara Fling, who we had met on Drag Week in 2006 were trailing us in thier ubiquitous green Fairlane wagon which seems to do every event in the country and do them all equally well.
I was surprised the pits were so full when we arrived, and rather than drive through the lanes, we found a place near the end of spectator parking and set up shop. The next thing I knew we had the company of Mike and Lane Sporong along side us as well as "Wacky" Mick, and his English Panel.

Brief interlude...

I know some of you guys are sitting around wondering why this process takes so long. I come home and prep myself for the next part I'm going to write about by looking at our accumulated pictures, time slips, HOTROD.com, Utube videos, everything I can that will help me recall the happenings, and the mood of what was going on that day, especially stuff that helps me establish timeline. Sometimes I have to call Boone, Dale, or Darryl, and see if they have different views than mine. I spent an hour on the phone tonight with Darryl discussing his runs at Gilliam LA., and it wasn't lining up with my memories, finally I checked the live feed replay to check the timeline and sure enough, he couldn't even remember it correctly. He made the comment tonight, "It's so much work and so much action, that it all kinda blurs together after awhile!"

We'd scrambled all our cash together for race fuel, I get so used to doing everything with plastic, I get out of the habit of carrying any. Boone came back with 2 1/2 gallons.
"What the heck Boone, we had more money than that!"
"It was like 16 Bucks a gallon!"
"For C-12, or Blue? That's robbery!"
"In Texas you said get the best fuel they had because you were mixing it, so I grabbed C-16!"
"I just didn't want you coming back with 100 unleaded or something..good grief".

Dale was playing Carb Guru, on both The Dart and the Valiant while Boone was doing the grunt work, Darryl was changing out plugs, and I was setting tire pressures. Darryl and I made it around with 30 minutes to spare in the first session. He was about 5 sets in front of me and went a very nice 11.312-119.6, spanking a nose high 57 Chevy Gasser in the process. I pulled up, same lane and went 11.442-116.24, spanking a nose high 55 Chevy Gasser in the process.
We returned to the pits to find Boone by himself.
"Where's Dale, Rachael, and the Belvedere?" I asked.
"Wanted to get her in the lanes early, and keep the heat out of it, he said." Boone shrugged, "He's probably up there throwing more nitrous jet at it!"
"I'll kill him, I swear..."
"You turning that slip in?" Darryl interupted.
"Naw, I want another one..I know it's greedy, but if you went 119.6, I should be more MPH than I was...think I'll jet up some more. We have a little tail wind, and cloud cover, so I don't think the air is going to get worse by the next session."
I figured he would pack up and wait for us, but he looked around and said, "Yeah, I'll try another one...maybe get 120 or a new best, who knows!"
Boone and I were in the process of re-jetting the Valiant when he looked out from under the hood and said, "Holy Crap! Was that Rachael? No Way..that couldn't have been the Belvedere!"
Boone's best from last year was 11.76-116 in the Belvedere, the scoreboard read 11.58-113.78! I squinted towards the far turn-off, "Yep, looks like a Blue four-eyed Plymouth to me...what the heck is our little brother trying to do?"

Rachael parked in the pits, at about the same time Dale showed up, out of breath from the lanes. Both were estatic, high fiveing and jumping around.
"I iced down the top of the engine, and pushed it all the way to the burn-out box", Dale bragged.
That brought the morning ice run into focus...scheming little monsters, "How much jet?"
"I didn't add any nitrous!" he feigned insult.
"I let off the nitrous at 1000ft." Rachael assured me.
"You don't even know where that is!"
She looked around at both cars being worked on, "Are you guys going up again?"
"Yeah, we're going to try to improve.."
"Good!, I want another one!" she decided
"YOU are done! You can't even legally go quicker than an 11.49 and you just went 11.58!".
"Well, then I want to run 11.495!"
I turned to Dale, "My valvetrain is noisy as heck, can you run my valves?", That was one way to burn off all his adrenaline!
Darryl handed him his LSM valve adjusting torque wrench, it was love at first twist, "I MUST have one of these" he declared. All of them were at .020 except one, which was .030, and had picked up some side to side movement on the shaft. They are 1.5 Crane Gold, and have been on this engine since 1993. By the time he finished bumping it over and re-adjusting everything to .018, the voltmeter read 10, something wasn't right!
The back battery had slid in it's tray, and pulled loose the cable connecting the two batteries together. I knew I had one bad battery last year, so I replaced one for this year...apparently the wrong one!

Darryl had bogged hard in Texas, and dead hooked on his first run at Gilliam, so he upped the tire pressure for his next run in hopes of a little quicker 60' and maybe a little more MPH. The Dart responded by blowing off the drag radials and netting an 11.58-119.5...he shrugged his shoulders and started packing up for the drive ahead.
Since I lack a dipstick, and was worried about the oil level after the first day's drive, we changed it quickly. it was only down about a quart and a half. Fresh oil, fresh valve adjustment, more jet in the carb, and two and a half hours later, I gave up .06 in the first 60ft! By the eighth, I was only down .02, I hit the stripe at 11.42-117.5. I really wanted to go back up, and get that .06 out of the hole back, but we had two more long trips ahead of us. So I left the car to the boys, and went to the tower to turn in our time slips!

I turned the map to the back, and read the last entry. "355 miles...YIKES!"

I had made my last pass at 11:56 AM, Darryl stuck his camera out of his window and shot this picture of us approaching a big rainbow styled bridge a few miles from the track at 1:08PM...we were on our way to Memphis.

Never seen so may mobile home trailers with a Wal_Mart blue swimming pool in the front yard.

Man, the air was good in Louisiana! The suckstang went 10.56 @ 127 and I was giggling like a school girl. 1 and done!

So awesome, makes me sick that I missed the rest of the trip

Love hearing the story!!

Brilliant.
Ray's story made me laugh, when he was co pilot for Elvis.
Mick

Plain Deering was a very small town 11 miles into the drive...with 1, yes ONE Gas Station!