Well played Darryl

"Open Eat Repeat" has me concerned.LOL.In a demented state here.

MOPAR BILLY
Hope you can give us an update soon on more of the story and pictures. This is awesome that you do this each year for those of us that would love to go but do not get to.
thanks and hope you can post more soon.
Jerry

Ok Billy can't you just quit work and finish writing this already? Suspense is killing me.Lol

The trio of big block Mopars finally found their way onto I-255 south, and as we traversed the sixteen miles towards I-70, Rachael was studiously poring over her phone trying to figure out which side of the motel we would emerge on, east or west?
All four men in this caravan have been OTR truck drivers at various points in our lives, and all of us have driven at levels of fatigue in which legal and illegal stimulants do little more than keep your eyes open. There is a point where you can drive many, many miles on an open road, as long as you aren't required to make complicated or quick decisions, as long as salient and precise thoughts are not required. We've became far too comfortable at pushing the edge, but we also recognize the onset of impairment, and what steps to take to protect ourselves from making bad decisions.
I was driving fine at this point, but trying to figure out how to get to the motel was proving to be far more difficult than it should have been, and this was leading to frustration. I turned onto I-70 West, and upon seeing my first mile marker, realized it was the wrong direction.
"Dang it Rachael, I give you one thing to look up, and you can't even do that!" She didn't deserve the criticism, and I would regret it later, but my nerves were on edge. "How far to the next exit so we can turn around!"
"Four miles...unless you want to just take me to the airport and fly me home right now, you Jerk!" Apparently I wasn't the only one at the end of my rope!
I turned around, made my way back to the junction, and then inexplicably, and with complete knowledge that it was totally wrong, I made a right turn back onto I-255 south, and of course, the two idiots behind me followed blindly along! I was done with this game, and pulled to the shoulder, parked the car, and stepped out for a breath of fresh air. The Barnyard Viper, and the Charger joined me on the side of the road, and soon it was just Boone, Rachael, Darren and I standing in front of the Satellite discussing our next move.

"I just want to get to the motel", Darren overstated the obvious.
"Well, it's right over there in that clump of lights, but I don't know how to get there from here!" I retorted, "and Rachael's no help"!
"You guys are the biggest bunch of Jerks I know!" Rachael added, and both of them got a laugh from that. I knew I wasn't allowed to laugh, unless I intended to buy that airline ticket!
"Well at least she isn't throwing her hands around in the air and screaming at every turn... one more outburst and the old man will be walking to the motel!" Boone explained.
"I guess we'll just have to drive down this until we find another exit..."
"It's just right down the road..." Rachael started to cut me off.
"That's what it shows on your phone?" I interjected.
"NO, YOU JERK!" She stepped out into the road and pointed, "I can see the exit right there, Collinsville Road!"
"Ok, ok, we'll take that", I agreed resignedly and we saddled up, and took surface streets over to the motel, as I didn't trust myself to get back on any big roads!

We pulled into a complex with four or five motels grouped together, and made our way down to the Days Inn. The parking lot was absolutely full, but the Hampton right next to it had plenty of spots so we parked there and grabbed our stuff to walk across. Two guys were enjoying a pizza on the hood of their 70 Buick, and they chuckled at our body language as we crawled out of the cars and gathered our luggage.
"You ever want to kill your navigator?" I addressed them.
"Sure, but what're you going to do when it's family, right? They laughed.
"Yeah, hopefully tomorrow will be better!"
"Sure it will, just get some sleep! They added.

Rachael jumped in the shower, I stretched out across the bed and called Dale. "Where are you at?" I questioned when he finally answered.
"We're getting on the I-55 right now"
"What are you doing there? I had hoped to reach you before you ended up in that mess."
"No, we got turned around, and ended up in some little one blinking light town, and the cop pulled us over! He took one look at our car, our tags, and our licenses and figured we were lost! We had no choice but to agree with him, so he sent us this way."
I explained where the motel was and told them to call me when they arrived, then I took a shower and went to bed with the phone in my hand.
In what seemed like 10 seconds, but was actually an hour and a half, the phone rang. "We're here, where are you at?" Dale asked.
Thought was muddled, but I pulled it together, "Come through the middle door, the elevator is just in the hallway, go to the third floor, and just to the right will be room 303, that's us."
"OK, we will be up in a minute!"
I hung up, went to the door, and just opened it a fraction, then went back to bed. I must've dozed off, and the phone in my hand started ringing again.
"Hey, Are you going to let us in? We've been out here beating on your door!" Dale exclaimed.
"I left the door open for you, you aren't at my door."
"We are standing right here, looking at 303!" he said it loud enough that if he was at my door, I would've heard him through it.
"What motel are you in?" My mind was trying to focus.
"The one with all our cars in the parking lot, of course!" Dale retorted.
"That's the Hampton, we are in the Day's Inn across the street", I informed him.
"Oh CRAP, JAMES, We gotta git out of here!" I heard him say, then the phone went dead.

They stormed in the room, laughing like a pair of giddy schoolboys fresh from a Halloween prank, five minutes later.
"I had my eye up to the peep hole, yelling that I could see you, and you better let me in" James explained.
"It's a wonder the cops haven't been called, it's a wonder we didn't get shot", Dale laughed, "That motel is laid out identical to this one, we followed your instructions to a tee".
I'm sure I would enjoy the humor of the situation tomorrow, right then, I just wanted to go back to sleep. A luxury those poor folks in the Hampton, probably weren't able to afford.

We were at the Hampton! Glad it wasn't our room.We were on the 2nd floor.

LOL, I knew the gist of things after talking to you at breakfast, but the details are hilarious!

Billy it's a good thing drag week only happens once a year. Too funny.

Haha

Wow,,thats hilarious!
Great story as always Billy!,,and thanks again for taking all of us along for the ride,I'm hoping to do Drag Week myself soon.

Billy I am starting to go thru Withdrawals. LOL
I miss my Drag Week story fix. I realize you are back to work now and your wife wants her time with you away from the 'puter. But... MORE please. I want to finish my drag week experience too.
Jerry

good stuff, Billy.

I keep checking back for "the rest of the story"

Darryl was long gone by the time we got up and started getting around, and the oppressive heat of the last two days, was already making it's hasty return.
Dale and I were discussing his debacle from the night before. "When we made it to the exit for checkpoint two, John Faroane's Valiant Charger was on the side of the road with four police cars behind it, but I think the first one just stopped to help them, then called all his buddies to come check it out!" He laughed.
"I can imagine that call, telling them he's got a tubbed out, twin turbo, Australian car with two big guys in it that talk funny!"
"We saw him again once we came off of I-55 to I-70, so I think he got the call from someone to skip that little detour", Dale added.
"So, what's wrong with the Gremlin?"
"The 'glide is toast, it's just burnt up completely!" He shook his head and shrugged.
I was surprised how well he seemed to take it in stride.
"Just lucky we even made it here last night", he smiled.

I got a call from Darryl, "Don't kill yourself getting out here, they took forever to get started, and then that red 69 Mustang coupe slapped both walls, so we are waiting for them to get him off the track!"
"That car wasn't THAT fast..."
"Stuff happens pretty fast at 100 mph, when it goes wrong!" He reminded me.

.....so when is the small block build post going to start??

In an effort to recoup our lodging expenses, we nearly wiped out the Day's Inn continental breakfast before leaving, so we felt ready for the action of day three ahead of us.
As a family, we had attended Gateway Intl. Raceway's Monster Mopar Weekend seven years straight from 1996-2002. We camped out at the track most of those trips, but we had stayed in Collinsville a few times also, so the drive to the facility felt familiar. We found a spot on the outskirts of the massive pit area, parked, and started the unloading ritual.
Dale pulled alongside a few minutes later in the Gremlin, "It stopped pulling when we got through the gate", he laughed, "The fluid is already hot in eight miles of driving."
"Perhaps you should talk to the other P'glide guys and see if you can round up some parts, or a re-build kit or something, and I'll have Rachael look for local transmission places on her phone."
"Yeah, sounds like a plan." He started meandering through the pits at a pace that had me wondering if his heart was really in the fight at this point.
Boone started into his street-to-strip conversion routine, and the Satellite had to wait for the Daily Driver session, but Darren and the Charger were already on the way to the lanes, seemed that yesterday's N20 runs had him excited to try it again!

Darryl walked up with his time slip in hand, and a disgusted look on his face, "11.23 at only 108, I lifted before the finish line!"
"What did you do that for?"
"Brain fade, I guess. Just frustrated with how long we were sitting around, and how hot it was getting already, and wasn't paying attention!"
"You're going back up?"
"Nope, I'm done, going to the tower to get my route map."

I walked up to watch Darren run about 40 minutes later, and noticed that Tony was bringing his Javelin up in the same lane behind the Charger, as Dale walked up next to me.
"There's Tony back again, and he ran a few cars behind Darryl the last time, so Darryl could have been up for another hit!"
"Darryl is already done?" Dale questioned.
"Yeah, he's already loaded up to leave!"
Darren ran a nice smooth 11.76-118, and Dale and I agreed that would be good enough! Then Tony put down one of his signature burnouts and Dale looked at me, "What did Tony have problems with last year?"
"Valvetrain", I stated.
"Sounds like nine grand in the box!"
"He works that 401 over pretty good!" I laughed as the aqua 69 Javelin laid down a 10.74-125, which was an improvement of five hundredths over his earlier 10.79.
"Darryl left some on the table today", I shook my head, "he should have came back up for another run like Tony did."

"Well, how is your search for 'glide stuff?" I questioned Dale as we watched a few more cars go down.
"Not good", he shrugged, "everyone who has spare parts say it's too early in the week to loan them out, as they may still need them."
"Sounds like they don't have much confidence in their transmissions!"
"Nope, and secondly they asked if I had a spare converter."
"What's that about?"
"They all say I broke the converter first, then that led to the quick fluid temp rise that burned up the tranny."
"Well, that's certainly plausible...I'd have to agree with that assessment."
"So, without a fresh converter, a fresh tranny rebuild isn't going to get us to Memphis.
"You still need to take the start beam."
"Why?"
"To prove you made it here, this far, especially after what you went through last night, and then that gives us an option to work on it after racing is done today...something might come up."
"Yeah, I suppose."
I could tell his heart wasn't in it. The fact that it was running much slower than he expected, the rear suspension problems, the limited driving range on fuel, it had slowly sucked the fight right out of him. "You need to get the Satellite up there and make a good run in it".
"You aren't going to try it again?"
"Nope, I'm just going to tear it up, you have a better handle on it than I do."
"Alright", he smiled and punched my shoulder, "guess we better see if Boone has the truck ready to go up yet."

Damn Billy, I cannot believe you remember all this stuff. You dont know how tough it was to change from my normal one pass and go, the first pass the regulator was sticking and flooding barely made the burnout and black smoke all the way down. I fixed it and lamented sitting in line again as the heat was really coming on but me and Ray were so close I thought I have to beat that first run. Ran the second pass and it wasnt even worth it for the hour lost lol.