Last year's debacle had us gunshy, but this year's tech line seemed to move along pretty well, I was re-connecting my horn wire, when the Track tech guy approached. I told him I was good to 10.00, he looked at a few things, and signed me off. First hurdle completed. I was still messing with the horn when it was my turn in front of Kieth Turk..."Lets see some lights", he hollered. I pulled the light switch on, and smiled. "Nothin'" he gave a slidelong look. I hadn't fixed the problem on Dims, but I looked in and the brights indicator was on..."You don't have four headlights?" I asked. "Nothin', give me turn signals..." I turned the key on and pushed down on the lever..but heard no flasher. "What the heck" I shouted in disgust, "all this stuff was just working!" I started to go around and look under the hood, but Kieth motioned me over, "Just push it over in the grass..it'll probably just take a few minutes to figure out and I promise I'll come back to ya". We pushed it in the grass, and the girls who were handling registration motioned me over, and took care of all that stuff, the numbers, goodie bag, stickers and everything else, so that all I needed was Kieth's sign off to be good to go. Once underhood, I realized that when I was messing with the horn wire, I had inadventently disconnected the light harness from the bulkhead connector. Then I couldn't get the horn to sound, and wasn't about to have Kieth back over until it was right. "Rachael, go borrow me a test light from someone..." I implored. "I don't know who to ask or what to say", she tried to get out of the task. "Start down that row", I pointed at the pits, "Throw your shoulders back and ask for a test light...You've got boobs dear, it won't take very long, I promise!" She was back quickly with a brand new test light, "First trailer", she laughed with an embarrassed smile. We managed to get a working horn, and called Kieth back over. "Headlights right?" he questioned, "Let's see them". I flashed them on and off. "You're good!" he grabbed my paper and signed off. Last year I managed to get by him without the brake lights working...but this time I felt cheated! I had everything working and didn't even get to show it off!
Back in the pits, Rachael and I found that we had lost one of our spots. Some ole fart with an old shivvy race truck had pulled his rig in with a "For sale" sign on it, Thinking a free entry to the track was a good chance to show it off, and get some buyers. So we had to pit nose to tail, and crowd our buddies with the big trailer, who turned out to be the aforementioned Bill Fowler, his co-driver, and the Mustang. While they didn't seem too enthused about being hemmed in by a Valiant, I noticed they enjoyed the company of the bubbly 22 year old rookie driver in the Belvedere! With the cars prepped to make a pass, Darryl started getting anxious, "When are they gonna start running? I figured they would have cars on the track by now!" "I don't have a clue", I shrugged my shoulders, "I've never been to Registration day on time before..."
Rachael's Belvedere and Ross' RoadRunner in tech line:
