I jumped out, and walked around to the front of the car, to see how much damage was done. Boone, Darryl, and Dale joined me a few seconds later.
"What the hell happened?" Dale looked at me with a shrug.
"I just pushed the hood down when we moved up, and didn't latch it....then I forgot about it."
"I see where it tweaked the hinge mount down on the inner fender, and maybe a little pulling at the hood bolts, but nothing really bad", Boone decided.
"Try to shut it, we'll watch the corners" Daryll added.
The hinges didn't move freely at all for the first two or three inches, and a lesser hood that was without 3 body lines and several multi-planed curves might have buckled under the effort, but 50 year old DDCP metal was more than up to the strain. It went down fine until within a few inches of closing, the back of the hood was now sitting about a quarter of an inch lower, and while that didn't cause a problem in the corners, it was rubbing on the underside of the cowl a little. I gave it a final shove, and it latched into place.
"Guess it could have been worse!" I shrugged.
"Like the Camaro, who blew his 'glass hood off today, and came back to the pits with a small piece attached to each hinge?" Boone laughed as we prepared to take off again.
"Yeah", I agreed upon recollection, "that sure was ugly!"

The rest of the run through Arkansas on I-40 was pretty mundane, and soon we were crossing the Mississippi River into Tennessee. 5 miles later we turned off on US51/TN3/Danny Thomas Blvd. for a 9 mile trek to Memphis Motorsports Park. This little jaunt was through an older part of Memphis, and as we worked our way through at a little after midnight, we stumbled upon the fact that apparently Wednesday night at midnight down in the Memphis river bottom, was Corvette VS Crotch Rocket night among the locals! We drove past an area with about 20 Vettes on the right side of the road in a small lot, with an equal or larger number of bikes on the other side, with small crowds lining both sides of the street. It felt like every eye was on us as we idled past, so I dropped the Valiant into 2nd, and blipped the throttle a couple of times...
"What the heck are you doing?" Boone looked at me incredulously.
"Saying hello, were you flying the duece while I was doing that?"
"Umm, no...had my hands in my lap, and looking straight ahead thank you very much!"
"We should go back, might be some money to be made!"
"You should try to get us to the motel in one piece, you moron!"
I seem to have a gift for picking motels on the opposite side of the track from our entrance point, so we drove 4 miles past and came up to our destination. There, in front of the motel, parked under the lights, was Jeff Lutz and his 57, holding court with about 15 other Drag Week competitors all standing around with red solo cups in thier hands.
I looked at Boone, "Where do they get the energy? I can't wait to put my head on a pillow!"
By the time we settled in, and were ready for bed, it was 1:30AM...another very long day in the books!