Darren was about 3/4 of a mile ahead of me, and Rachael was following him with her four-way flashers on. The rain was fairly mild for the first five miles or so, and I was steadily gaining on them, then we hit a stretch where I could barely make out the road, it was raining so hard (yeah, no wipers either). I don't know if the truckers we were sharing this early morning jaunt with were being duly cautious, given the conditions, or if they were simply checking out our rides, but all of them seemed to slow when they passed us, making it considerably less harrowing than some of our past experiences.
Finally I caught up with them, and Rachael let me pass, so she could follow both of us with her warning lights. I found that Darren's 33 X 18.50 Et Streets were cutting a great path in the water for my 30 X 13.50s to follow, so the only time I felt the back kicking around after that was when we would hit pools of water in the roadway, or streams of water running across the road.
Boone called me, and we figured out they were about 6 miles behind us, and he was complaining about both Dale and him getting crossed up on several of the bridges. "We are gun shy now, we slow every time we approach a bridge, regardless of how short it is", he explained.
We covered forty miles in a little over an hour, then Darren made a hasty exit to the shoulder with the Dakota. I pulled over ahead of him, and Rachael stopped behind him. I called Boone to tell him we were stopped before I even got out of the Valiant to check on the problem.
"My headlights went out...apparently I've cooked the battery", Darren exclaimed. He yanked his hand back from the hot stainless lid on his Taylor battery box. The acrid sulfur smell, and the tea kettle sound should have been warning enough, but Darren prefers a three senses kind of approach, I suppose. Once Boone and Dale arrived, they formulated a plan to steal one of the Barnyard Viper's batteries to replace the one Darren had fried. I was walking around snapping a few pictures, and basically staying out of the way, so I wasn't privy to the conversation, but I believe they were leaning on Darren pretty hard for not monitoring the charging situation properly. The fact that they expected him to take responsibility for damaging his own equipment didn't set very well with him, so no sooner than they had the battery swapped in, he fired the Dakota, spun out into the highway, and fishtailed away from us in a huff. Everyone else was standing around the trailer, putting the tools away, and I was right next to the Valiant, so I jumped in, and took off after him.