At Cordova, rain was coming, so they tried to rush the program. The staging lanes were packed.
Somebody stole Ricks racing Jacket out of his car in Leclaire, so I lent him my Jacket so he could race legally. I didn't need it, a racing jacket is only required if you run quicker than 11.50 ET.
After we raced at Cordova, we stopped at the American Pickers shop in Leclair.
Another checkpoint down:
Jeff was perhaps getting a little weary of all the stops for silliness, so on Thursday, he offered up a bet that there was no way to make it St Louis by 6:30. Well, a free dinner sounded pretty good, so I laid into the secondary carb every chance I got. Jeff was starting to see that dinner tab money fleeing his wallet, so he said "look Joel, a castle!" He knew I couldn't pass up a castle! Then, when I slowed down and circled back, it wasn't even a castle, and Jeff admitted that he tricked me.
We saw Tom Baileys car at a little gas station in a little town.
When his trunk monkey had to crawl back into the car, he said "well, back into the sauna" The TH400 trans sits right between them, and he said the trans temp has been running at 200 on the road.
We made it to St Louis well before 6:30, so I got to collect on another dinner. We even drove past the arch, but couldn't find the parking lot to go in it.
At Gateway on Friday, Rachel Gebhart and I ended up side by side in the staging lanes:
I started thinking, since I can't accomplish anything with a 13.50 ET, maybe I should try for a killer reaction time. We run a .400 pro tree, and they do not use auto start. It seems that the moment both cars are staged, the starter presses the button to activate the tree. That would make it pretty hard to deep stage. So I asked Rachel if she would mind pre-staging first, that would give me time to deep stage before she staged. When we got up there, She pre staged, I went in deep, then she staged, and instantly I saw the yellows come on and I turned the Hemi loose. I expected to see Rachel blow by me, but it didn't happen. She broke a u-joint on the starting line. Bummer. I was pleased to see a .038 rt on the slip, even though my et fell way off to 13.90
More later
