When Boone came back, he pulled the fuel jug out of his Truck, then chuckled and shook his head as he handed it to me.
"What's so funny?
"I had to explain to Sean Fling in the Staging lanes why I was heading up the return road backwards", Boone expounded, "and he thinks you need the fuel to make weight on the scales!"
"Why would he think I would try to skirt the rules?" I laughed, knowing that Sean has read my stories in the past.
After we dumped the fuel in, the small block fired to life and sounded just fine, so Boone headed back to the pits. I jumped in the Valiant and rolled up on the scales.
"You're good", Matt smiled, and gave me a thumbs up, "3140 lbs."
I pulled off the scales and idled down the return road, made it to about the eighth mile mark, when it suddenly started missing, and sounding like it was barely hitting on two or three. I shut it off in disgust, and coasted over to the right, hopefully leaving others room to get by. Here I sat holding the best time slip the Valiant had ever produced normally aspirated, and I couldn't get back to my pits! I pulled my phone out to call Boone again, when I looked up and noticed a track worker coming towards me on a four wheeler with one of those rollers attached that you see them use to clear the Top Fuel cars off the track with. He spun around, and bumped my rear tire, then checked to see if the height would work on my car. Talk about customer service, he pushed me all the way down the return road, through the lanes, and all the way through the pits to my pit spot!

While it seemed much longer, the time from my pass down the fabled track, to my embarrassing shove into our pit spot, only covered thirty-five minutes, and Dale was just heading up for a pass in the Gremlin. John had the back of the 67 Valiant jacked about four feet into the air and I could see that he had already switched to his street tires, but he was under the transmission now. I walked up beside the car and questioned him on the problem.
"This thing has one of those US Car Tool drive shaft loops that bolts to the trans cross member", he explained without coming out from under the car, "and the flimsy piece of junk was flexing so bad last night on those bad roads that I thought it was going to grab onto the shaft and rip it out of there!"
He rolled out from under the car, "but, the bolts are all tight, nothing seems out of order, and the drive shaft is only scuffed...it's just not approved for rough Illinois county roads!"

Dale launched the Gremlin, and I didn't hear him pedal it, so that was a good sign. He was on a single, so I heard the announcer call out 9.08.
"He'll want another one...no doubt about it", Dad declared.