I can be critical of the late start on Friday all I want in retrospect, but in real time as I dragged my body out of the motel bed at 7:30 am, I was thankful for it because I still had to run into town to the tire store Darren had used earlier in the week in order to get new front runners for the Valiant.
"Front pocket...jeans on the chair", Rachael mumbled when I asked her for the keys to the Belvedere, then she rolled over and pulled the covers up under her chin, clearly not interested in getting up yet.
I made my way to the parking lot and popped the trunk on the Belvedere. The jack and all the tools I needed were right on top, since they were the last thing Skippy had loaded the night before. I removed the remaining good tire, and loaded it in the front floorboard with the blown one and headed out with the map Skippy had drawn up for me from Rachael's lap top, thankful to be in the big roomy b-body for a change!

As soon as I walked in the front door of Dobbs Tire and Auto, I was greeted by a stack of four Pirelli P4 185/65-15s with a "Clearance/Special" sign on them. My first thought was that they were a very strange size, followed immediately by the thought that they were short enough to fit the Valiant wheel well, if they didn't have any VW tires in stock.
Sure enough, after running through all the possible choices with the salesman, we came back to the ones on the floor.
"Ya know...we had so many Drag Week cars in here last Friday, and Saturday wanting oil changes, front end alignments and such, that we finally had to tell them we could only do tire work for them, because we couldn't get our regular clientele taken care of", the salesman explained as we conversed. It hadn't occurred to me that guys would show up early with that much still in question on the car, but I guess nothing from this crowd should surprise me. I looked across the parking lot as I waited on my tires to get mounted and noticed that quite a few Drag Weekers had decided to use the late start to skip the motel breakfast and congregate at Waffle House.