In February, Dale texted us another ad he found for a 65 Dodge Dart GT in Texas and Darren decided he had to have it. This coming on the heels of buying a 604 Indy big block out of Chicago that was supposed to go in his Pro Street Dakota. It seemed that 2018 was the year the Gebhart Boys were throwing fiscal responsibility completely out the window.

March 3rd was the day we were waiting for, as that would be the day that preregistration would go live on HotRod.com for Drag Week 2018. There was a nice Mopar car show and swap meet five miles from my house, so I drove down there to hang out and bench race with old buddies, knowing if I didn't, I'd be sitting in front of the PC nervously counting down the minutes.

Dale was tasked with getting himself and James both registered, as well as possibly Dad. He had brought some of his IT and Controls guys over from work and they had a war room set up with five high powered laptops ready to go. Boone was camped out at a friends house who is a big time on line gamer and has one of those rigs with two big screen TVs as monitors. I was on my own, but only registering one car, as Rachael had already announced baby #2 was on the way, and her due date was extremely close to Drag Week! She was adamant that she could still go, but Grandpa wasn't going to have any of that. Darren was going to use his girlfriend's old laptop with his phone as the hot spot for internet, my confidence for him getting in wasn't very high, especially after he hadn't got in on time for 2017 either.

I found the link as quickly as it went live, and began to input my data into the spaces provided. First page completed, so I clicked next, consulted my notes and quickly filled in the second page. This time when I clicked next it took me back to page two with a red warning about an empty box. I hadn't noticed a small box marked gender, "When the heck did they add that!"
I clicked M and moved on to page three, methodically entering each box as I worked down my sheet. Page four was my credit card info, then it was time to click "place order". Success! I was order number 416 at just over five minutes in.

My attention quickly shifted to our group text on my phone, and the Drag Weekers Facebook page where everyone had been posting their order numbers. Not thirty seconds after I started monitoring Facebook, I saw guys posting that they were locked out as it was already full!
According to Dale's texts his group had registered Him and James in the first two minutes, but held off on Dad until the rest of us were in. Boone and Michelle were in, but before Darren and I reported, it was closed, so they quickly entered Dad on the wait list.
Upon reading that, I decided to put Rachael on the wait list, just in case. Finally Darren reported that he had gotten in with order number 436, just short of six minutes after the link went live. As we watched social media and the various websites where people were discussing barely getting in or being left out we never saw a higher order number posted, so Darren may have been the last taken.

As the dust settled, and HOTROD reported on wait list numbers, over 400 went on the list. Dad was number 12, Rachael was listed as in the "61-90" group. The fallout from such a record turnout was immediate, two Drag Week veterans who live in Phoenix had failed to get registered, and immediately switched their plans to attend Rocky Mountain Race Week instead. Several regulars missed due to the fact that American Express was not accepted even though it was listed as an option, by the time they entered an alternate card, it was too late!