With Dale so heavily involved in the Purple Duster, and James' Challenger. It was clear there would be no Calvary charging down the hill to help Darren out at the last minute. The Charger, Dakota, and 65 Dart were all far enough away from completion that the towel had been thrown in by mid August. On our family group text, the three of us attempted to convince him to just buy a set of drag tires for his Ram R/T and enter it, since basically he has driven it and followed us around the last three years in a row anyway. It seemed like a simple solution to us, but with Darren, nothing is ever simple.

First, he ordered a set of Center Lines (who've been out of business for a year) from some wheel retailing website that none of us had ever heard of, and it took two weeks after the promised delivery date for him to realize they didn't have them and couldn't get them, so then he had to scramble just to find anything that would fit and arrive on time.

Second, he decided if he was officially entering the truck, it needed to be faster, so he ordered a DiabloSport Trinity Tuner with it's fancy 5 inch dash screen, custom tunes and all the bells and whistles. Of course, getting the tuner installed and the new tunes downloaded, with a 10 year old laptop, spotty internet service, and a non savvy, impatient computer operator, proved to be a study in frustration, failure, and hilarity!

Meanwhile in Phoenix, the Valiant had sat untouched, and unmoved just outside my front door for the better part of 8 months. I decided that since the charging system had acted strange a few times on Drag Week 2017, I should rotate in a new set of Optima Red Tops, but other than that, I just packed all my stuff in the car, fired it up, and loaded it straight on the trailer for the trip to Oklahoma.