After tech on Sunday I had brought the coop up to the staging lanes to make a test pass, but when I got there they told me it was too late. The staging lanes had just closed. Missed it by a few minutes, but it might as well have been hours, either way I was destined to make the first official day of drag week competition nothing more than a test of a car that had not yet made a clean pass down the drag strip.


My buddy Jeff has several different modes that he operates in. One of them is happy, fun loving, outgoing Jeff. Another one is let's go, get it done, hurry up Jeff. And then there is introverted, completive Jeff. Last but not least is cranky Jeff.
So when he told me Monday morning he had not slepped one minute all night, I was thinking "this is going to be hell day". But when he actually brought me a cup of coffee while I was getting ready, I knew it was going to be a good day!


As we were driving in to the track Monday morning and Jeff wanted me to drop him off at the gate I said that he should just call the courier and have them come into the pit area. That way he wouldn't have to walk, he wouldn't have to get wet if it rained, and he could help get things ready while we were waiting for the courier. Jeff would have none of that. He was walking down to the gate to meet the courier because that's the way it had been set up. I continued to urge him to call and change the arrangements slightly. It's a courier I said, they get paid to go where they're told. They don't care if they have to drive an extra 3/4 of a mile. They do this stuff all the time. Jeff said "That's the difference between you and me. You expect people to do stuff just because you ask him to. I don't operate that way. I told them we're meeting at the gate, I'm not going to ask them to drive into the track.". Okay, so maybe he was a little cranky from the stress and with having been awake for 24 hours straight. I'll get busy on the unpacking myself and Jeff can walk to the gate to get his papers signed.

The trailer was total chaos. I didn't even know where to start gathering stuff to carry in the trunk of the coop and I was only guesstimating how much crap we could carry. So I just started going through the cabinets and everything and grabbing what I thought we'd need. Half the stuff I was thinking was there wasn't.

In case I had to make several hits to get the car to run properly, I wanted to get an early start, and as soon as I saw anybody getting into the staging lanes I rolled the coop in as well. The playing around I have done with the clutch tamer at Stanton really paid off. The launch on that first pass was nearly perfect. Also I had looked up my notes and figured out where my shock settings were supposed to be. Upon checking them on Sunday, they were about 15 clicks to stiff. Correcting that is what solved the rear wheel hop at launch. Words cannot express how jubilant I was after that pass on Monday morning, after all that we had been through and as many times as I considered dropping out, this beautiful run down the drag strip happened! Jeff was as happy as I was! I knew it was going to be a great day and a good week, and I was certain that before the week was over I would have the coop running in the nines.