Now even G-Bob is calling me out! Good grief!

I think to consider a DW spinoff, you would have to look at the current Business model. It doesn't take much poking around to realize it's certainly not going to be a money maker! Makes about as much sense as competitors doing 5 days, 4 tracks, and 1500 miles for a jacket!

Another thing is getting the cooperation of the tracks. I think as Drag Week continues to grow in notoriety, tracks have begun to understand it's good for them, but it certainly must be the hardest part of putting a drag week style event together.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQsaVWA3gNg

Good Hot Rod Roadkill video featuring Drag Week! You can even see the Valiant getting pummeled on SeeRed's first 8 second pass.

I haven't worked on the story for the past few days as I attended the funeral of a dear friend yesterday. Bonnifacio "Lonnie" Garcia was a racer's racer, and a kind, caring gentleman as well. We bracket raced together at Firebird for years, as we watched each other's kids grow to be adults. When we introduced Lonnie to divisional racing in Super Street, he was well and truly hooked! I am seriously going to regret stepping away from the divisional circuit for the last 4 years, because Lonnie was out there, trying hard, and always calling me, trying to get me back out there.
He had been struggling with diabetes for a long time, and it had took a toll on his eyes, but through multiple surgeries on them, he continued to race. Then he began to battle with kidney failure, and he continued to race, smile, laugh, and enjoy every moment. This year he made every division 7 race, while finding Dialysis centers near the track on those 3 and 4 day events.
Last weekend, he was competing in the 2012 Divisional Final at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The weather was great, he was riding around on his scooter talking to all his friends, his wife of 32 years by his side filming all the fun, and Lonnie, the ASE Master Technician was wrenching on his ride as well as anyone elses who needed help. I had mislpaced my phone Saturday for several hours and when I found it, I saw that I had missed a call from Lonnie. I decided to call him back Sunday afternoon when the race was over, not bother him during the event. Super Street's first round was Sunday morning, as everyone got around to prepare to race, word went through the pits that Lonnie didn't wake up, and he wouldn't be making that lane call, he was 52 years old.
Sorry to slam this on you in this thread, but it only enforces my earlier conviction, quit putting off those once in a lifetime events, that you just don't have time for. Get out of your comfort zone and reach for something, even if it's making that phone call to an old friend or family member you've been putting off!

Before you ask what Lonnie was racing...He got a smoking deal on a bare chassis that had at one time been under a Daytona. He started looking for a replacement Chevy body that my buddy Brian Smith could adapt to it. Did I mention Brian loves 2 door wagons? So Lonnie and Brian are walking through a junk yard and they find an 85 Cavalier wagon, parked next to a similar Cavalier 2 door coupe...the tape measures came out, and the next thing you know the chassis, wagon, and coupe doors were at Brian's shop!
Most people thought it was a 7/8 scale Malibu wagon...

We had exchanged numbers with Kim Abbott before leaving Memphis, and Scott called us to warn us that the directions for the next Checkpoint were wrong. While Dave's Burgers was indeed only .3 off of I-40, it was on the left side, not the right as the sheet advised.
We were within about 20 miles of Conway, where the checkpoint was, when Dale tried blowing around us in the Belvedere at 70+, I crammed my foot into the Valiant as he came along side, but I had no desire to stay at 4k for any length of time and let him go.
He called to inform me they were going to go ahead to the checkpoint without us since they had no intention of driving so slow! I decided if that were the case, I would keep the little instructions mistake to myself!

Darryl, and I managed to get into the David's Burger parking lot ahead of the speedy Belvedere, as they eventually saw the sign on the opposite side of the highway, and made thier way over. As is typical of the Drag Week checkpoints, there is usually an audience of locals hanging around watching everyone come and go. In this case, there was only one guy in his pick-up, probably early 20's still there. He jumped out and looked at our cars, and talked about all the stuff that had rolled through.
"I was really waiting up, because I wanted to see Larry's Chevy II, you know, the one in all the Magazines, that has won so many times?"
"Yeah", I smiled, "he should be through here any time, he was putting the third-member back in when my brothers left"
As if on cue, the shoebox Nova rounded the corner into the lot. The kid took an appraising look, turned and shrugged his shoulders at me, "That's it?"
I laughed quickly before I could catch myself, "Yes, that is the baddest real street car on the planet!"
"But...some of those other cars look so radical..and they are pulling trailers...and", he stammered.
"I know, I know, but right here before you is the real deal", I confirmed.
He walked over to take a better look, and I considered what had just happened for a moment.
It's easy I guess, for someone who has watched Larry's car do amazing things on the track, to look at it in complete awe, but I could understand to the casual onlooker, how it could be considered almost understated, possibly even a sleeper, if a 6 second sleeper is even possible!

Boone and Dale had not fueled the Belvedere yet, so once again we left ahead of them. Rachael had ran out of things to talk about, and I was starting to feel pretty tired my self. We were just grinding out miles at this point, until the antlers started appearing on the right side of the road, then I was wide awake, and thinking about the pictures of ksj's white Challenger which met it's end with a chance bambi meeting! At first it was one every 5 miles or so, then we started seeing them in clumps. Everytime they would appear, I would see the headlights of Darryl's Dart behind me jerk towards the next lane.
15 minutes later, while I was still concentrating on the shoulder, I heard a loud noise outside my window, and looked over to see Larry's Nova go screaming by at 20+ what I was running, scared me awake, that much I'll admit to!
Dale finally appeared behind Darryl, and I started thinking about a fuel stop with all of us together again. We had stretched this one to 125 miles or so and ended up pulling into a station in Clarksville Arkansas. We were watching some serious lightning which appeared to be about 20 miles up the road and Dale walked over to me, "Larry told us at the last stop, that Jeff Lutz had called him and reported they hit some heavy rain near the AR/OK border, and were just crawling along!"
"Doesn't sound very inviting, and I'm going to need to load up on coffee if we keep going".
Boone had walked up and I gave him a nod toward the Motel sitting invitingly on the other side of the station, "You want to walk over and see if they have a room?"
"One or Two"
"Just one, we'll double bunk, and someone can sleep on the floor. I think it makes more sense to make the rest of this drive in the daylight, since racing isn't until 3pm tomorrow".
We reached a concensus, and skipped coffee and snacks for a good nights sleep instead, we drove over to the motel to find the red '55 Gasser sitting on the other side.

LOL.Hitting a Bambi is not good.2011 Larry decided to treat us to a drive by.Only he put it on the limiter as he was right beside us.I liked to crapped my pants. LOL.

We woke to a dreary looking Friday morning. Over the motel breakfast, Dale couldn't wait to tell me about thier adventure the night before with Larry and the Nova.
"He gassed up at the station, across the street from us in Conway, and we left first, on our way to catch up with you. We stretched the ole' Belvedere's 2.73 gears out and were running around 80, passing cars, and then pulling back in the right lane. Saw these headlights coming up, staying in the left lane and moving right along. Ended up being Larry, he went by us and we gave chase, according to the RPM, somewhere between 90 and 95", Dale shook his head and laughed. "Boone was yelling at me to slow down, and let him go because he didn't want to catch you guys that soon!"
He leaned towards me for effect, "Then we came around this bend, and there was no traffic ahead. I guess Larry didn't want the company, so he kicked that Chevy in the tail, and put a half-mile on us quick!" He laughed again and shook his head, "I looked at Boone and told him he just got his wish".
We prepared to get rolling, and decided on a little musical chairs. Rachael jumped back behind the wheel of the Belvedere, Dale decided to try shotgun in Darryl's Dart, and Boone let it be known he wasn't making this whole trip without driving the Valiant, so I moved to the passenger's side and let him have the wheel.

Of the 20 or 25 bambi`s that we drove past the one I remember the most was the one that was standing right next to the road with this look in his face like he had just lost everything in a card game and was getting ready to jump. Nothing worse than a suicidle bambi.

Mine had the same look on its face. LOL.

Sorry for your loss of a friend. Great story as all ways.

We didn't make it 40 miles before we started running into the rain, light at first, and gradually getting heavier.
Last year, on Goodyear SST Drag Radials, I had very little problems, even in a torrential downpour, but I've heard nothing but horror stories about these bias-ply ET Streets.
As it continued to get worse, we found ourselves running just off the butt of 3 or 4 semis meandering along at about 55. Boone put the Valiant in thier tracks, as they cleared the water off the road in front of us. This seemed to be a workable solution, and we rolled up another 10 miles in this fashion, until we aproached the AR/OK border and all the trucks had to exit into the weigh station. As they exited to the right, our nice little tracks went with them and we were confronted with the uniform sheen of standing water on asphalt. We went about 300 yards before the rearend took a little jump to the drivers side.
Boone and I grew up in Oklahoma, where our parents had large paper routes that had us covering roughly 400 miles a day, rain, sleet, snow, ice, country roads, those papers got delivered every day. I put in 131 miles on my 16th birthday. We then graduated to Tractor-Trailers, and everything in between in every kind of weather. So we have the experience and expertise to drive in this situation.
Boone made a slight steering correction with the wheel and slightly let off the gas...no brakes, no panic, just a correction. The back end over-reacted and swung wildly towards the shoulder, now we were at a sharp angle, heading into the fast lane, and an ominous guard rail on the shoulder of that lane. "Oh crap Boone, bring it back around", I shouted as my left arm grabbed the shoulder cross bar, and my right hand found the door bar. A car squeezed between us and the guardrail, horn blaring as our front end headed across the center line, Boone wisely gave a measured steer to the right, and lifted off the throttle, we returned to our lane, but didn't truly have control until our speed dropped to about 25. The best way I can describe it is, you have a locked rearend behaving like you are on black ice, but the front tires have rain equivalent traction, so it's a very interesting interface between the two. Every time we tried to add speed, we would again lose control of the back, and we're on a major interstate with a 40 mph minumum speed limit. "Boone, we MUST get off this road!" I empasized.
"I know, I know...two miles to the next exit!"

We bailed off in Van Buren AR, and pulled into a gas station to gather our wits and nerves (pic in the above post).
The other two pulled in and parked as well, Dale walked over shaking his head, "Darryl wanted to know why you guys were stopping so soon for fuel!! Apparently he didn't see all the gyrations going on in front of Rachael!"
I walked over to Rachael, "Fire up your smart phone, and find me an alternate route...hopefully a nice little two lane that runs parallel to I-40!"
She smiled demurely, and shot back, "Oh, NOW we can use the smart phone! Can't find it on your sheet? Don't want to call your Dad and ask?"
Ok, I had that one coming, but I was just a few moments away from losing my car, and wasn't in the mood. "C'mon hotshot, show me what that thing can do!" The pic below shows her at work on a solution.

"This US64 is what you need, but it doesn't cross the I-40 until about 8 miles down the road from here", she was flicking at the screen as she talked. "This Dora road will get you 3 of those, but you will really have to go out of your way to get to it after that."
"Why don't you guys stay on course, and let us know what you run into, we may try to come back to the 40 if it lightens up", I looked at Dale and Darryl.
"After that you'll want the 100 to the 10", Rachael continued, "The 10 will take you to within a few miles of Muskogee".
"Alright, let's give it a try", I decided, and jumped behind the wheel of the Valiant. By the time I traversed the 3 miles of Dora road, Dale had called and assured me it had lightened up enough to get back on, so we jumped back on I-40 in an attempt to at least make the 5 miles to the US64 junction. We made it about 3 miles without incident, then it was Boone's turn to grab roll bar tubing and scream like a girl!! We jumped off on 64 and eased our way down the wide, lonely, quiet 2 lane at 25 mph. "Not going back on the big road", I assured Boone.
"Cheater, taking an alternate course!" he teased.
"This is the way HotRod would have sent us down if it hadn't been such a long drive, this is where the course should be", I reasoned.
"Self-justification has always been one of your strong suits!" he laughed.
I donned my Doc Holiday/Val Kilmer impersonation yet again, "It appears my hypocrasy knows no bounds!"
20 miles later, as we eased into Sallisaw Ok, Dale called back, "It's getting much worse up here, Belvedere even broke loose once or twice, saw the Aussies, and many other competitors pulled over under each underpass we drove by".
"Yeah, we've noticed it too, just taking it slow and easing our way across here."
Boone and I pulled over in a wooded area to help "water" the trees, and shot this pic of the Valiant braving the elements.

Lots of kind accolades to your freind Lonnie Sunday morning at the race. Many friends and family at the line and they ran his car on a solo pass in his honor.

Sorry to hear of your loss Billy

Great reading,Billy! Sorry about your buddy...

You missed out if you didn't eat at David's burgers, amazing hamburgers!

The only time on the entire trip I had trouble getting hot was going the wrong way looking for the burger joint, got hot and picked up some vapor lock as a result, here is the car taking a breather while we went and chomped down a great burger.



And I believe this was the second time I got to stand on I-40 that day.




That last run was rough, I left pretty early and didn't get much rain. But that amount of time at 3500+rpm on I-40 was rough. My car sounded like a Duramax at the last check point. A lash check the next morning showed nothing wrong, a look at the oil lead to an oil change which made it sound normal again.

Wow, Clark what was the deal with the standstill? The Burger joint was closed by the time we arrived, which is usually my luck!

Boone and I cruised into Vian Ok., home of Mopar Stock eliminator competitor and engine builder Jim Lewis, and I pulled over and shut the Valiant off.
"What's up?" Boone looked puzzled.
"I've had enough, I'm going to walk around a bit and stretch out this tension, then you're driving again!"
"Oh, alright."
My shoulders hurt, my back hurt, my hips hurt, I had driven a grand total of 32 miles, and had gathered up a loose tailend about 10 times. You had to apply throttle like an egg was under the pedal, if you lifted too quickly it would get loose until the rpm fell to the point the converter would free wheel. This was not fun, but I felt better after walking around a bit.
Boone made quick work of the ten miles between Vian and Gore, then we jumped onto OK10 N, which was a tiny, shoulderless, switchback laden, undulating road which ran parallel with the Arkansas river. The saving grace of this piece of real estate was the ancient, rough, grooved and pebbled asphalt, which allowed the water to flow in the low spots, as the pebbles provided more traction than we had been experiencing previously.
We pulled over a few times to let traffic that had backed up behind us move by. We were going quite well until we came around a corner just past Green Leaf state park, and headed down a hill towards a concrete bridge. There, on the other side of the bridge was beautiful, fresh, black, brand new asphalt! Thank you very much Oklahoma dept. of Transportation , not! Boone scrubbed 10 mph before we got there, but still, predictably, the rear tires had a mind of thier own again!

Below pic is BBR assuming the "Yes I own a Ford position", one he had perfected by arrival back in Tulsa, but arrive, he did!

I believe the first stand still was from a semi losing an air line and bieng stuck on the spring brakes in the middle of the road. The second one I had no idea what it was from. Crazy enough both cleared up and got back to the speedlimit like nothing ever happened.

Both stops were almost welcome, my fan is aparently not enough to keep my car cool on the highway unless there is open air. If I was running open highway I had zero trouble running at 180 degrees. But, come up on a semi within a few hundred yards and it would creep up a few degrees, get into heavy traffic and it was 200 degrees, as soon as the road opens up again you can watch the temp guage slide back down. Needless to say there wasn't a ton of open road that day.

Haha gotta change the diaper on the Ford every so often ya know!

We hit the dead locked traffic on I-40 too. Sat there idling forever. Finally shut the car off and then traffic started moving. Figures. Everybody was running hotter that day because we were going uphill the whole time. Mine got warmer than it had been running but never got hot. Overheating was a huge concern of mine before DW, but the electric pump and fan did an outstanding job of keeping the suckstang cool. I was more than pleased with how well they worked.

We were still a good 30 miles out of Muskogee when Rachael called to inform us that they were at Okie's Steakhouse, site of our very first checkpoint having a meal, and would we be joining them.
"No. Boone and I still have a ways to go, and at this rate we're barely going to make Tulsa by 3pm", I informed her.
"Do you really think it's going to matter?"
"Never try to predict Oklahoma weather dear, your Uncle Dale has spent all day racing at that track, and then had to drive home in a blizzard, so I just want to be there when we are supposed to be, and then we'll figure it out".
We finished off the OK-10, and then pulled out on US-62 for a straight shot, we only ran 7 miles on this divided 4 lane, which is old concrete, but it was a dicey proposition, this took us over the bulging Arkansas River once again, just below the confluence where it receives the Verdigris and Neosho Rivers. We turned onto US-69, which I figured Boone would use as an alternate route to avoid the Muskogee Turnpike, but, alas, no, he jumped right onto the big road 5 miles later. Oklahoma toll roads have a 45 mph min. speed limit, "What the heck Boone, I thought we discussed this?
"Ah, we have to get back on the prescribed course at some time, and this seems about as good as any!"
The first 3 or 4 miles were pretty crazy, but then the rain lightened up considerably, and we managed about 50 mph without too much difficulty. It was surprising how many competitors we noticed on this 20 mile stretch, still working thier way into Tulsa. The little stock appearing 60's Ford shortbed, with the hood missing and a huffed FE, moved around us with ease, but we caught him again as we jumped onto the Creek Turnpike, he was pulled over at the tollbooth digging through his truck for change. The instruction sheet clearly said it was a 75 cent toll, and bill changers were on site, this clearly wasn't the case as you could see the hole where the bill changers had been removed. Boone and I threw our combined 55 cents in the basket, and drove on through, red light flashing and alarm going off, oh well!

The guys followed us through checkpoint #2 a short time later.

After the checkpoint, I once again took the wheel of the Valiant, finishing off the last 7 miles of our crazy journey and arriving at a dreary, damp, car show being held at a wonderfull place for a drag race!