Marks a good guy even if he does own a PonteCarlo.His car is as clean looking as they get.Between Mike Crow and I we make sure he knows that there are mopars at DW.

Darren and I made our way to the tower to turn in our time slips. Darryl had been gone for a while, and Boone had already turned his in, picked up his route sheet, and pretty much had the Barnyard loaded up and ready to go. As we showed them our pictures and picked up our instructions, Tom Bailey rolled his ex-project sick seconds composite 69 Camaro into the water box for another last ditch effort to extend his streak. He had a comfortable lead to win Drag Week the next day, and he already had a 7.07 run in the books at Memphis. There were only 20 minutes of track time left, and announcer Ron Ward was already explaining that the relentless sun had pounded the track's earlier teeth into submission. Tom and engine builder Steve Morris, weren't about to be satisfied with "just" the win however, they were determined to get a six second ET. at every track! Watching this kind of stuff unfold in front of you is another of those things that make Drag Week so awesome.
Sure enough, it stuck and managed a 6.96-211! Many people will look at the passes they turned in each day and say, "Wow, they just dominated the event", without ever understanding the absolute tightrope they traversed between that accomplishment, and abject, total failure!

Back in our pits, we quickly finished loading up and were ready to roll out. Rachael informed me that she was going to ride with Robert and Dad in the Charger, so I would have to make do with James as my navigator.
Lane walked over to harass us , "The Gebhart boys leaving early? Something's not right about that!"
I had to agree with him, 1:15pm was a far cry from our normal four or five!

I was the first one to exit the track.
"Take a left on Fite road", James told me, looking at the sheet.
"A left? 51 is back to the right".
"Is that how it's going to be... already?" He stared at me.
"Ok, ok, left it is".

We drove five or so miles through residential neighborhoods until we jumped onto Paul Barrett Parkway/ I-269/ Tn. 385. Eighteen miles later we exited onto US-70 east, and pulled into a gas station a mile further down the road, with Robert's rental Charger behind us.
I had just started the pump when my phone rang, it was Boone. "We are stopped about five miles from the track, just past that church", he opened the conversation.
"Yeah, I saw it."
"Darren's car is making a bunch of noise, and we're trying to figure it out."
"Well, we are only about twenty miles up the road, at a big station with plenty of lights, why don't you bring it up here?"
"Well... actually we are in a pretty nice neighborhood on a side street. I think we're going to try to figure it out here."
"Do you want us to come back?"
"Not yet, just hang out there for a while, and we'll call you in a bit."

dang, don't you hate that? just when it gets interesting he stops for a commercial break!

Memphis was great again this year. They pulled some DD guys to the lanes early because they were staying so clear. I got two runs in and was on the road before 11am.

Keep typing Billy, great story!

I relayed the situation to James and Rachael, and added, "Most nice neighborhoods don't like grease monkeys working on jalopies out in front of their picture windows for long, they need to get that thing moving".
We discussed it with Dad and Robert, and decided that they would go ahead to Bowling Green, but when they pulled out, it appeared they were driving back towards Memphis.
"Why'd they go that way?" James looked at me incredulously.
"Dad probably talked them into going back and checking on his favorite boy!"

Thirty minutes later, Boone called us back, "We backed the converter off, found one crank to flexplate bolt a couple turns loose, and one of the converter bolts were loose, but that didn't clear it up".
"Did Robert, Dad, and Rachael show up there?"
"No... I thought they were going on?" He paused, then added, "Lane and his Dad are here though."

I called Rachael and she informed me that Robert wanted to get the rental car turned in that night, so they chose to jump on I-40 to get to Bowling Green, rather than following the route, which is why they headed in the other direction. James and I decided to go back and check on the brothers, figuring we might have to help someone make a decision, and it would be easier face to face, than twenty miles away on a phone!

By the time we arrived, all the attention had turned to the engine. Dale had the coil wire pulled off, and Darren was rolling it over has everyone listened under the hood. It wasn't a sharp tick or knock, more of a rumble.
"It's definitely on this side", Michael Sporrong was pointing at the driver's side valve cover.
"Yeah, and it sounds like a piston or a valve... like air is going someplace it's not supposed to be!" I added.

A school bus pulled up and dropped off a boy, maybe 9 or 10, at the house we were parked in front of. He practically sprinted to the front door, all the while stealing concerned looks back at us. He dropped his bag on the front porch and while looking back at us, scrambled to find the key under the mat. He clutched the key to his chest and spun around putting himself between the screen door with it's powerful door retractor and the front door, squirming like he feared for his life, or desparately had to go to the bathroom. Finally the door opened and he bolted in, then he remembered his bag, and tentatively came back out to snatch it with his eyes trained on our every move. He nearly made it back in unscathed, but the screen door closed on the backpack like a clam shell. Two hard pulls brought it free, but landed the poor little guy on his backside just inside the house, he jumped up and slammed the front door with all his might!
Boone must've been watching as intently as I was, because both of us burst into laughter at nearly the same time.
"I thought I was witnessing a scene out of 'Home Alone'!"
"I was thinking the same thing", Boone shook his head.
Twenty minutes later, a little red econobox screeched into the driveway, and a girl in her late teens ran to the house and picked the boy up, both of them looking at us like we were movie ogres or something as they sped away.
"Apparently Boone, hot rodders are held in the same light as pirates and thieves in these parts!"
"Maybe so, we've already had several people stop by and ask us what was going on, one of them was a mopar guy, who just happens to be a sherriff's deputy... he said we could leave the car at his house if we need to."
"Well, I guess that may be an option, but heck, we're only 275 miles away from finishing this deal!"

Finally, we narrowed it down to cylinder three or five, and pulled the plugs. Darren broke out his borescope (you know, one of those Drag Week tools you can't be without?) and we had a look inside. While I couldn't make out incredible detail, everything in cylinder three looked clean, relatively shiny, and nothing looked out of place. Cylinder 5 was another matter entirely, it was much darker, seemingly oil soaked, and there appeared to be some very dark spots in a few places where the cylinder and piston top were in contact.
"Um, I think it ate some of the top ring land", I surmised as we all crowded around for a look at the display.
"I can't draw a conclusion", Darren shook his head, "But that cylinder definitely is not as healthy as the other one!"
We put it back together, and Dale and Darren took it for a test ride through the neighborhood, when they returned, you could see it was smoking out of that bank, not horrible, but certainly noticeable.
"It's running, lets just try to baby it to Bowling Green", I suggested.
Darren ran his fingers through his thinning hair, "I don't know", he sighed, "We have a spot to leave it, and I'd hate to tear it up worse in the middle of nowhere!"
"It actually sounds pretty bad, and has a little vibration in it", Dale added.

The decision to leave it was much easier than figuring out the logistics. Lane and Michael decided Darren could ride with them in the Baja Truck, but then we were forced to once again decide what to leave in the car, and what to spread between the only two remaining vehicles we had left. It was about that time that Dale discovered he had left the keys to his truck in the Gremlin, and started making frantic calls to Eric, to see if he could overnight them to Beech Bend Raceway Park, never a dull moment with this group.

"Darren ran his fingers through his thinning hair" Really? You all need to get a mirror.Your Dad has more hair than you kids.

Darren dropped the Charger off in the Sherriff deputy's car port, and we finally started moving once again. I had already received texts from Rachael and Darryl both that it was raining pretty good in the Nashville area, so we knew things would eventually get interesting with the Barnyard Viper and it's ET Streets when we ran into that.
We retraced our steps and ended up at the exact gas station James and I were waiting at when we were told Darren was having trouble. As we were fueling up, we noticed that Alex Taylor and her mom were across the street at the McDonalds, and they appeared to be checking under their beautiful orange and white 68 Camaro. As a 16 year old girl taking on Drag Week with Mom as her co-pilot, they had caused quite a stir, the blue jean shorts simply added to the attention. Before we knew it Michael had sprinted across the four lanes of traffic to offer his assistance.
I walked over to Lane at the pump, "Your Dad seems to move quite fast when there are pretty gals around!"
He laughed, and almost appeared to blush, "Yeah, I'm sure he'll tell us he simply likes to help people, but he's still just a horn-dog!"

The time stamp on the photos indicate that from the Satellite making our last pass at Memphis, to our second visit at this gas station just twenty miles away from the track, we had used up four hours and twenty minutes! That's how long drag week days get a whole bunch longer!

Yeah it seems that anytime that Alex and her mom had
any problems there was a handful of guys there in a
few seconds... she sure turned some heads

We stopped in the small town of Arlington a few miles later at a local burger dive and continued our tradition of eating early into our journey each day, the food was good, the company was better, and the atmosphere was decidedly backwoods with no hint that we were only 35 minutes from Memphis!

The first checkpoint was a straight shot fifty more miles down US-70, and it was the only checkpoint of the entire event that we made it to in daylight! It was called Billy Tripp's Mindfield in Brownsville Tn. (Google it!)

Leaving the Mindfield, Hot Rod could have sent us along US-70A/US-79 in a nearly straight run to checkpoint 2 in Paris Tn., but that's just not the way they like to do things. So instead they ran us over to I-40 for a 16 mile jaunt on the big road, then dumped us off if the middle of Jackson Tn., for a little stoplight, cruise through town before we re-joined US-79 in Milan. James and I pulled into the Exxon gas station in Milan, across the street from the massive Oakwood cemetery. Two things had changed in the last 47 miles we had covered, it was seriously dark, and we were working through smatterings of rain and wet roads. After we fueled up, I called Boone to ask how far they had fallen behind us, but I barely had time to explain where we had stopped before I heard him coming over the hill to join us.

Thirty-seven miles later we pulled into Paris Tn. For checkpoint #2 which was their mini-Eiffel Tower. Last year we had a checkpoint at the mini-Eiffel Tower in Paris Tx., kind of makes me wonder how many other states have something similar, or if we've seen them all.

Before we made it out of Paris, we were hit with a pretty good batch of rain, that had James and I down to 20-25 mph, but it was patchy so we pressed on. Boone decided to park and wait it out, and have us call back when we ran out of it, this pretty much summed up our approach for the rest of the night. I remember thinking the drive from Paris to Clarksville, then on to Russellville was probably quite scenic and enjoyable, if you weren't fighting rain, wet roads and pitch back night along the way!
We stopped for one last load of fuel in the Satellite, and I called Boone to see how far back they were.
"Well, quite a ways actually, we started losing oil pressure, so I pulled over", He explained.
"What the heck is going on?" I asked.
"It was three quarts low, after I filled it up, everything is fine, but it had us worried for a while."
"Wow, are Lane and Michael still with you?"
"Yeah, they've been following us the whole way, we told them they could go on, but they didn't want to abandon us like our brother did!"
"Hey, I've got my phone!"
"Yeah, yeah, I know, just kidding, call us when you get to the motel."

James and I had a great conversation the entire drive, and I was wondering why we hadn't traded off more often. In 2011 we had swapped cars, drivers, and passengers the whole trip, but this year we hadn't done it hardly at all.
At one point he looked over at me and said, "You've got Dale driving this thing at the track because you say you don't have a good feel for shifting it, right?"
"Yeah, pretty much, I had no seat time in this car before the trip."
"So we've driven through four towns in the last two hundred miles, and you left it in drive the whole time!"
"Yeah, it shifts out great when you're cruising around!"
"That's not the point, if you manually shifted it every time, you'd have developed a much better feel by now. You've driven it six hours a day for the last 4 days, and you should have put that time to good use!"
"Ok...you have a point."
He looked over and smiled, "I hope I never get old!"
"Your day will come... trust me!"

The last thirty miles, after we cleared Russellville, were the toughest just because the fatigue had really set in and we just wanted it over. We were coming into Bowling Green from the southwest, and our motel was on the northeast side of town. I had no desire whatsoever to drive through the heart of town, so I took a loop on a hunch that it would get me to I-65. It worked out great, and even though the time on the big road added about 5 miles, I felt it was worth it!

We pulled into the crowded Super 8 parking lot, and found a spot in the back. James started shuttling our stuff to the rooms as I called Boone, to find out how far out they were. I noticed a few of the GM boys huddled around a 64 Buick, so I went over to talk with them while I passed the time waiting for Boone to arrive. I noticed their lively bench racing session was fueled by a fifth of whiskey that was being passed around, and wondered where they found the energy. That may explain why they were some of the few drag weekers still at the hotel, when we were ready to leave the next morning!

Doug the guy with the 3 pedal blue Buick rocks.He stopped and gave Jeff and I a ride in 2010 when we broke before Indy.Its usually him and his brother every year.Another DW addict.

Friday morning, I was up and dressed early enough to catch Darryl before he left for the track. Even though Hot Rod had announced they would be starting an hour later, I knew he would be leaving quickly, and I needed his help with a peculiar situation.
"We have to figure out how to get to the track this morning!" I said as I walked with him to put my stuff in the car.
"What do you mean? This is the same way we drove into the track when we got here", He stated.
"No, I mean all the extra people and luggage, my car will be rubbing the tires if I overload it."
"Yeah, I have the same problem, the Dart won't handle a bunch of weight."
As I loaded my bag in the car, I heard him fire up the Dart and head out of the parking lot. I was left wondering if he just blew me off or if my communication skills were suddenly lacking?
I began to doubt myself when I tried to relate the problem to my own family, everyone seemed to be wrapped up in their own thoughts and oblivious to what we needed to do to get everyone to the track.
"Look, we've got seven people and all their luggage to get to the track in 2 cars, so obviously the Satellite has to make two trips, and I need to even out the loads as much as possible!"
"Great," Dale jumped in, "I'll wait for the second trip, so I can stay here and wash my laundry, I'm out of clean clothes".
Dad was equally as helpful, "Yeah, I'll wait for the second trip, and Darren can ride with Boone in the Barnyard Viper."
"So the two fattest guys left want to ride in the car when it's carrying four people, and one of them wants to keep his luggage", I stared them both down, "Now I understand why the airline industry gets so frustrated! One of you have to ride with Boone in the truck, you guys out weigh Darren by a bunch!"

I was able to wrestle everyone's luggage away from them except Dale's, then James and I headed to the track with Boone and Dale in the truck since we convinced him Rachael could handle putting his clothes in the dryer, and packing them in his bag!
We unloaded the Satellite in a pit spot as quickly as possible, and I told James to drive back and pick up Darren, Pops, and Rachael.
"Why me? I figured you would do it," He looked at me.
"Because I outweigh you by 125 pounds! Why doesn't anyone understand I'm trying to avoid killing the tires... and make Dad drive, Darren ride shotgun, and you and Rachael in the back seat!
"OK, ok", he laughed, "I was just pushing your buttons!"

As he drove away, Darryl walked over and asked, "Where's he going?"
I stared at him, "He's going back to pick up the rest of our group! Robert dropped off Pops and Rachael last night, and returned his rental car. Lane dropped off Darren, and he and his Dad were in a different hotel across town! How did you think we were all going to get out here?"
"You should have said something, someone could have rode out here with me", he stated.
I decided to walk away, and look at a few of the other cars before I killed somebody.

Hahahaha

It wasn't like we had arrived at the track on time, but there weren't any cars going down the track. As we prepared Boone's Truck for his first run, an impromptu bench racing session broke out with Scott and several other local Moparts members visiting for the day, and we found out why. Lightning had struck the timing system during the storm the night before, and the crew was frantically trying to repair the damage. The first set of cars wouldn't make it down the track until 10:25 AM, and the right scoreboard never was functional.

While it's not saying much, it was about ten degrees cooler on Friday than it had been all week, and the air was a ton better, resulting in quite a few improved time slips. Twenty minutes after the first pair, Darryl took his one and only shot at the track, netting a career best ET for the Dart, but the mph was down significantly, 11.096-117.15.
"What's up with the mph?" I asked when he handed me the slip.
"Been fighting a fuel delivery issue all week, and with the better air it just leaned out and quit pulling up there!"
"You going to jet up and try another hit?"
"Nope! That's it for me, Drag Week 2013 is in the books!"
"So now you go to the tower, and get a route sheet back to Arizona?"
"Exactly!" He laughed, "We won't be able to get back without printed instructions and checkpoints!"

Tony and his Javelin also turned in their best time slip of the week with a 10.539-126.06, but made a slower pass later in the afternoon which makes me wonder if he was just taking a victory lap, or if someone else was behind the wheel?