I made a new friend there:

John and Opal said it was their favorite drive of Drag Week, I don't even really remember it, and BangShift Chad called it the most dangerous drive on Drag Week ever! Guess it really depends on your perspective, your state of awareness, and what time you made it!

Dale and James backed the Gremlin up next to us, and basically fell asleep where they sat. Boone and Darren pulled out the generator and the battery charger, and hooked it up to the Dakota.
"We must've eliminated a short of some kind", Darren explained to me, "Before, without the alternator, the lights were always dim, and got worse pretty quick. Now, I can run a long time, and they are steady, and bright".
"So, you guys are going to catch a nap, while it charges?"
"Yeah, you and Rachael go ahead, we'll probably get moving in an hour or so."
Darren curled up with a blanket in his Kirkey seat, but Boone grabbed one of the Harbor Freight moving blankets, wrapped himself up in it, and slept on the concrete parking lot beside the trailer.

Most dangerous? Chad likes to embellish. When the track were announced I knew most of the route was going to be on 281.Maybe its because I grew up in that area I didn't notice.I thought the worst would be the brick streets and deer.LOL.

The seventy or so miles to Checkpoint Three was pretty uneventful for Rachael and I, except for a little problem I was having with the Valiant. The night air was cold, so I closed up all the windows, but there is a small hole or two in the firewall, and one header tube has an annoying habit of blowing out it's gasket halfway through each Drag Week, so about the time the cabin was getting warm and cozy, I'd start feeling nauseous, and a little less than coherent! I'd roll down the window and get a blast of fresh cold air, which would revive me, and freeze me at the same time. After experimenting over the hour and half jaunt, I found that the driver's side window opened about three inches provided a happy medium.

WW2 Veterans Memorial at the Pratt airport.Doug Reh with the Unlimited Buick has a GM dealership there and also my hometown.We thought the Memorial might be a check point.Only because the Hot and Cold Water towers don't have lights.Honest to God Ive had people ask if indeed one tower had hot water and the other cold water.http://www.kwch.com/fetchtoto/Business-Directory/cityofpratt/hot-and-cold-running-water-towers/22112826

"Rather than wait for the brothers here", I told Rachael, "let's drive to the next Truck Stop, so we can freshen up a little, then we will let them know where we are".
"OK, sounds good to me!" She nodded.
She took the lead in the Belvedere, and I followed her. Ten miles later we passed a fairly large convenience store on the right, and if anything, she sped up.
I called her on the phone, "Why didn't you stop"?
"You said a truck stop...that was a hole in the wall."
"Which part of I need a bathroom did you not understand."
"You should've been clear, I'll stop at the next one."
I guess she was getting even for all those family vacations when I used to tell the kids, "Hold it, we are making good time". There was literally nothing for the next forty miles until we entered Great Bend. A semblance of daylight was sneaking though the clouds, and it was spitting rain, so the race track wasn't a big priority at the moment. I slid the Valiant up to the curb at the first Casey's we saw, and burst through the door sending early morning commuters scrambling to protect their cups of coffee from being knocked out of their hands as I lumbered towards the bathroom.

Boone and Dale arrived at the checkpoint to get their picture at nearly the same time. Darren was ahead of them, because Dale had missed the turns on the route several times, and Boone felt compelled to wait for him, considering what happened last year after he screwed up the directions.

I saw that checkpoint in the late afternoon.3 Gebharts saw it in the a.m.the next day.

I was pretty sure checking on our unused pre-paid motel rooms would be a waste of time, at this juncture. I considered calling John and Opal, to see if they had checked out yet, but I really wasn't worried about a shower, just more sleep! So I drove into the edge of the Wal-Mart parking lot, jumped back in the Belvedere with my pillow, and managed another hour and a half of pure bliss before Rachael talking to Boone on her cell woke me up.

The clouds were just as ominous, but the rain was gone, and the parking lot was nearly dry.
"Where are they?" I asked Rachael
"Still a little ways out, twenty or thirty minutes."
After a brief shopping trip at Wal-Mart, we headed out to the track, and watched several Drag Week competitors turn into the airport, even though the route sheet clearly said turn left AFTER the airport entrance.
I made the 975 mile trek to S.C.R.A. Dragstrip from Phoenix three times in the previous decade to race NHRA division 5 races, so I was pretty familiar with the layout of the facility. The pits/return road is a WWII era expanse of broken, cracked concrete wide enough to handle The B-29 Superfortress in it's former glory, and home to the 1955 NHRA Nationals. Rachael and I drove four or five pit spots past the last people in line hoping to be able to hold spots for the other guys, but there were still a large number of racers just rolling in, and we were barely able to hold onto enough real estate for all five of us.

I went to grab a couple of gallons of race fuel for Rachael, and on my way back to our pit got a text from Opal, "Left a cup of Hot Chocolate in your trunk on the fuel cell." Ever had somebody give you something you didn't even know you needed? Dang, that hit the spot!
Everywhere you looked, the t-shirts of the previous three days were replaced with fire jackets and hoodies, for a desert dweller, I could feel it to my bones.

Great story as always Billy! You folks are sure a dedicated bunch!!

Boone and Dale arrived twenty minutes or so after we did, and settled into our pit spot. Then Darren rolled in a little later, and drove by, acting disgusted that we didn't have a spot roped off especially for him, and parked two spots down. The spots are marked out long enough for a semi and as wide as three lanes, so we had to convince him there was plenty of room after a little re-arrangement.
It became apparent rather quickly that the track prep was going to take a little longer, despite our late arrival, so we sent Rachael back into town to burn up some more of the McDonalds gift card.
"I didn't eat anything, all night" I admitted, "Too concerned with just getting here!" Dale and James both agreed.
"Dad and I stopped at some small convenience store, and they had hot biscuits and gravy of all things! Wasn't great, but wasn't bad either", Boone added.

One of the families we had spent a large amount of time racing with when Dale, Dad, and I were chasing the NHRA SST Divisional trail in division four, five and seven, were the Lacys from McPherson Kansas. The Patriarch, Terry, decided to make the one hour jaunt over to Great Bend to take in the Drag Week action, hang out with us, and do some quality bench racing. We haven't been Super Street racing since 2008, and it was great to touch base with an old friend.

They started sending class cars down the race track at 10:30AM with mixed results, the cool track, combined with far better air than we had seen all week meant more than a few were struggling with traction, or their tune up. I was the first of our group to make my way to the lanes. The staging lanes at Great Bend are unique in that they are just an extension of the strip, so they are long, straight and narrow, and we were only using two lanes. This means you have to stick close to your car, because the line is constantly moving forward, ordinarily that would seriously cut into my social and spectator time, but with the current weather I was happy to sit in the car and fire it up to move three or four car lengths at a time. Boone brought the Barnyard up next, and was around 15 cars of so behind me. Rain started speckling my windshield at 11:15, about the same time Rachael showed up with breakfast, she gave Boone and I ours in the lanes so we just sat in the Valiant and ate as we watched just enough moisture landing on the car to keep us from racing.
After we finished off our food, and it became apparent that the rain wasn't letting up, we decided to abandon our vehicles in the lanes, and walk over to the pit to grab some drinks and see what everyone else was doing.

Dale had the distributor out of the Dakota after another failed attempt to set the timing and idle, and had locked out the timing curve.
"I told Darren we had to lock it out because it had like fifty degrees of swing, and he swore it should only have twenty. We re-installed it and still had like twenty or thirty, so I pulled it again...look at that intermediate shaft".
I bent over and peered inside the engine. The bronze gear, and the cam gear looked fine, no excessive wear or slop, but the slot in the middle that actually drives the distributor had a huge section broken out and gone on one side!
"Wow, I've never seen a failure or problem there in any of the big blocks we've ever had."
"Nope, I haven't either", Dale agreed, "But the guy who owned this previously had an ancient magneto in it when Darren first brought it home".

At 12:45, the track was once again ready to race on, but Drag Week Race Director Lonnie Grimm decided to bring Daily Driver to the lanes, figuring the 10.80 and up crowd might be able to put some heat and grip back in the surface before the faster cars were turned loose again. Lohnes made it clear over the loud speaker that this was to be a one hit session, as they wanted everyone to get a shot at the track, and didn't know if the weather would hold.

Since the first Drag Week in 2005 with forty cars, the event has grown into this year's 310 first day count. I was convinced in 2011 that two hundred would be unmanageable, but they have made the necessary adjustments in track personnel, event personnel, and procedures to keep up with the demand. Thursday at Great Bend was a shining example of this, when the call was made for Daily Driver. In the first forty-five minutes before the rain, they had been running cars all the way to the finish line before the next set even hit the water box, but now they went double time with one set staging and the next set in the water ready to start their burnout as soon as the first guys cleared 60ft., and they put a hundred cars down the track in just over forty minutes!
Most of the DD guys, knowing this was a one shot deal, then the class cars would finish up, and a clean up, open session would only be ran as weather permitted, made this one count and called it a day! The pits cleared out pretty quickly after 1:20PM.
Ken Metzinger's red 66 Barracuda(pictured in above post) ran 13.45-99, right in line with where he was at Topeka and Thunder Valley. Mr. Ogle blew the tires off his big gold Challenger at the launch and moved hard right out of the groove, but stayed with it, and wrestled the E-body back to the meat of the track with an 11.78-120.1. Robert's big black Ram R/T responded to the great air with a 14.70-91, while Rachael put down a disappointing 12.60-108.8, she was clearly back to her three runs a day routine!

John and I pitted together. I was napping in my truck trying to stay warm when John tapped on the window to go get our runs about 12:40pm. I hadn't had a good nights sleep because the hotel screwed my reservations up and I had to drive over 40 miles out of town to find a room at midnight. Not fun. Of course I had it much better than these guys, so they probably thought I was whining for no reason, lol. The truck definitely liked the cooler air running a new best for me.

Boone and I watched from the lanes as Clark, Ross, Mike, Scott, Clark, and the rest of the Mopars in DD made their one hit count for Great Bend.
"This Valiant is averaging 11.28 for the week, and he just ran 11.29! That kind of consistency is going to play well for him in the bracket race". Freiburger's call on John's run was definitely foreshadowing, or just a good observation, one or the other.

At 1:15PM, I found myself in the water box, directly behind Addie Ross in the Falcon Wagon. I was determined to watch her pass, but they waved at me to start my burn-out when the Falcon was at half track, and I completely missed the numbers on the scoreboard.
The Valiant yanked the front end up hard and the engine was at full song immediately, I hit second a little early at around 6400, and it ripped through the middle of the track, the bottom of drive felt good, then it started to struggle to pull rpm up top, and I was rewarded with a 10.781 at only 122.

Back in the pits, I questioned Rachael about her pass, "Were you imitating the turbo cars up there? Why did you take so long to launch after the tree came down?"
"James and Dale were on me to hit the N20 early...so I staged...then accidently hit the button early, and it died on the line, so I had to put it in neutral, start it, then go", she explained.
I didn't say it, but I was actually impressed that she pulled it together and saved the run! I've seen quite a few veteran drivers get totally shaken up when they have a similar problem.
I texted Darryl, and asked him what the Falcon ran, and he texted back 11.13 almost immediately, as he had basically been glued to the live feed every single day, going through massive withdrawals!
Boone was up next, about thirteen minutes after my run, and the Barnyard responded with it's best ever Drag Week run, an 11.242-118.74, that left him smiling, and ready to call it a day.

Dale idled the Gremlin into the water box at 2:00pm, about ten minutes after they announced that the lanes would close at 3:30, He launched at bit crooked, and the Gremlin moved out of the groove, fighting for traction, and basically throwing away a full tenth by the 330ft clocks compared to earlier passes. He held on for a 9.41-141.16.
Rachael ran just behind him, and carded another 12.614-109.53, the last bottle Monte had filled for us only had 6lbs. in it, and I was beginning to wonder if we had enough nitrous left to get an eleven second run in the Belvedere today. Addie Ross made her third pass of the day just behind Rachael, the little gold Falcon wagon went 11.06-122, and I could tell by her dad's body language on the starting line, that it was their last shot of the day, and the dream of an all ten second Drag Week had slipped through their fingers. As happy as I was to move past them in our class at that point, I would've preferred seeing them get a 10.99.