high winds and a wayward tumbleweed.........

Might want to clean the carb before this years Drag Week.

There may have been a gremlin living in there

Maybe a rodent Hopefully he will cover the carb. from now on when it will sit for more than a day or two

Id have to agree with you Billy, that's pretty bad

10 bucks he dusts the carb off and runs it "as is"

It was actually a bird's nest...

eggs for breakfast !

I answered Boone's phone call and he quickly explained that he had caught up with Darren and Dale at a wide spot in the road-gas station in the middle of nowhere Illinois, and they were trying to find someone with a welder.
"I saw them pull off and head down a side road...what was that all about", I questioned.
"They were bottoming out the Gremlin on every little bump in the road, so they pulled off the beaten path to transfer all the stuff from Dale's rack into Darren's truck."
"So, they were cheating!"
"It's only cheating if you get caught, which is why they drove up a side road to do it. Besides, once I caught up to them, we stuck everything in the trailer behind the Barnyard, so we're legal again!"
"I told him that rack was a bad idea, but why are you completely stopped if he unloaded all the excess weight?"
"I had the floor jack in the trailer, so he really couldn't check out the problem until I caught up to them. Once we got it in the air, Dale realized that one pair of the lower adjustable shock mounts had been beat up so bad that the bolt had ripped free and they were essentially trying to drive across US-67 with one 130 pound coil spring holding up the back of the car!"

As soon as Dale had finished building his custom trailer hitch rack and set those two totes, and two five gallon jugs on it, it was clear to me that he had created another problem, but he refused to change course. The first couple of days, he had crawled under the Gremlin and screwed the bottom spring mounts a couple inches up the shocks in order to allow for more play while driving down the road, but since we had left Cordova in a rain storm, he tried to get by without diving under the car.

Boone and I compared the math on our route sheets, and decided we were a good twenty miles up the road from them, and he assured me there was no need for any of our group to turn back.

More please! At the risk of sounding demanding, I/we are sitting on pins and needles.
Thanks Billy, in advance!
Don

Less then 100 days until Drag Week 2016...

The only way for this to work now is going to be a true netflix binge fest! We've got several episodes to go on 2015 and the first 10 episodes of 2016 have already been shot!

It was the warmest afternoon of traveling we had experienced on Drag Week 2015, and the water temp gauge that Aaron had payed little grief to over the last fifty miles, now held his rapt attention. He tried 2600 rpm, then 2800, and finally 3K.
"It doesn't seem to matter! It just won't drop below 220 no matter what", he breathed in nervous exasperation.
"Do I need to throw a rag over it?" I teased, "here's what I can tell you, when you try three grand, John and Rachael disappear off our back bumper and we start pulling away. He's got an electric water pump on that big block and his temp gauge doubles as his speedometer, so let's back off and try to keep the gang all together."

Our nice little countryside two lane jaunt turned into stop light, and city street driving as we traversed the town of Macomb Il., population 21,000. We cleared the town on US136, then we were required to make a right to get back onto US67 again. Aaron had clicked the 904 into low, and eased onto the narrower, shoulderless two lane, which was empty in front of us. He applied no more throttle than it took to move the tach needle, and immediately shifted into second as soon as the 428 gained 500 rpm.
"Show this thing some love, she ain't no show poodle!" I had turned my head to face him, both for affect as well as to gauge his reaction.
He shot me a sidelong glance, "What?"
"Show her some love", I repeated.
He rolled the power on, with the torque coming on faster than the rpm.
"This throttle pedal goes on forever!" He exclaimed, grabbing drive as the needle swung past 6.
As a point of fact the throttle has a very short throw from idle to wide open, but as I mentioned earlier the light action requires keen attention, and therefore provides more feel than one is accustomed to...much like the trigger pull on a double barrel 12 gauge.
He lifted shortly after the shift, but didn't look over or address me until after we had settled back into cruising speed.
"I'm thinking you are going to cause me to spend a bunch of money when I get home", he laughed, "this is too much fun!"

An hour later, I called Boone for an update.
"Well...the good news is that we managed to get Dale's shocks adjusted, and the brackets welded up, so we were back on the road", he explained.
"Were? That sounds ominous, what's the bad news?"
"We are on the shoulder right now with the Aussies, the 1320 Video guys, some of the Hot Rod camera crew and probably 10 other Drag Week cars!"
"What is going on? I didn't see any shoulders on this road that would support a crowd like that!"
"You know Mike in the old Firebird, that has been traveling with Daryl in the Chevelle?" He questioned, then paused.
"Yeah, yeah...I've been calling them the 'Drag Week Odd Couple'. What happened?"
"Well...some gal in a lifted truck ran him off the road! He went into the ditch on the right side, fought it back onto the asphalt, shot across the two lane and ended up in the ditch on the opposite side."
"Oh boy, did it tear the car up very bad?"
"Don't have a clue. You see, the left ditch is really more of a ravine, with a marsh at the bottom...the Firebird is ten feet below us in high grass and mud to the door handles!"
"So...all of you stopped?"
"No, just Dad and I. Dale and Darren kept going, and I think Robert is ahead of them."

Thanks Billy. I enjoy your tale.

Always enjoy your writing.

Wow, I had not heard about the Firebird going in the ditch. Scary!

Thank you Billy for taking time out of your busy life to entertain your faithful followers!
One of these years I would like to join you on this adventure called Drag Week.

Don

We rolled into the town of Jacksonville IL. just as the evening shadows were growing long and the effective range of our fuel tanks were reaching their limit. I motioned towards a fairly new gas station in front of a Wal-Mart Supercenter, and Aaron pulled the Valiant up to the nearest pump with John following us in, and the Belvedere only a bit behind with Skippy at the wheel.
We had just began to fuel when a mini-van pulled to the edge of the lot, and Elana Scherr and Wes Allison jumped out with cameras at the ready. They took a few shots while we conferred at the station, then proposed that they follow us across town and shoot the cars as we traversed the city.
"The lighting is perfect, with dusk coming on!" Wes enthused.
We had really planned on stopping somewhere in Jacksonville to have Opal's birthday dinner, but now we had this conundrum. I've been a car magazine geek for forty years, and when a renowned cover photographer says he wants to shoot your cars cruising through town...well...stopping to eat doesn't seem quite as pressing!

It was roughly seven miles across the town of 19,000 which had been home to EMI/Capitol's vinyl record pressing plant from 1965 to 1995. We cruised in the right lane while the Hot Rod staff van took up a position in the left lane about two car lengths ahead of us. Mr. Allison propped himself up in the shotgun seat of the van, on his knees, facing backwards with the entire top half of his body hanging out the open window. He would give Aaron exaggerated hand signals to adjust the distance between the vehicles, take a few shots, then more hand signals, all the time looking angry and frustrated.
"What do I do?" Aaron asked me, feeling the pressure.
"Stay between the lines, and don't hit any of the other cars", I teased. I wasn't like we were the only two cars driving through the heart of town at 6:30 on a Thursday evening.
Wes motioned for the park lights to be turned on, took a few shots, then asked for the headlights.
"Heck of a game face he has!" I commented.
"Yeah, you'd think he hated his job from the look of him", Aaron added, then he breathed noticeably easier when the van faded back to Rachael and Skippy to repeat the process with the Belvedere.

It's not the first time Wes Allison has shot the Valiant or the Belvedere, it's just that I've never seen the pictures...they are probably buried in the Hot Rod archives by now, never to be seen again. Luckily Elana used these in one of her Hot Rod Drag Week updates on Hotrod.com, so I had the opportunity to get them, and they are easily among my favorite photos ever of both cars.

Finally the Hot Rod van moved back to take pics of John and Opal in the 67 Valiant and a few minutes later I received a text from Opal that read "We need to pull over, our headlights aren't working".
We were just reaching the edge of town, about to cross under I-72, so we pulled off into an area with a gas station, two motels, and a fifties themed diner that had apparently closed about six months prior judging from the overgrown shrubs in the parking lot.
John fiddled with the light switch a few times, and the headlights appeared to be working just fine.
"That photographer was a pain in the tail!" John complained, "He kept asking for lights, but I had already pulled the switch, so I don't know what the problem was!"
Aaron had been on his phone as soon as we shut the Valiant off, and he walked over to John and I to relay that Robert was only a few miles away and asked for us to wait up. I looked at our clump of cars and the abandoned diner and decided to fetch my camera for a few shots myself. Robert showed up shortly along with the second Hot Rod camera crew, the ones that were documenting the Firebird in the ditch, they grabbed a few quick shots of us as well, and jumped back out on the road.

Top photo by the Amateur
Bottom photo by the Pro

Yeah, I suck!