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Louisville KY to Urbana, IL.
Is it the opening credits for "Green Acres" or
is it Indiana?
It's midnight and thunderstorms are rattling the windows.
The canvas sides are down and strapped tight, so settle
in for tonight's narrative.
Well, we're finally getting things dialed in. Today we
transitioned from the rolling hills of the Blue Ridge mountains
into the midwest farmlands, and the rallying has changed
character. The roads are much more gridlike, following
county lines and plots, through 6' tall corn and around
the pig and turkey farms. Such a nice smell in 90 degree
heat!
Jaws firmly set, we were all set to have a good day.
A camera crewman stuck his video camera in the cockpit,
and as Janet counted down to launch, I lifted off the clutch
and pressed the gas, and rooom! but no movement. Dang!
Wrestle the shift lever into gear and hop off down the
road. Smooooth. Even better, on tape. You just know this
will come back to haunt us.
Then to add injury to insult, we missed a turn. Dang!
It was a tough day, lots of turns and speed changes, and
as we found out later, almost every team had their problems
too.
Anyway, I have fallen for this before. There was a Model
T parked on the side of the road, not unusual as the local
folks bring out their old cars for us to see. It was on
the left, the turn was on the right. I saw a stop sign
ahead and knew that wasn't the next instruction. So Janet
turned me around and had me run the exact same speed back
to the turn, which she doubled to get the total loss. 2:12:00.
She then had me run all maneuvers and posted speeds at
10% higher for 22 minutes. Amazingly we ended up ACEing
the leg for a zero error!
Our score today was good for a 14th place finish overall,
and we can do better. We even beat the kids, the race leaders,
who came over and congratulated us on a good run. Ya' gotta
love it, but when you're rooting for the old age and treachery
teams it's hard to split the loyalties without looking
like a dope. Greatrace is like that, we all take delight
in our friends doing well.
Entering
Urbana, the evening stop. Big crowd, big party. Also a
nice car show with local iron.
It's raining pretty hard out there now. Cunningham's Model
A speedster, the young man who is currently leading the
race, has no top. One of the racers moved his car out of
his trailer so that Greg's car would be protected from
any hail that might pop up, even though it risks his own.
How cool is that
One quick point: the race's founder, Tom McRae, had a
vision for getting high school kids in the hobby. No one
would be happier with Cunningham's success more than him.
The Rover continues to work perfectly, and it's still
a big hit at all of the stops.
It's late and we're out at 8:00 AM tomorrow. Thanks for
checking in, and to those of you who have come out to say
hi. We hope to have more good news tomorrow.
Steve & Janet
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