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Stage 9 , July 3
The weather remains cool, which is a blessing,
and the thunderstorms we encountered didn't affect the
timed portions of the race. We went under one cell that
had you thinking of the Wizard of Oz, humming 'na-nana-na-na-naaa...'.
There was circulation and a few places that lookes like
they might sprout a funnel cloud, but we made it out from
under it during a transit. Some teams in open cars encountered
hail at the front of the pack, but because it was a transit
they ducked under an overpass.
Lots of open field running today, which
we like: plenty of time to see intersections, and long
runs at fixed speeds confirm that our speedometer calibration
is correct. Out west, the transits can be pretty long,
and we had hours of running on I-80 at 65 mph. The Rover
passes many other racrs when on the Interstate, where your
speeds are not controlled. Transits are calcualted at 50
mph, so you can make up some time and get a longer break
afterwards if you motor at better speeds.
The course was pretty straightforward, no
mazes or complicated maneuvers, so once again it was driver
skill to be able to hold speeds and do speed changes accurately.
For those of you who know this area, we pretty much followed
the Union Pacific on the old highways: straight runs through
cattle ranches and farms, slow for a small town with silos
and no stoplight, then speed up again.
That's not to say there was no drama. We
went through a hilly and tree covered area of Nebraska
(yes, they do have hills there!) with lots of ups and downs,
and really crappy pavement which had the Rover pitching
so much all I could do was to average the speedo needle
at 50. We often hit bumps and frost heaves that had our
gear in back airborne. A set of emergency instructions
were passed out at the start due to a bridge being out
for repair, and we were diverted on about 20 miles of rural
dirt roads. No problem for us, but you can imagine those
Indy car owners with nominal air filtering weren't too
pleased. GR roads are brutal sometimes, and that's part
of the challenge.
Another challenge in this part of the country
is farm equipment. My goodness but tractors are getting
big these days! We encountered two sets of equipment today,
one we got around easily, but one that had a big part of
the race tied up in knots: these two big boys not only
obstructed both lanes, they had both berms covered as well!
Cars in front of us were pulled over and we were waved
down to stop, but we charged on at 50 mph, and just as
we got to them they pulled over for oncoming traffic, which
also pulled over for us. We were one of the few who made
it by cleanly: it pays to attend Sunday Chapel services!
One other top team jumped out in front of us, and with
some heavy calculations (they were 5 minutes late) they
positioned themselves just ahead of us and stayed there
until the end, where they could file a 'time delay'.
We're continuing to refine our game, and
we made two air pressure adjustments, one before the speedo
calc, one mid day. This worked sweet: :09 for the day,
our first single digit Stage! This was only :02 out from
the money in our class, and when you look at 'raw scores'
without the age factor, only two teams in the whole field
beat us, and those by only a few seconds.
We're feeling really good now. We knew the
Rover could pull winning scores, and now we're showing
it. Today is our day off, and we'll answer some more questions
that have been sent our way, plus send over more pics.
Today I'll rejet the carb for altitude (taking the Rochester
from a 48 to a 46, since we'll be going up from here),
and we'll run some practice to see how much our elapsed
speeds are affected by altitude. We'll also have time to
give the truck a good cleaning, but absolutely no repairs
are needed. There are a lot of teams doing major surgery
today, but not us!
Steve & Janet
Greatrace 45
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