NO EXCUSES

Those who know me know my preference for the 1961 Imperial as the epitome of automotive sculpture. It’s also a really well-engineered car. I started to collect them in 1999 or so. You may have seen the site I started to log the acquisition and restoration of a 4-door hardtop called Subtle XS, or you may have come to this page from there. With a family, business, and a real life to lead, that project came into hiatus a few years back, but not until I had amassed (good word here!) FIVE 1961 Imperials. One was a rare convertible in fair condition and needing a pretty thorough restoration, but I set it aside until the original 4-door got done. Then, my friend Dave Ullman and I decided to enter the Great Race – a long-distance endurance road rally across America. It just seemed like it might be WAAAY more appropriate to do that in an open car, so the convertible project jumped to the front of the line in the summer of 2005 – one year to get ready for the Race: deadline June 24, 2006.

Still having to work, I knew I'd need professional help (with the car!), so I searched out for a restoration shop capable of a complete mechanical overhaul and some cosmetic clean-up. Somehow I settled on a shop in Bradford, Ontario (not TOO far from my home). They had a very presentable facility, had done some similar-vintage Chryslers, and they were REALLY eager to take this on. I should have seen that as the hard-sell it was. I have rarely made worse mistakes. This shop (that shall remain nameless except in the complaints I will send to Hemmings and the BBB) overstepped their authority and pulled and stripped the body from the frame without asking! Now I had to decide: go forward with a full restoration or stop. No contest. We agreed on a budget and off they went. Mistake #2: I should have pulled the project from them right then. They quickly shot through the budget and we were nowhere near done. The level of communication was poor and the project management was abysmal. Finally, in February 2006; I called it quits and pulled the project. At that time, it looked like this:

Mel Benzaquen of Classic Restorations in Stony Point, NY had agreed to take on the project and get ‘er done in time, based on the first shop’s representation that the car was ready for paint and reassembly. HA! Little did we know they had butchered the body with bad bondo – to the point that the trim pieces wouldn’t even fit on! A huge push ensued to get the car ready in time. Thanks, Mel et Cie.! We did it. For details about that process, check out Classic Restorations project log HERE. When I picked it up again (Friday, June 16 – just days before the Race), it looked like this:

OK, it cost a WEE bit more than originally planned, but it’s all done and we’re ready to Race!

Oh, well, there is the small matter of getting it legal (state inspection) and insured (it’s worth a bit more now) and stocked with spare parts, and broken in (brand new engine rebuild – new brakes – etc. – all need some break-in); and packed for a two week trip with two persons. And I have to finish prepping the folks at my small business to do without me for a few weeks, and I really should help dear wife Sue get my son Ethan ready for camp and daughter Sam starts a new job, but she’s under the weather; and I have to get the Scout Troop ready for our week-long camp-out 6 days after I return from the Race. No time to waste!

Dave Ullman, my old friend, has foolishly agreed to participate as Navigator, and he arrived Tuesday June 20. I had tried to get the Imp inspected Monday, but the back-up lights are mysteriously inoperative (they worked yesterday!). Is this an omen, or just a sign that there’s No Going Back?! The brake booster is hissing, too – a major vacuum leak during brake use – can we live with it? Can it be swapped out in time? I posted my first plea for help to our Imperial club online mailing list.

HEEELLLPPP! It's two days before we leave on the Great Race and the  '61 failed inspection - no back-up lights, AND, the brakes are making  a vacuum-leaking hiss when the pedal is pressed unless I really press  down.  Does anyone know where the back-up switch is and how it works or fails?  Can I trust the booster with a vacuum leak like this or must I pull  it out and try a fast swap?  near panic. jc 

Dave, Ethan, and I work feverishly through Tuesday night and Wednesday, finding and resolving these bugs. We’re legal Wednesday afternoon. Packed that night, and off to Philadelphia Thursday morning. We have a beautiful, but untested and unfamiliar car, but psychologically, we’re ready!

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Day 1: Home to Philly

Well, we got here. It’s a 5 –1/2 hour ride normally from Melrose, NY to Philadelphia, PA. We kept the speed down a bit, so we did it in 6+. It was a hot day and sunny, but it’s a convertible, so we ran top-down. We had some knocking pulling the hills, so once we arrived and settled in, we retarded the spark. Lacking a proper timing light, we engineer-types figured the perimeter of the distributor base and calculated that the thickness of a screwdriver tip at the base circle is 1.5 degrees. I struck the rim of the base and the adjacent block with the tip and a hammer, making a 1.5 degree mark, then rotated the distributor til the two mark halves were just out of alignment. Voila! No more knock and a cooler running engine, too. We burned a quart of oil in that first day (better stock up) and the brakes get a little screechy. There is a strange ooze from the back axle end at the left, but it doesn't SEEM to be brake fluid. Keep an eye on this one! Otherwise, all is well.

We checked in for the race, surrounded by a host of incredible cars and good people, many of whom we knew already. We had met at a practice rally in Texas, which we ran in a rental Toyota convertible, with cardboard fins to represent our not-yet-done Imperial.

The ‘taillights’ are hotel-room cups colored red with an indelible marker:

Art and Engineering Together Again!

Now we are fully armed with a real car and it got its competition markings:

We’re Ready To RUN!

Day 3: Stage 1

(note, from here, you will get my daily text postings, enhanced with minimal edits and picture adds. They are written for Imperial Club members, but I hope all will enjoy them. There’s a little repetition in this first post from the road). jc

Well, we're through two days of running (not counting the 5-hour run from home to Philly for the start). This is my first access to email. So far, so good.

We were up til midnight Tuesday, fixing the backup lights to pass inspection so we'd be legal to drive to the race, much less IN it. They had blown a 20A fuse in that circuit! The switch and bulbs are fine, and we could get light at low current when we fed the switch separately, so in the end, we just made a jumper that bypasses the in-harness lead from fuse to switch - and all is better.

There's juice oozing from the rear axle near the left hub, but I'm 99% sure after three days running that it's not brake fluid, even though those pads do scream from time to time. The motor seems to be doing well. The idle is rough, mostly because of the vacuum leak from the booster, I think, but otherwise, it seems to be taking the load. We set the timing back 2 degrees because it was knocking on the hot run down. It's been fine ever since in that regard. About 14 MPG at 70 MPH. It burned a quart on the way down to Philly, but no more in the next two days.

Handling was awful at first, running on orginal-spec bias ply tires (Goodrich Silvertown 8.20 x 15, from Coker Tire-and by the way, Corky Coker and his wife Teresa are running the Race, too, in their 1930's INDY racer!). Lowering tire pressure from 30-33 to the spec 24-26 made a BIG difference in that (but there's still not much cornering ability!)

Our exhaust pipes are knocking about under there, especially in hard going, due to some interferences at extreme suspension positions, but I suppose they'll survive.

Overall, I'm VERY pleased with the car so far. I begin to think we MIGHT make it all the way.

We did get our first battle scar - the left front hubcap went loose on a railroad crossing and I think it clipped the left rear fender on the way by. There's a little slash behind that wheel well. I guess when we get back, we'll have to ask for some touch-up. From now on, we're running sans caps - the gold wheels and stickers make it look like an early Richard Petty Plymouth racer! I'd like to post some pix, but not to the whole list? - (does anyone have an ftp site I can access from out here? Kenyon?).

Our team number is 61, not by coincidence! We've done two park-and-shows during meal breaks and the Imp draws a good crowd even in this amazing field of cars! we're racing against everything from brass-era cars (1913 Velie, a 1920's Rolls-Royce) through Model A's and 40's vintage sports club racers, to every kind of sedan you can imagine, and some unique sports cars. None is newer than our '61 and we are the only Imperial!

We even had our first IML'er visit on the starting grid in Philly. Thanks, Jeff - well met! For those wondering what license plates we ended with: NO XQS [see title of this BLOG!]

[Here’s a shot of the starting grid on the Boulevard in Philadelphia: ->

TheFredettes in the yellow Model A pickup will prove to be good teachers]

Today, we got some interesting road grime: It was raining and we were dodging buggies in Amish country. Those horses have their own kind of emissions problems, y'know! The tops been up and down. We stuffed shoprags in the A-pillar tops to minimize the leaks there today and it worked fine, even in hard rain. No A/C at all, alas. The compressor kicks in, but we get no cooling. Even ventilation is severely limited and we think maybe one or more damper doors are not opening, as even with the fan on high, we can barely feel any airflow.

Unlike the car, our performance is only so-so. We're in 5th, I think, of 25 rookies, and about 55th overall (midfield of 103). We're getting better, though! It's LOTS of fun. Although our total score wasn't much better today, our better segments were better, indeed - we just made a couple of bad mistakes on other segments. We're off tomorrow from York, PA to Washington, PA - then on into Ohio Monday. More as events warrant! Stay tuned and we welcome any IML'ers who stop by to say 'HI'

I'll try to post more as practical! jc

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Day 4: Stage 2

IMLer's: Please excuse if I don't answer each of you - time is tight in Great Race days!

Today, we crossed the Allegheny Mountains, moving from York, PA to Washington, PA (almost into Ohio), over the old National Road, pieces of which became US 40, then I-70. We drove all the twisty, hilly bits that they cut out for the faster highways - perfect for a challenging road rally! Well, perfect for more ordinary rally cars - the sheer size of the Imperial makes those mountain twisty one-and-a-half-lane roads a real challenge, indeed. But we did OK. It poured rain throughout the morning. At least 4 inches fell in an hour or two at the peak of it. We were reasonably comfortable, but we found all the leaks in the weatherstripping and we also found that the defogger has its limits. The rain seems to have contributed to two electrical faults. The driver's window switch won't connect for 'down,' only 'up.' I can hotwire that to the other window on the left side (they mostly go up & down together anyway. Mysteriously, the horn died this evening as we were pulling into town. The roads are lined with kids and families out to see this amazing collection of unusual cars go by, so tooting is de riguer. Every town we have visited so far (York, Lancaster, and Washington, PA, plus Cumberland, MD) has closed their main street and let us fill it with a rolling car show for an hour or two. We stop to eat and un-eat, and the locals enjoy the cars. It really is a show - part parade, part museum, part car-show, part race. In Cumberland, they even had the restored theatre on Main Street open to feed us and they were showing the old Tony Curtis Great Race movie! It's a real boost at the end of a run to come into a town through the finish arch to the applause of a crowd! Needless to say, the mighty 61 Imperial convertible ALWAYS gets a big hand. And in EVERY town so far, at least one (often two) guys come up to say, 'my uncle X had one JUST like this!' Already, I think we've accounted for most of the total production (429) of 61 Imperial convertibles ;) !

For those of you worried about the vacuum leak: it's ONLY during gentle braking. There is no leak normally, with no brakes, nor with hard application. I think we can live with that. The risk of running A/C uncharged, well, that I can't say. Pinkie, the Parts Car Not had uncharged A/C for years with no ill effects when I finally sprung for a load of R-12. I think we'll give it a go. And the jumper for the brake lights is NOT a fuse bypass, just a bypass for a wire that was shorting somewhere - it can say in forever, as it just replicates the original connection.

When we left home, this engine had just 80 miles on a total rebuild. It ran pretty well! It burned a quart in the 350 miles to Philly, so I bought a case for the long trip. In the three days' running since, it hasn't burnt a drop that I can measure, and it's still as clear as honey. The transmission (also freshly rebuilt) is shifting a bit hard, but there's no slip at all. As we found out in the rain, the wipers work well. The lights all work still. We have been very pleasantly surprised at the comfort level of the seats, too. Neither of us has any stiffness (yet). We did discover that the smooth leather is not ideal for wearing shorts - they do get sticky in the sun.

Today, we thought we executed MUCH better than before, with no real major errors. We were a bit disappointed to see our score did not improve! We're in 46th overall (of 89 still running), and 5th for Rookies (of 26). Well, tomorrow is another day. There's still room to move up! Check out the details at www.greatrace.com. Look for National Guard Great Race 2006 (Nat Guard is the Title Sponsor this year). Pictures are posted already from yesterday (24th), but none of the Lone Imp yet. They took a good one of us exiting a covered bridge today - maybe it will make the postings by tomorrow! all for now, jc

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Day 5: Stage 3

Well, it was too late last night for a report, and it will be quick this AM. We're off at 7:45 this morning. Yesterday, we did very well in 5 of 6 measured legs, and we don't know why we scored notably worse on the last one, bringing our daily score to 1 minute 36 seconds, a bit worse overall than our previous days! Even though that beat some of our other rookie competitors, we have now dropped from 5th in rookie to 11th, because of our newer car (older cars get a multiplier less than one on their actual scores - our factor is 1.00), and because of our consistency day-to-day (lowest of three scores was dropped today, some others had worse days to drop). Oh well - more days to go!

Weather was nice yesterday, cool and not too wet. We had some terrific welcomes as we crossed Ohio, stopping in Wheeling, WV, then Cambridge, Zanesville, and Dublin. Local car clubs had lots of their cars on display, bands played, closed streets were lined with crowds - quite the parties! Some teams have hand-out cards with pictures and descriptions of their cars, to give the kids, who go around collecting them. So last night, I made up some of ours and sized them 4 to the page and found a 24 hr Kinko's to print and cut a hundred of them for us. [you can see ours at the top of this blog. Click HERE to go there]

Mechanically, we're OK I think. The engine is sweet. The horn has returned all on its own. When I tied together the up contact of the driver's window (dead) with the same contact pin for the left rear window, I got a surprise: using the left rear switch for both makes them go in OPPOSITE directions! Its OK, because I can hold both momentarily and get the effect I need. Weird and I can't even imagine how that happened! We have an annoying squeak in the rear whenever we're on power. I'll get under this AM (hence the short note). I hope it's just rubbing exhaust pipes or something.

For now, and for the Imperial Expeditionary Force/Farce, jc

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Day 6: Stage 4

WoW! What a tough day! 7 1/2 hours of competition, from Dublin, Ohio to Indianapolis, Indiana in a run that lasted from 7:45 to 6:30. We made show stops in three other smaller cities in between! We were doing well until the last leg, when our brains were a bit fried. The last leg of today's rally was a maze of farm roads (just a wee bit wider than the Imp!). It was a series of stop-and-go's at speeds of 15, 20, 25, 35, 45 mph, looping around and back over the same intersections. At one time there were 73 car in the maze at once! We missed a turn and actually lost track of our time error (OK, let's call it that we were 'lost'). By the time we recovered the track, we knew we were several minutes off the pace, but we weren't sure just how much! With the other cars criss-crossing all around, we couldn’t even just try to catch up to our original position in the order - we couldn't tell where that position was! We took a SWAG and floored it, passing the '56 and '58 Corvettes, a Mackey, and our friends in a '58 DeSoto, all while they were dutifully going about 35 mph, and we were blasting at near 70 - all on 1-lane farm roads, passing halfway in the weeds. WHEW!

The best cars for this type of event are small, light, overpowered cars with tight suspensions and manual transmissions. And fade-proof brakes. SO we have a real challenge here, to prove that and Imperial can take it and make it even in this trial. We did OK. On that got-lost leg, we overcorrected and came in 1 minute TOO EARLY! We'll have slid a bit in the rankings, I guess, but we also got our first ACE (award for a perfect time - zero seconds error) on a leg early in the day.

The Imp was a real soldier today. We flew down some rough and gravelly little trails. We hit the brakes hard. We even powerslid a few corners when we were way off. Not the intended life for a stately cruiser like this. Still, not even a stone chip today, just a little more rattle underneath. OH! I forgot to tell you about that rattle I mentioned yesterday! This morning EARLY, before we began, I slid under and found the left exhaust mount (not the little flexy bit, but the frame-mounted cantilever) squeaked when I pushed up on the pipes. AHA! So I tightened that right up and that squeak stopped. As soon as we got out on the course, though, I could hear that I had not gotten the one I was after. In my haste, I assumed that the squeak I had found was THE squeal, not just A squeak. Back on my back tomorrow, too, I guess. Still, I can't complain. There were 3 DNF's today - at least one due to a water-whipping prairie thunderstorm that blew water sideways into everything (including some old ignitions). We're changing tactics slightly tomorrow. Who knows?

Wish I could send you some pictures! So far, none of the posted images at greatrace.com show the Imp (the popular image around here is more for 30s vintage open wheel racers).

All for now, jc

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Day 7: Stage 5

Well, I wrote you a longer report, but this road-based email program is hard for me. I think I erased it before it got sent. I'll try again in brief.

Today was a driver's consistency course - lots of long, level runs. That's better for a big car. We tried a new method for timing the corners, as we were not satisfied with our performance so far. We were ragged, working out the details on the fly, and then we missed a timing mark on the last leg. So we got a 1:24, about the same as before. Still, we are encouraged by that (we didn't get worse, even when learning a new way), so we'll do it that way tomorrow, too - we WILL break the one-minute mark. For today, though, we fell in the ranks again - to 15th in Rookies and 70th overall.

No rain today. We ran from Indianapolis IN, to St. Louis, MO. We did our park and show on the famous Eads bridge over the Mississippi, closed just for us. I got a photo of the Imp on the bridge with the Gateway Arch behind, as the sun set.

Still, the small towns are more fun. They really come out for us and Vandalia, IN is my favorite so far!

[Vandalia, the former capital city of Indiana, is where Abe Lincoln first practiced law. Here’s a rare picture of a Lincoln inside an Imperial!}

A big car is tough in this run, but we don't have it the worst. There's a team of two fellows running a 1922 Rolls Royce - mechanical brakes on the rear only. Manual spark advance. Wow, what a job to horse that around. So, they’re really just touring - but they still managed a 43-second score today!

The Imp is running well. A little lope at idle (fouled plug or vacuum leaks?), but strong and smooth under power. The brake pedal is lower than when we started, but still firm. The new method we adopted today uses timing of the decel and accel half-speed points, rather than pre-measured tables of speed-change times. That allows a gentler driving style as the half is the half whether the braking and accels are hard or not. I think we can get the brakes all the way to California this way!

We haven't seen any IMLers since Jeff Cantor in Philly. I know we aren't coming to every town in America, but if we're near you, we'd love to meet. How often do you see a racing Imperial after all? til tomorrow, jc

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Day 8: Stage 6

YESSSSSS! Well, today our new formula paid off and we achieved not only less than 1 minute error, but a very satisfying 15 second score! Of course, it was a low-scoring day for many teams, because the organizers elected to drop one leg that 'some teams' had difficulty understanding (isn't that the point?!). We did it just fine, but they make the rules. If they'd kept that one, we would have moved up more, but as is we went from 70th to 65th and from 17th to 9th in Rookie Class. In fact, I spooked a little during the last leg, when we missed a speed change mark and the car behind (that didn't miss it) came charging up on us. Dave proposed an approximate correction (we couldn't know exactly when we missed that sign), but I thought we needed more - just because that trailing car (a Mercedes 190SL) was so close. I was wrong and though Dave accepted my 5 second extra correction, we ended up 10 seconds early on that leg. If I'd stayed the course, we would have had 10 seconds today and won the Daily Rookie Trophy! Lesson learned.

Today we ran from St. Louis to Springfield, MO. We had only two intermediate stops and it was another driver's day - with a real premium on steady speed control, rather than lots of rapid fire turns and speed changes for the navigators. Now that we're in the flats, the Imp is very happy and we'll be gaining on the little cars that out-manuevered us in the hills.

[we passed through Ulman, MO – a tiny village, unexpected. Dave’s last name is Ullman, so he snapped a shot over his shoulder as we motored out of downtown Ulman:

Is there any better way to see the country than from an open Imperial?]

Absolutely no mechanical problems so far. The oil was less than 1/2 quart down this morning. We still didn't get to that squeak, because we were parked in an urban garage last night (St. Louis) and it was an uninviting place to lie down and slide under. Besides, I need a curb to pull up onto to make room for my fat head to fit safely under.

Whenever we pull in to a town for a pit stop or meal, we always line 'em up for the folks to see. We hand out picture cards to the kids and sign autographs. The Imp always has its top down (if no rain) so the folks can see the red leather, square steering wheel, pushbutton transmission, AND we always put out our 1:18 die cast model, bedecked with great race stickers, just like the real car! Very popular with the little folk!

I'd like to tell you that there's pictures of us on the website, but so far I haven't seen one of the Imp there. The organizers favor the older cars and open-wheelers, perhaps as more evocative of the 1908 Great Race - Who remembers that movie?

Well. I'm off to bed, psyched for another good run tomorrow (to Wichita), and the proof in the doing of our improved technique: to repeat our good scores as consistently as we began with poorer ones. Jc

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Day 9: Stage 7

Just a pre-breakfast quickie (message that is). I got up early to get under and find that squeak. I don’t know if I got it this time or not, but I did find the right exhaust hanger bolt (not the frame-to-cantilever, but the strap-to-cantilever bolt that is replaced in normal exhaust installation) was completely gone. That squeak had gotten worse yesterday, in that it went from being power-on only to all-the-time. Maybe that's when the loose bolt left us?

Just a quick word about the exhaust. Classic Restorations that finished this car in time for the Race did a GREAT job (not like the first shop in Branford Ontario that was really bad - you may see 1/2 page ads in Hemmings, RUN AWAY!), but there was little time for sorting out the details. The exhaust shop was a sub, and I'm not impressed. The U-bolts were loose and this is the second hanger fault. It's not proper parts, either. There 's a weld joint forward, where there should be a front muffler; and the bigger back mufflers are round instead of oval, eating up critical clearance in the intricate fit between frame and body. Clunks and squeaks and a booming resonance at 40-45 mph. sigh. The life of a racer.

I had noticed a popping when the hood first lifts and I found that this morning, too, when I checked the oil (another quart in). The hood is slightly too far back and while it clears the cowl when closed, it clips it on the way up. First paint chips there now, due to this minor misalignment. Still, I'll wait to deal with that! Off we go to the races!

OK, now we're talking! As we swept through the plains today, running in 90+ heat and sun from Springfield MO, through Miami, OK (where my mother grew up - bonus points if you know why it and that Florida place share that name), to Wichita, Kansas; we showed yesterday was no fluke! We had six timed legs instead of 3 - and we scored 28 seconds - a tie for third in Rookies!

[Here’s a picture of Yrs Trly in front of the BEEYOOTIFUL restored Coleman Movie Palace in Miami – remember this place, Mom?

Note the growing case of trucker’s tan. When heading west, that doorside arm is in full sun all day!]

We had a great turnout and a beautiful Main Street welcome in Parsons, Kansas; then the first really big turnout for a larger city - in Wichita. It seems we arrived coincident with the national meet of the T-bird folks! I met two IMLers today. Steve Christy and his Dad drove the 2+ hrs from Kansas City to cheer us on at Parsons (Steve's original hometown!). Thanks, Steve! Then, we met Chris Menges in Wichita. We had excellent placement in the show at both cities and we gave away ALL our postcards of the Imp and signed a load of autographs again.

The car was a rock today. I mentioned that I had some light knock on long hills yesterday. Today, with a degree less advance, we heard a ping or two on only one hill, late in the afternoon, when we were running really hot (Never out of normal range of course). The brakes were fine all day - our new, low-scoring technique is significantly easier on them, too, aas well as moving us up the ranks. There was some attrition today, as the heat took out some other cars and the lone Mercedes (190SL) that had dogged us the day before showed that the oil smoke we saw then was NOT benign: they rode in on the truck.

Tomorrow, we start early. It's another high-speed day as we are to make Pueblo, CO - which I'm told is normally a 7 hour run on the Interstate from Wichita. This should be another favor to the big cruisers, compared to the older swelterboards. We'll see. I think it's a top-up day, though - so we don't die of sun and windburn if we really are to blast along.

Still no pix posted of the Imp at GreatRace.com. This is starting to bug me! Oh well, we moved from #70 to #60 overall today. Pretty soon, they'll have to notice. Tomorrow, we do even better! jc 

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Day 10: Stage 8

Well. Humbled by Life again. If Pride Goes Before a Fall, then I guess we were proud going into today. We figured after two good days that we were dialed-in. Today's run was a LOOOONG one, mostly on US 50, from WIchita, KS to Pueblo, CO. There's no better cruiser for that run than an Imperial, so were looking to do really well and move on up in the rankings! We executed perfectly, too, with not a single uncompensated error: we figured at the end that there was no way we'd be over 30 seconds error - MAX - and we hoped for a 10. We were crushed to see 1 minute 21 on the clock as we pulled in to Pueblo! Early on every leg, and pretty near proportional to the leg lengths. I think we messed up our speedo calibration. You'd think a couple of engineers could work a simple instrument, wouldn't you? Sigh. We sure can't blame it on our car today!

We placed 60th today; 15th in Rookies. Bleeaaah. I'm feeling very annoyed with myself and Dave is almost as put out as I am (he needs more sleep, so he's put off his mad til morning). We fell to 65th overall and to 13th in Rookies. There are still five other rookies within a minute or so, so we aren't doomed to the bottom, yet. I'll write in brief notes, because it was an interesting day (until we got our score, anyway).

1) Kansas is flatter than a pool table and the roads go straighter than a parolee in a police station.

2) It was hotter than a blow torch today. The local bank showed 101 F at our afternoon pit stop. There were 8 DNFs today and a lot of those were heat related. We each drank over 5 litres of water today, and still found little need for restrooms!

3) Great heat mirages! The road shimmered like water ahead. Ha! Just hot asphalt. It's easy to see how the early settlers went nuts seeing those in their heat and dehydration. We ran top-up all day in hopes of keeping our faculties functional through the whole stage (prior days had shown us that the last leg was where we made all our significant errors). That seems to have worked, anyway.

4) This is cattle country and we passed feedlots and rendering plants. Feedlots make a lot of flies - but how they get into cars passing by at over 50 mph is beyond me! It's clear why the ancients thought flies just appeared out of thin air. Of course, once they're in the car, they can't find a way back out. They just flit about annoying the hot, tired people there with them. 4a) Rendering plants are really odiferously malodorous in the summer heat - 'nuff said! On the other hand, we passed one field that had a strong and very nice scent of lavender! We couldn't see any source, but it was sweet strong - most refreshing.

5) We hit one of those summer thunderstorms that seem only to come in the high, dry plains. The wind whips up a visible wall of dust ahead of the storm (and we drove into it); then the lighting crackles all over the darkening sky and you can see torrents of rain ahead and above in the clouds- but none makes it to the ground because it evaporates faster than it falls! That evaporation cools the air as if all the heat's oppression were broken by a cool revolution in the sky! We felt it fall from over 100 to the low 70's in no time at all.

6) The wind here comes continually from the south. It shapes the trees (almost all of which stand alone as arboreal sentries over grassland and fields). They mostly look half knocked-over in the steady blow. Today's storm gave us high headwinds from the west, twisting the trees and power lines in new directions. One let go in front of us and we had to leave US 50 and detour on to local unpaved roads for many miles (or around one block, in local scale). One other car had a flat in the rough, but we made it through OK. While there, we flushed a pair of wild pheasants! [the 59 DeSoto had a flat back there in the sharp rocks. We stopped to help, but Imp wheels are different from all other Chryslers. Fortunately, we had a can of Fix-a-Flat, too, and we got them back into town!]

7) Today we left Wichita, passed through Dodge City KS, Garden City (?) KS, and Lamar CO. Several Days ago, you saw a Lincoln in an Imperial: today we had an Imperial in Dodge! It's amazing how fast the land use changes right at the Colorado line - from irrigated fields to sage brush. We learned that there is a century-old water-rights deal in effect that prevents Colorado from drawing 'Kansas water' and so prevents irrigation there.

8) We ended in Pueblo, CO. It's home to all US government publications, y'know - I wonder if there's a huge Indiana Jones style warehouse around here someplace, where they keep all those free publications, just waiting for us to write and request one? We didn't see it, but the old downtown is very cool. The train station (Atcheson, Topeka & Santa Fe Depot) is a redstone beauty - all restored as a meeting and banquet hall! I could stand to live in this town!

Our car ran beautifully today, as we knew it would. The heat never bothered it at all (it never ran above normal range). As usual, it attracted an appreciative crowd both at stops and honking and waving all along the route. We've arranged it with US flags in the windshield bar receivers when the top is down. A perfect parade car! Still no official photos on the GreatRace website (is that photographer BLIND?!), but we were interviewed by the Hutchinson News in Dodge City, maybe he'll post some in tomorrow's paper there (see www.hutchnews.com, or http://www.hutchnews.com/news/regional/stories/race070206.shtml if it’s still there). We're all out of handout postcards of the car, and I tried to get new ones at the all-night Kinko's in Wichita, but it turned out to be far away late at night. Sleep seemed the better option. Refilling will just have to wait for our rest day in Durango! Sorry, Kids!

The sudden dust and rain today got the car filthy. We did a wipedown 'wash', but it needs a real bath. Not tonight. Off to bed! Jc

(BACK to TOP)

Day 11: Stage 9

Sunday, July 2:

OK, we were both bothered all night by the mystery of what we did wrong the day before. I did mental math and was convinced that the speedo calibration change, if reversed by accident, would match our accumulated error awfully close. And yet.... Dave got up EARLY, after waking several times (he says) tossing around thinking about what went wrong. We spent several hours in calculations, eliminating the possibilities one by one. It was not the speedo calibration - we did that right. We even checked on the thermal expansion of the tires in the hot Kansas sun (possible, but unlikely). We eliminated everything but our corrections for acceleration (we must account for not instantly going from rest or from one speed to another, as presumed by the ideal times we're trying to match). Yesterday's long highway run had many 55-40-55 mph transitions (to allow normal traffic to pass up the old cars on those occasions when Kansas provided a passing lane section). There it was! We had inadvertently used the whole measured times of acceleration to adjust our timing of acceleration starts, rather than half of them (which gives the average lost time for a linear speed-up). That meant we gained a few seconds with each time we accelerated! In earlier days, the starts, stops, and corners had dominated the days' performance figures, but yesterday, they were almost non-existent and these speed changes drove the error! RATS! But - Lesson Learned! Immediately after we figured this out, we went out and rebuilt all our acceleration tables, too, by making a new set of measures for stomp-it-to speed runs. We are at higher elevation now and the engine is fully broken-in, too. We found some more minor error there. Now we're confident the good days we had earlier were not just flukes!

So today we got off to our usual ragged start - it seems we must make some kind of minor error, followed by a panic to correct for it, just to get our adrenaline up to functional levels! We've done that every morning so far, except for the long run in Kansas. The early going was still flat, and now we were tired from our poor night's rest. We were both a little drifty at first. Then we tightened up and made a good run with only one serious error and that one mostly corrected, too. We scored 39 seconds overall for the day, with 19 of those in that one error. We also earned our second Ace (a perfect score on one leg of the day). It was a six-leg day, from Pueblo, CO to Durango, via Alamosa and Pagosa Springs. I love those San Juan mountains!

Digression, sort of:

It occurred to me while taking a pit stop today, that I have been writing about 'we' on this trip, maybe even mentioning my co-pilot/navigator by name, but I haven't really told you who he is or why we're doing this (skip this part if you want just the day's events report). David Ullman lives in Corvallis, OR - the opposite side of the continent from my home in Melrose, NY. We've been friends for about 30 years. We met in Schenectady, NY, when he was a young Engineering Professor and I was an old Engineering Student (thereby hangs another tale for anot