skibigsky's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back from Topeka Whew. Back from Topeka. A hell of a trip. 1000 miles each way, with Mr. V. not feeling well for most of the trip. Charles drove most of the way out. The boys (Mr. V. and Charles, who I have decided to adopt as my stand-in-husband...) did a test run on Sunday, giving Charles much to tweak with the car (he is a (and I quote) "fiddle-fucker" by nature), making him happy. Me, I spent days walking around the paddock, drooling over the CP cars (see the last post - but I am GOING to drive CP-ladies, at some point in my life, even if I go sideways the entire time) and the HUGE trailers, and stackers, and toters. (This was a car/truck lover's wet dream. Oh hell. The link at the bottom doesn't EVEN capture the paddock. Easily $100 million in cars and trailers (not to mention towing vehicles). And while most everyone was having fun, they were deadly serious, too. So... Results. I was DFL in my class, 12 seconds out from first place, but I did put down 2 clean runs (1 each day, thankfully!) out of six, and frankly, for just having gotten my license this summer, I'm DAMN pleased. And I was 11th. (Okay, so it was out of 11. But I showed up, and didn't totally lose sight of my competition.) Mr. V. was 13th in his class, and Charles was 8th in the same class (and would have been higher, except for a serious brain fart after the finish lights - he went DNF AFTER the lights in the cones... GAH!!! He would have trophied, probably, otherwise.) MattMan, my MINI co-driver finished up 19th out of 36 in a VERY tough class - the top 10 guys were within 2-tenths of a second, combined over 2 days. Our boys in the SuperStock Lotus Elise had some issue, and while they finished in the top half, didn't do to well, relatively (Mr. V. beat both of them, and I was closer on individual runs to them than I have EVER been.) A great time. The drive back sucked, between the battery in the truck being dead when we went to pull out, to I-80 being closed due to snow, and losing a tire on the 5th wheel outside of Evanston, WY (thanks to Charles and having all the tire changing stuff in the RV, we got on the road again with the spare pretty quickly). But we made it, and had a lot of laughs along the way. Pics to come, but if you want to get glimpses of a national auto event, check out my album. http://picasaweb.google.com/gdranow/2007TireRackSoloNationals 11:02 p.m. - 02 October 2007 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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