Thursday, we finished a long day in Placerville, CA which is an old Gold mining town. Cameron and I had finished a stage there several years ago. The townspeople really came out last time and this time too! When we finished up the Parc Ferme, we transited from Placerville into Sacramento about 50 more miles for the night.

Friday morning was cold since we were down in the SF Bay area. We were 82nd car out. Our friends Sheila and Linda (the Lacy Racers) from Searcy Arkansas were the last car out. Kinda stinks. All the people are gone and most of the food too when you get into town. But that’s the luck of the draw on Championship Day.

Great Race Rallymaster John Classen really throws the book at us on Championship Day. I mean that literally too. The Course instructions were 45 pages! I didn’t know that there were that many turns between Sacramento and Vallejo!

It was a really hard day. 64 timed maneuvers and 57 stop and go’s. There was a sneaky 30 second stop and go mixed in with all the shrilling 15 second stop and go’s, but my faithful aggravator, sorry…. I mean navigator, didn’t get caught!

Six time Grand Champions Burdick and Bell were the car in front of us. Occasionally you can see and "mark" the car in front to "verify" your position which is always a good thing to do. If you make a change to your position based on your "verification", this is called a "hack". Now you can go to a cocktail party and talk like a Great Racer with rally talk. Burdick and Bell won the day with an 11 seconds. I told Wayne Bell that if I had known he would win the day, we would have hacked all day.

Curtis and Bruce took a speed change at the apex of a turn instead of at the sign before the turn for a time maneuver as they went through a check point which put them in a double jeopardy situation. Two legs were affected so they made a 34.

We beat them with a 31 seconds. We did not know if it was a good score or not until we got to dinner at Buck Kamphausens museum in Vallejo. Apparently all the scores were high and we were 8th place for the day.

Buck Kamphausen is one of my partners (Rally Partners) who owns the Great Race with me and another 8 guys. He is an undertaker, investor, and all round good guy. He supplied a car for two Hemmings Rookie Challenge cars; one for Shawna Rohbock and Mike Kohn from the National Guard and the other for the Philadelphia School group. He put on a spread for us with a band, and some great food.

At the entrance to his theater he had a bar, which was chocker block full of Great Racers by the time we got in since we were one of the last cars. I stepped to the bar to get something to drink and saw a sign hanging over the Bar that looked mysteriously like my Coker Tire logo which features a wide whitewall tire but this one was clearly flat. The sign however was for Coker "pure Tennessee sippin whiskey"

"Guaranteed to flatten you"

And sitting with all of the other bottles were these square lookin bottles (which looked a lot like Jack Daniels) with Coker logos on them! Buck is such a practical joker! It was a kick! He gave me one of the bottles and a copy of the sign.

Sister and Sandy McRae flew up from Granbury Texas to see the finish. It was so great to see them both. Sandy’s husband Tom founded the Great Race with Norm Miller( founder of Interstate Battery) 24 years ago. Last year we renamed the Spirit of the Event Award after Tom McRae.

After the dinner party, we booked it on over to San Rafael for our headquarters hotel at the Embassy Suites. We have only one more day of rallying. You can tell that everyone is pretty dog tired. Theresa and hit the bed as soon as we could to try to catch up on some much needed sleep.

"To finish is to Win" and we only have one more day to win!

From the road,

Corky