To all, Although I have not had time to put down my final thoughts about the Great Race, my cute wife Theresa has done so. Here are her “end road thoughts”. She writes pretty good!

-C

From Theresa:

Here are the end road thoughts from the navigator of Car #88 aka the aggravator, as Corky calls me. I am proud to say that I am now a two year veteran of the Great Race. As you have been reading our adventure notes I know many of you have been asking, "Why in the world are they doing this? How could this be fun?" Well it is hard. I have said it is the hardest thing I have ever done next to nursing school. The race is a once in a lifetime experience that happens every year. It is full of character building opportunities for sure! It is hard to work your best under long days, scorching sun, hard rain especially when you come in with a lousy score. You put on your best face and try to be happy for the rookies who are beating your socks off. And for sure you ask yourself, "Why am I doing this?" Then I am reminded of all the people in the crowd who came to cheer us on at each finish line. I have learned that the most difficult things you do are often the most rewarding. We drove over 4100 miles, visited 48 cites in 18 states, met countless numbers of wonderful volunteers and saw America from our wonderful open Indy car. We did all this with a rolling history museum of 97 cars, countless number of support vehicles and traveled with people who have become our very close friends. I have said the best part of the day was when we went "off the competition clock at our last instruction" but before we saw our score. The finish cities were fun with a party in every venue. We could laugh with other racers about the incidences that happened to us during the day that were not so funny at the time. And we ALL had them. It was nice to feel vindicated with my driver to find that 44 other navigators had also missed the same instruction.

One statement that I got repeatedly from people who saw the small cockpit in the Shafer 8 was, "Wow, I hope you like each other." Our response was yes, we have liked each other for 29 years! I have to give a great amount of credit of our success to my driver and husband Corky. I tell him that if he had a decent navigator he could win the race. I think he is the best driver on the race. He can hold that speedometer needle at 48, 24, 15 or 10 for countless minutes or hours as the course instructions dictate. He can also hold the car barreling down mountain curves at 30 when it should have been 25, (oops). He can also get back in place when we are 20 cars down because I took the wrong turn, (oops again). He is a fantastic problem solver under stressful conditions. I can solve problems; I just can’t do it in 10 seconds.

So there were plenty of "fun" moments. It was fun seeing Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell getting the ride of his life in our car in Durango. It was fun seeing our personal friends meet us in cities across the country (too many to name). It was fun throwing water on each other at red lights and in the trailer at the end of the day. It was fun seeing people I mentored get a good score and an ace at the end of the day. It was awesome hearing the crowd get excited when Corky revved up the car skidding into the finish line. I loved riding in our 1937 Buick Indy car. Hearing the sound of those four 97 Strombergs with that big chrome header/exhaust is down-right exciting every time Corky starts her up. I was in the coolest car with the coolest guy for 14 days. People told me I was downright "gutsy" for doing what I did. I liked that. Being on the race with Corky is an adventure, but for those of you who know him, just gettin’ out of bed everyday with him is an adventure. He can get into trouble and solve problems in the same breath.

I can’t write this without giving mention to the rest of Team Coker. Big thanks go out to Andrew Givens and Jerry Priesel our support crew. They serviced the Shafer, and helped Curtis on his Packard. They met us at every venue with our show trailer cool, and drinks iced down. I know they had their challenges with getting that rig across country under stressful conditions too. Our teammates in Car #2 Curtis Graf and Bruce Gezon did an awesome job winning third place with the 1916 Packard. They are true ralliers (is that a word?). They had a great factor, but I personally choose torque and horsepower over factor any day! Bruce has mentored me over the last several years in the art of navigating. He knows that I am "math challenged", but has tremendous amount of patience.

The absolute best and most fun day was coming into the finish line at San Rafael and learning that we had kept our 25th position by coming in 11th for the last championship day with a score of .08 seconds. Guess it was proof to me that we could do it. Check out our finish line picture at greatrace.com (stage 14).

Way back on June 25 we heard a wonderful message at chapel from John Borschein who drove a week for Focus on the Family. John is in charge of the National Day of Prayer and a great guy to know. He used the scripture in 1 Corinthians 10 quoting Paul on "running the race in such a way as to win." But then he went on to say that the prize is a perishable wreath. The most important thing is not the prize, but how you run the race. With this in mind, I can say that winning is good, but the character of those who win is even more important. Hopefully we have helped others along the way as we have been helped and most importantly, we credit God for protection, strength and help all along in ways we will never even know.

Thanks for following along in our journal and sharing in our “once in a lifetime experience that happens every year” this year.

Theresa Coker, navigator, Car #88