Theresa and I loaded up our Shafer 8 and headed to Dallas Wednesday afternoon with the Texas Great Race in our sights. The venue was changed this year to Irving which is also home to the famous Curtis Graf. Curtis is one of our Rally Partners buddy’s, who run Great Race.

We saw our buddy Thom Wells, now from Hendersonville NC on the road headed west too. Then when we finally stopped at a hotel, there he was again! He and Steve Wilson have a new business restoring vintage cars and supporting Great Racers.

We rolled in to Irving thursday mid morning and registered up and got the Shafer 8 tech inspected so we could rally. We also ran our speedo check and dialed our Timewise speedo in perfect like. We had dinner Thursday evening with Faye and Curtis Graf and Ty Holmquist at a cool little Italian restaurant with a singing Italian owner.

I had planned n planned n tried to work it out to leave immediately after rallying Friday so I had pre arranged to be first car Friday. First car out was 8 AM. Being first car has its advantages n disadvantages. You get to lunch first: advantage. You don’t have rookies in front of you screwing you up: advantage. You don’t have experts in front of you in case you make a mistake and need to hack: disadvantage. You get back to the hotel quicker for happy hour: advantage. You are first to get dry clothes on: advantage. No one is already there when you arrive to hear your terrible score: advantage…. To hear your great score: disadvantage. You get the drift.

You might have seen the Weather Channel this weekend. We had big rain, floods, and tornados. Dang. We chose to bring our open Indy car. People keep looking at us like we are wacko or something. Its beginning to give me a complex. But maybe we are! We keep smiling and having fun driving in the pouring rain and surely we shouldn’t be havin so much fun. Theresa reminded me that a rain this hard is like rainin pitch forks and hammer handles!

There are 47 entries here in Texas and everyone of these folks are heros! You know why? Cause they are driving their antique cars! Like I say all the time, you can’t get the smiles without doing the miles!

We had lunch with the Rotary Club at the Chamber of Commerce building in Graham, Texas. Meat loaf n mashtaters! Jim Neelley hosted us. It was rainin so hard there was a River in the middle of the parking lot.

The second half of the day brought us more rain and water crossing most of the back roads. One stretch it was raining so hard that Theresa nor I could see the road and all of a sudden we hit about a 2 ft deep river across the road! Water came up, under, over and thru the floorboards! I was surprised the Shafer 8 didn’t flood out. It should have!

We finally got back to the host hotel….first, of course: advantage. the rally master through out the last leg where all the water was across the road. We get to throw out one leg too which means we have a 15 second gross and a 09 seconds for the day once we throw out the worst 6 second leg. Not bad. Theresa was happy! I was too.

Tomorrow is Saturday and we are 24th car. Wearing out tires, with smiles n miles,

From the road,

Corky