The start of the Great Race looms before us all year long and we look forward to it but its a lot of work and is a hard two weeks on the road. We start working on our 1937 Shafer 8 long before the time comes to leave for our start city. Andrew Givens, GR Ace Wrench award winner in 2005 works for us at Coker Tire and did all the work to get the Shafer ready. The Shafer 8 (car nbr 88) is a wonderful machine and has crossed the USA more times than I can count. Andrew will again be accompanied by Jerry Priesel in our Coker Tire tractor trailer rig. Jerry works in our sales department at Coker Tire and will be helping Andrew set up our display and fix flat tires every evening in each city all the way between Concord, NC and Anaheim, CA.. Coker Tire is again a sponsor of the Great Race and the Official Tire.
My sweet wife, Theresa, will be navigating (aggravator) for me again this year. She’s a real trooper and is gettin better n better…at navigatin too! We placed 4th in the GR Texas regional race back in April…so who knows what is gonna happen this year!!
My son, Cameron graduated from college this past May so he was free to come Great Race again after a three year hiatus. This year Cameron will be navigating for Greg Cunningham in Greg’s 28 Ford Speedster (car nbr 98). Greg won the Great Race back in 2005. He will be navigating for me next year in the race as we go from New York to Paris next year in 2008.
My partner in Honest Charley Speed Shop and President of the HC is Honest Mike Goodman. Mike will be rallying with Dolus Ferguson in our 32 highboy Double Exposure. Honest Charley is the Official Sponsor of Deuce Week East.
We got out of Chattanooga Wednesday morning about mid morning and made the trek over to Concorde to get checked in. Now it’s Thursday and we have calibrated our speedometers, got all three cars checked in and stickered. We had a two hour rally school, where they remind us how to rally (yawn) and update us on any rule changes. The official start day is Saturday. We finish in Anaheim on Saturday July 15th. Theresa and I both are ready to get started! I hate waiting!
I will be using my crackberry again each night to send updates in to my office to get them and some pictures posted on my blog.
Our friend Bruce Gezon is here patiently waiting on his driver, Curtis Graf. Curtis was making some last minute changes to his new 32 back in Irving Texas. He will show up, just in time to start! BTW… thanks Carol Gezon for the huge cookie stash!
All for now… Hope you check back and follow with us as we rally across America.
From the road,
