[SuperCricket]

After 9 months of preparation my navigator and I were finally ready to drive to West Texas this week for BBORR 2006. It was to be my first open road race and I was really excited. Two good friends wanted to come along to help, so we turned my 1977 Grumman Stepvan into a makeshift RV for the week. We put a mini-fridge, television, Xbox, home sound system, etc. into the van, along with every tool from my shop and tons of spares for the racecar and van itself.

http://teejaded.com/v-web/gallery/BBORR2006/STA70001

We all loaded up Wednesday and drove to the truckstop for fuel. We drove the rig up onto the scales and paid the $8.50 to find out how much everything in that picture above weighed. 13,200 pounds with the 4 of us in the van, HOLY CRAP.

As soon as we got onto the highway a cold front came through, and we fought storms through the night. I soon found out the top speed for the rig was around 65 mph and we were averaging 8 miles per gallon in the semi-flat land around Fort Worth and West of it. After our first fueling I noticed the oil pressure dropping, and pulled off the road for a checkup. The oil wasn't touching the dipstick, and it took 3 quarts to get it back to normal. We had only gone 90 of the 500 miles...

The sun was rising and we were way behind due to pit stops and the horrible storms. We had to pull off the road for over an hour for hail and bad rain earlier in the night. We finally made it onto highway 285, the road BBORR is held on. The van wasn't liking 3000 ft altitude and the huge hills, and I under estimated our gas needs. We ran out of fuel 6.6 miles from Sanderson and had 30 minutes to make it for our rookie school. We tried to flag down racers and random people for 30 minutes to no avail. We stood on the side of the road with a big red fuel jug next to us, and wathed handfulls of Vette drivers and other racers just wave as they went past.

I unloaded the racecar, I knew it only had a gallon it in to get it onto the trailer, but it was enough for me to light-foot it into Sanderson. We filled up the fuel jug and booked ass back to the van. Allthough the racecar isn't insured, there was no other option. We arrived at the courhouse and saw the rookies coming out, the class had just ended 5 minutes prior...

We went to the registration desk, and the lady Kenda that runs the race said even though we missed the school she had two guys who could get us caught up on what we needed to know. So it was off to tech the car in.

I drove the car off the trailer and into the tech line. The tech guy was just about done going through the car, everything was perfect until he said, "you don't have any windows?" Oh Lord I thought. "No I don't have windows, the rules say nothing about it, is this a problem?"

The tech guy called the race director who said he was afraid the back window on the Camaro might blow out due to air pressure since I had no windows. I proposed a number of options, including removal of the entire hatch, using tow straps to hold the back window in, and even smashing the entire glass out right in the parking lot. The tech guy said removing the hatch should work, and I was fine with that; he walked off for a minute.

He came back saying the race director said even if we remove the glass, we would now need window nets. I asked why the Shelby Cobra replica with no roof or windows was allowed to run, or the handfull of other convertibles, and he had no response. He called the race director again and said "without window nets, you can't run, no exceptions." I asked why there was no mention of this in the rulebook and the tech guy said "it's just assumed all of these cars have windows, most are street cars." Oh my God. After 2 hours of bickering with the director we had run out of time, loaded up the racecar, and headed out of Sanderson.

We started back through the hills on 285, and found our miles per gallon to be 4.4 for those 60 miles. It took a little over $500 in fuel to get us from Fort Worth and back, and 28 quarts of oil. Yes I said 28.

We saw some dragstrip in Odessa at around 6pm Friday, and decided we needed to do something with the racecar. The owner greeted us at the gate, we told him our story, and he invited us in. We had fun taking turns trying to launch the racecar on 315 Kumho Victoracers (which don't hook worth a flip at the track), and enjoyed the laid back atmosphere.

It's really odd I felt more at home in the middle of the desert with a bunch of redneck drag racers than in Big Bend. We sat on the roof of the step van and drank the last of our beer, and headed back to Fort Worth.

So I spent a couple thousand dollars and dipped into my savings to run an 1/8th mile dragstrip in West Texas. I just wish the BBORR guys would elaborate their short rulebook a litte more to include things like this.

So uh watch those back windows folks. And if you are going above 120 mph make sure you don't roll your windows down...

This post has been edited by SuperCricket: Apr 23 2006, 01:47 AM

[CMC#5]

That is a real shame...though it'll make for funny stories when you're hanging out bench racing for years to come.

Very nice gesture Mike...that's really cool that you would offer that.