Texas Road Trip
Are there any sayings about road trips? There should definitely be some. Maybe some like this:
When they start out bad, it usually means you got all the bad stuff out of the way.
Or
Isn’t this fun?! Trouble is just part of the gig my friend!
It seems some are without a hitch, but I’ve never been on one of those road trips. The last road trip I was on, I drove the second half of the way home from Tennessee with no headlights, no A/C and no blower motor because electrical draws caused the truck to shut down. Oh, and the trailer got a flat. Without a spare. The road trip I was on before that, the box trailer we were towing was in the other lane because there was so much snow on the road it was sliding down the road crown. And on the way home the empty trailer slid out from behind my brother while he was driving and jackknifed, smashing the truck bed all up and denting the front of my trailer. But this? This was going to be a nice and easy one. I built this car last year, it was tried and true by now. So I packed up a backpack and got dropped off at the BART outside of town. I rode BART into the airport in San Francisco. I knew my flight had been delayed, but it wasn’t crossing into my layover yet, so things were going to be fine. I was an hour and a half early and it was going to be easy as, mate. Not so. Since my flight had been delayed, the self-check in didn’t work for my boarding pass. So I waited in line. They found my ticket but wanted me to wait 8 and a half hours for the next flight out. This isn’t what I signed up for. I could have worked the rest of Friday, if that were the case. So I stood my ground and they got me a seat on another airline. So I rushed over the next terminal and waited in their check in line. Lots of people fly out on Friday afternoons, just so you know. This wasn’t quick. But I got the boarding pass. Waited in line at security, but since I only had the paper license issued and an expired hard copy license I had to wait to get a special security check. I made the flight, but just barely. I was really hoping to eat something, since it was now 5:05pm and I hadn’t eaten since 8:00am, but I was the only guy running to an empty gate. They were waiting on me. Alas, they were waiting on the front lavatory to be serviced. So we sat on the tarmac for a bit. Thankfully, the two guys I was in a row with really hit it off and wanted to talk some more.. so instead of being between them, they let me have the window seat. I read the sky brand magazine behind the seat until I found a crossword, Sudoku and a Mensa quiz. The Mensa quiz stumped me on more than half the questions and the crossword was on some subject I didn’t know. Sudoku it is. Finally landed, but the lavatory debacle had us waiting for our gate to be vacated. I was hungry. It’s now 11:something in the evening and I am still waiting on calories to be injected via my mouth. But everything in the terminal is closed. I catch a cab to Texas Motor Speedway and spot a 24 hour Subway at a gas station just outside the complex. I pay the cabbie and get a sandwich. I happily walked the mile and a half to the hotel, relishing my spoils.
I polished off the sandwich and held a steady gait into Championship Parkway. Boom. Eye candy. I bust into the parking lot and see this. I thought I was catching a glimpse of the Camaro I was to drive home, but this was a ’67 Nova painted nearly the same color. Suddenly all my strife was worth it. This was going to be a good weekend, I could just tell. This weekend, Dallas is gearhead paradise.
What’s cool about going on a Good Guys road tour is that you get special parking at the event and your car is already pre-registered when you sign up. So we didn’t have to get up before dawn and line up outside the fairgrounds in a two mile line just to get a decent spot next to your friends. If you’ve been to a Good Guys show in Pleasanton, then you know what I’m talking about. We rolled out of the hotel parking lot around 8 and drove in through the tunnel at Texas Motor Speedway. “Show cars”, a big arrow showed us the way. Idled in through the flocks of people and backed in a nice spot reserved for Texas Road Tour Participants, right up against the wall of Fuzzy’s Tacos. Breakfast burrito? Who could say no?! (Their food is delicious!!) I got to meet some of the other tour participants at breakfast and some more outside the building. About this time, I’m really wishing I had the time off to have gone on the tour. But then I heard the stories from some of the guys about the roof being taken off the building across the street and flash flooding in Utah. Hot Rod magazine even started calling it the Aqua Tour instead of the Hall of Fame tour (http://blogs.hotrod.com/the-goodguys-aqua-tour-20014-day-6-143497.html).
I got to walking around the swap meet section of the show and found out just how much cool stuff Texans can have. There were some sweet cars and some even cooler goodies. They had reproduction old prints, old gas pumps, hard to find parts and stuff I wish I knew I needed.
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I’ve always wanted to get a copy of that print or recreate the “Let me see!” scene
I’m a sucker for old CB’s. ‘Specially when they have fender braces
I’ve always liked these
I also got to spend time in the autocross area. I just love to hear cars being driven the way they were built to be driven. While I was watching cars set times, I got to see some of the contenders tweaking tire pressures and tuning their cars. Really neat stuff and a lot of food for thought.
The Texas sun must be bigger, too, because the heat finally got to me and I retired for a nap in the passenger seat of the Camaro. When I woke up, I had wandered back into Fuzzy’s for lunch and my brother called to talk shop. I had to rush out of the restaurant and hang up the phone because we were lining up to go out on the track. We got to drive on Texas Motor Speedway for being part of the Good Guys road tour. Check out the cover page of the Good Guys Gazette that’s out or about to come out and you’ll see the photo of the cars parked on the embankment. Today, though, we got to have a few laps around. The speed, unfortunately, was set by a pace car that wasn’t going to break 100 mph. But nevertheless, we got to go out on the track and I recorded a little video of us going ‘round.
We pulled off the course and right into traffic headed out of the show. So we decided to sit tight for a minute before we drove across the highway to our hotel. We wandered into the hotel and found a couple guys from the road tour and invited ourselves onto the table. Ate a great meal and splurged on dessert. Tucked into bed and planned to head back to California in the morning.