Today was the official start of the Great Race. All cars left the hotel in their racing position order (while we are car #98, our race position was #87), and then headed to Francis Field in the City of St. Augustine. Our hotel was quite a way out, so we had a long speedometer calibration run on the highway, followed by a winding route through the City, and ending at the field.

St. Augustine was founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers and is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the US. It is billed as the Oldest City in the US.

All the cars were lined up in Francis Field and hundreds of St. Augustinians came out to see the cars.

While on the field, we were witnesses to a wedding ceremony. Shawn Lednick is a veteran racer who was our teacher via Zoom for months prior to the race. He was a racer in one car with his mother and father, and his two sisters were racing in another car. Shawn’s mother had lost her wedding ring months ago, and unbeknownst to her, her husband had purchased her another ring. Shawn and his sisters made arrangements for the Elwood character, the navigator for the 1974 Plymouth Blues Brother’s Mobile, to preside over a wedding ceremony, where Shawn’s mother would be presented with her new ring. Mrs. Lednick was surprised and choked-up over the thoughtful gesture of her family.

L-R – Mr. Lednick, Mrs. Lednick, and Elwood Blues. This Christmas will be the Lednick’s 61st wedding anniversary.

The official start time of the race was 11:00am, with one car leaving per minute. Announcers spoke about each car as they approached the Start Line, and at a horn blow, each car was off to start their journey. Spectators lined the street on the way out, cheering on all the cars.

The Wandering Troubadours of Finland and their 1918 American LaFrance on the approach to the Starting Line. A selection of crew members were escorts, each carrying the flag of Finland. As the American LaFrance drove up the road on its departure, all spectators were treated to loud backfires that sounded like discharging cannons.

The Hippo had start #87, thereby 87 minutes after 11:00, or 12:27pm. The race announcer shared the name of the driver and navigator, the make, model, and year of our car, and then he told the crowd that Hal and I had been friends since kindergarten; the horn then blew, and we were off to the races!

We had five legs of the race today on our journey from St. Augustine to Tifton, GA. On the third leg, we blew past one of our turns, and didn’t realize it until we were a good 15 seconds down the road. I had to make a quick three-point turn in the middle of a two lane road, and by the time we made it back to the appropriate turn, we had lost well over a minute. Now we had a huge amount of time to make up, so Hal was feverishly making calculations to pick the best solution to make up the time. The car that was supposed to be behind us was now well in front of us. I floored it until we caught up and passed that car, trying to get back into our place, and we still had substantial time to make up. By original race design, we were supposed to be driving 50mph on a two lane road with a 60mph speed limit, but to make up time we jumped up to 60mph, a 20% increase over the race design speed, and we needed to hold that speed for 300 seconds, or five minutes. We got through a substantial part of the 5 minutes and noticed a Great Race Checkpoint ahead. At that checkpoint our time would be logged for everything in the leg prior and would reset to zero as soon as we passed. If we didn’t make up the time from our mistake, then we would be stuck with a horrible high score. My foot went to the floor, and The Hippo surged with every ounce of energy to get to the checkpoint as fast as possible. We blew past them at a speed not to be mentioned and had to get back down to 40mph for what was the start of the next leg. I braked and downshifted to go below 40mph for long enough to compensate for the excess speeds, and then brought her back to settle at 40mph.

On another part of the race, we were on a two-lane road for 90-100 minutes, and with the exception of three soft turns, the entire duration was perfectly flat and seemingly flawlessly straight. Neither Hal nor I have ever driven on such a long and straight road before. Just at the end of our time on that boring stretch, we had to look out for a right turn. Our travel speed was 45mph, and the turn came upon us very fast. Fortunately, no other cars were in sight, so we slammed on the brakes and made a hard turn, with The Hippo leaning hard to the left. It was both exhilarating and nerve racking. That’s when Hal noted upon reflection, “WOW! This is bit like a Policeman’s job. It is 98% boring and 2% terrifying!” We both had a hard laugh while keeping focused on the continued task at hand.

We pulled into Tifton, GA a little after 6:00pm for the close of the day’s race. The town of Tifton had closed off three City blocks to through traffic, and as we crossed the finish line, the announcers introduced each car to the huge crowd of people. The race cars lined both sides of the streets while townsfolk strolled the streets to get a close look at the cars.

The town of Tifton had prepared a wonderful dinner in the City Hall for all the racers and their support teams. We had potato casserole, a delicious tomato pie (never had that before), fresh peas, barbecued chicken breast, beef, and a divine blackberry cobbler with vanilla ice-cream. Hal had been craving ice-cream for the last three days and took a pass on it for dessert. He was trying to eat healthily. That is, until we started to leave, when he saw two big bowls of banana custard. Apparently Hal has a big weakness for this particular Southern delicacy. All concerns for eating well quickly evaporated as he finished one heaping bowl and promptly returned for a second huge helping.

After crossing the finish line, we were presented with our day’s score:

19.91 seconds was the score, with all five legs in the single digits. Remember the leg where we missed the turn? We scored a 1 second deviation from design – unbelievable! In the morning when we did our calibration run, we decided that we would adjust our speedometer one click to make up for a 10th of a second discrepancy. We forgot to make the change at the beginning and remembered after the third leg. Seeing the results, we should have left it alone. The five leg totals were substantially better than yesterday’s score. On Friday we ranked 71 out of 125 racers. Today we moved up to 61 out of 125, and we are in 5th place amongst 24 Rookies for the last two days. We are moving in the right direction!

Hal (Navigator) and Willy (Driver) in front of The Hippo, in Tifton, GA

A sticker on the side window of a 1961 Chevy Nomad Wagon.

By the close of the day as we pulled into our hotel, our odometer was reading 13,169.2. The Hippo has now traveled 1,355.1 miles since our start in Baltimore.

You may recall from a prior post on Thursday afternoon, I made some repairs to the engine to halt oil from leaking. I checked the dipstick this afternoon and the oil level is holding at full. So far it looks like the repair was a success.

Tomorrow we will be in race position #118 of 125, and we are headed to Auburn, Alabama for lunch, and we will finish the day’s race in Birmingham, Alabama. Onward and westward!