This morning our start position was #118 out of 125 cars. These positions are generated randomly every day. Being in the back of the pack just makes for a long day because we start 118 minutes after the first car, and thereby end hopefully 118 minutes later too.

As will be the norm throughout the race, we get our race instructions 30 minutes before our start time. Hal then takes the instructions and figures out how we will approach the race.

This morning’s instructions were particularly difficult, requiring extended computation time from Hal. Essentially, he needed well more than the allotted 30 minutes to make all his calculations. We left the hotel at our designated start time, and would normally run through the speedometer calibration run, however Hal needed to complete his calculations for the worksheets, so we made a collective executive decision to increase the setting on our speedometer one click, undoing the change we made to our speedometer late in yesterday’s race.

To clarify, we are not provided with maps, and are not allowed to use maps or GPS programs. Here are samples of just two worksheets of today’s packet that was comprised of 22 pages of instructions for 7 hours of driving:

You will notice these pages make no representation of miles traveled from one street sign to the next. The designated speeds on the pages are sometimes the actual road speeds but are more normally lower than actual. There may be 30 minutes between the signs noted in instruction 115 and 116, or they may be 2 minutes apart. We have no idea how far apart they are, we just know that when we see the right arrow 40mph sign in instruction 115, that we will then need to transition to 30mph when we eventually see the 30mph sign shown in instruction 116. Until that happens, we must maintain a speed of 40mph without any fluctuation.

To further complicate matters, the race presumes that the transition between the two speeds is instant, however we all know the car must slow down from 40mph to 30mph, and we therefore must know exactly how long that deceleration takes, and we must then make up for that lost time compared against the master race time. The following chart is the collection of data that we generated through our time trials that we completed on Thursday evening.

Looking at the top chart, select 40 on the Decel/Brake column on the left, and follow that line to intersect with the 30 on the top Accelerate column. You will see at the intersection of the 30 column and 40 row, there is a 1.6. That represents the time lost slowing from 40 to 30mph. That same 1.6 was written by Hal in instruction line 116. Each race instruction comes with its own requirement, and Hal must analyze each, then allocate the appropriate gain or loss, and then must strategize on how and where it will be best to make corrective measures to align with the master race time.

And just for good measure, or to make things much more cumbersome, the race will set up 5 checkpoints throughout the days course, and they will not tell you where they will be located. Once we pass a checkpoint, our gain/loss clock resets to zero, so Hal must be strategic in how and where it will be best to make up for the time loss from acceleration, deceleration, and time loss from turns.

The combination of today’s five legs totaled 6 hours, 59 minutes, and 39 seconds. Imagine your navigator making all those calculations AND watching for each of the designated signs, then adding in driving a 72-year-old car and having to accelerate/decelerate, and turn, the exact same way at every stop, start, and turn. Hopefully you now have a reasonable sense for just how complicated this race is for each team.

The following is our ticket of the tally of our results for today:

Leg #1 we were off 2 seconds in a run that was 1 hour and 47 minutes(!), Leg #2 off 52 seconds (oops), Leg #3 off 3 seconds, Leg #4 off 11 seconds, and Leg #5 off 3 seconds. Our total variation on time was 1 minute and 11 seconds, and we received a handicap due the age of our car of a factor of .905, making our final score for the day of 1 minute 4.26 seconds. Today’s course was much more difficult than yesterdays. We came in 60th place today, one better than yesterday, but we have moved into 48th place overall: still moving in the right direction.

We had a pizza lunch in Auburn, AL, and dinner in Birmingham, AL was not sponsored by the town. Similar to the prior days, we became the festival in each town. We were greeted by a former team member of a Lax team Hal used to coach, along with the young man’s fiancé, and father, who was also a good friend of Hal’s. The five of us went to a nice Mexican restaurant across the street from the Birmingham Stallions USFL football stadium, where a game was underway.

Hopefully we keep moving up in the rankings over the coming days. Tomorrow we are off to Tupelo, Mississippi for lunch, and then to Memphis, TN for dinner and a tour of Elvis Presley’s home, Graceland.

Outside of a few hiccups at 37mph in second gear (a very high rpm for the engine), The Hippo ran well today. I need to think on those hiccups – not sure why that was happening.

See you tomorrow!

PS – Dominick Dunnigan found and shared a cool link that shows the route of Day 1. See: https://www.relive.cc/view/vevWBBQdnyq