We started today at pole position #91, which meant we received our course instructions at 9:01 sharp. Hal sat next to The Hippo in the shade running calculations for the day. I had 30 minutes to kill, and after ensuring all was organized and in good working order with the car, I decided to check in on my Oura Ring app. Most folks are well acquainted with Fitbits, a watch-like device that monitors one’s vitals (heart rate, etc.). I enjoy wearing real watches that tick, so my wife Caroline found the Oura Ring for me. This is a ring worn on one’s finger that transmits vitals to a phone app via Bluetooth connection. It measures activity levels, heart rate, sleep cycles and much more. When I opened my app, I was expecting to see that I had burned virtually no calories, because I was sloth-like sitting in the car all day. I was startled by the following:

Sitting on my duff, stressing over keeping a 72-year-old car on the road through excess speeds and extreme heat, I managed to burn 3,897 calories, the equivalent of walking 14 miles! I did a quick Google search and learned that Formula One racers burn between 1,200-1,500 per race. Those who know me well know I am not a fan of exercise, preferring productive physical work, think splitting firewood, over what I consider to be exceedingly boring workouts at gymnasiums or on home exercise equipment. As my father used to say, “I ascribe to astronaut Neil Armstrong’s creed. “I believe we are all born with so many heartbeats, and I don’t intend to waste any of them on exercise!”” My wife Caroline LOVES exercise, biking through the hills of north Baltimore County between 40-60 miles on any given Saturday or Sunday. Now, learning that I can get a workout equivalent to walking 14 miles, by racing an antique car, I feel like I have hit the JACKPOT! I can wave goodbye to Caroline whilst she hits the road with her bike, and I can hop in The Hippo, and burn some high-quality calories!

Now back to reality… Hal and I hit the road starting our morning calibration run. We had a nominal difference from the design times, and thereby made minor adjustments to the speedometer. We were both looking forward to righting yesterday’s wrongs and started the first leg of the race with great optimism. Our starting point was a backward street sign on the right side of the road. We counted down to our specific timeslot and charged ahead. We quickly made a left turn and were to be traveling at 45mph. I dutifully hit the speed mark and saw a tight left turn ahead. Staring intently at my speedo, I was not going to lose any time so early in the morning and flew around the turn. Hearing nothing from Hal about speed reductions, I made darn sure we were going 45mph through the entire turn. The rear of the car was sliding, and the wheels were squealing as we held on with white knuckled grips. As we came out of the turn into a straightaway, we both thought it was odd that Race officials would design such a dangerous tactic, but we had been taught to trust our directions. I asked Hall what our next instruction was, and he noted it was a right turn onto Route 291. I thought for a moment and shared that I thought I remembered seeing a Route 219 (not 291, but close) just prior to the hair-raising turn. Hal shared that he had his head down and was doing some math and was not looking at the road. We drove just under 4 minutes before we knew with certainty that we had missed our turn. By the time we got back on course, we had burned through over 9+ minutes. Now, how to make that up?!? Every morning we are provided with a list of all vehicles and their pole positions for the day. The list includes the car #, make, model, year, and color. We knew who we were supposed to be behind, and who should be behind us. We also knew we would have zero chance of making up that much time with usual tactics, so there was only one option left – floor it! From the list we could see we had 8 cars to pass. We roared past one, then another, and yet another, feeling very nervous, but optimistic – we’ve got this! Then, soon after we passed car #3, we saw a checkpoint ahead. Aaargh!!! We were now cooked on the first leg, with our time locked in at 6 minutes and 20 seconds late.

We knew we had to forget that loss and focus on the legs ahead. One more problem… The checkpoint was somewhere in the middle of a timed run. Our instruction required driving something like 2 minutes and 30 seconds at 35mph after a specific marker, and the checkpoint was, let’s say 45 seconds down that run. While the checkpoint signifies a reset to zero for any time lost or gained, it still requires that all continue following the instructions. We were in rocket mode, trying to pass cars (safely), and were not concerned with race instructions, because we just needed to get back close to our position. Once we passed the checkpoint, we slowed to the designated speed, but we had no idea when to stop at that speed and accelerate to the new speed. Solution! Let’s look at the car in front of us and see if we can tell when they are accelerating. They were quite a way down the road, but we picked the point we thought they increased their speed, drove to the spot, and accelerated. By this time, we were both laughing hysterically. We were so set on starting the day well, and we trashed it right out of the gate. There was nothing left to do but laugh. We remembered our race mentor saying, “If you finish this race, you should count yourself a winner!” Short story, we ended that leg off 9 seconds.

Leg 3 had more problems, 12 seconds off, leg 4 was only 8 seconds off (single digits are GOOD), and then there was leg 5. We approached a stop sign, and we were supposed to be stopped for 2 seconds, but cross traffic held us there for close to a minute, We strategized on how to make up that time, but we could also submit a form requesting that time back, because it was a situation outside of our control. We started to work on decreasing the time lost, and then a tractor pulled out onto our lane when we were to be traveling at 50mph. There was some momentary mayhem deciding what to do, and we opted to stop, and track the time to submit on a form. The problem was that I did a lousy job of deciding what I was going to do, and because of my indecision, Hal could not possibly track the time lost appropriately. We opted for the scientific SOTP (Seat Of The Pants) method, and chose 1 minute 10 seconds as the time for our waiver request. Our Leg 5 was logged at 1 minute 33 seconds, and with our waiver, it was reduced to 23 seconds. Leg 6 ended at 7 seconds, and Hal found a calculation error that if corrected, would have had us at 1.5 seconds off.

Other random thoughts, notes, and highlights:

We had lots of very hilly twisty turning roads with wildly ranging speeds. Through the worst of those roads, it started raining. Introducing rain into already challenging conditions was not fun. At one point we decided we were quite lucky to be in The Hippo. Her steel panels are probably 3 times thicker than current automotive steel, and thereby she was a natural roll cage. We have seatbelts, and if anything dreadful happened, we would be in the safety of a strong steel box. We have NO expectations for such a problem, but this is the kind of stuff that runs through your head when you are bouncing up and down the roads in the rain. Several of the racers are in open seated vehicles; no way would I want to do a race in one of them, as there is nothing to protect the driver and navigator if they were to roll.

It has been hot since I let Baltimore, and we have no air conditioning. That means the windows are down all the time, except during rain. The window weather-stripping is dry-rotted, and the wind from driving with the windows down has been tearing it to shreds. I cut a loose piece off days ago, and today more has decided to give in.

Mid afternoon we had a stop at the Museum of Automobiles in Petit Jean, AR. One of the cars in the collection was a Lincoln that was JFK’s personal car.

We pulled into Russellville, Arkansas for the close of today’s race.

And my favorite moment of the day… A little boy from Russellville was in awe of a 1916 Hudson Super Six Series H. The driver/owner happily asked the boy if he wanted to sit in the car. The youngster’s eyes widened. The driver lifted him into the seat, and then asked if he would like to wear the navigator’s headset used for communicating with the driver while driving. “SURE! Can I?!?” The boy pretended to drive the big beast and gave instructions to the driver through the headset. The boy was in heaven, and I am sure he will remember that moment for years to come. It may lead to his becoming one of the next generations of antique car owners.

The racers and team members are represented by all walks of life, and all have the unifying love of antique cars. No politics, no controversy, no drama, just a passion for these old cars. Every driver and navigator we have met have all been generous with their time in helping us Rookies, and if someone needs help, people all jump in with tools and expertise to help get cars back on the road. These are all really good people, and Hal and I feel privileged to be part of the group.

We will be in pole position #59 tomorrow morning.

Oh, and what is the good news??? Our 6 minute and 20 second overage on Leg 1 was reduced to 2 minutes. No one is ever booked with more than 2 minutes over or 3 minutes under. Also, even BETTER news… Rookies get the worst 6 legs of their overall 8 days of racing removed for the computation of ranking of cumulative results. That’s VERY good news for us!