Well not for everyone and everything (thank the lord above), BUT for ANRA Drag Racing, well yep.
You see when the Flying Pig Racing team set out for the ANRA season finals at Auto Club Famoso Raceway last weekend we knew the weather was looking sketchy. But we are drag racers, optimists, and adventurers. And kind of dumb. But that's another story. {drag racers are dumb}
Me and my wingman Barry (not Dan) loaded up the stuff, including the incredible Orion smoker that Barry recently procured from Chuck {if you don't share your toys} and hit the road early Friday morning committed to spending the entire weekend at the patch. We were accompanied by Kenny (the nuke) following behind in his purdy Wayfarer. We three had decided that we were at worst going on a 3 day camping trip in the rain, or at best a fine weekend of championship drag racing, or most likely a little bit of both. It turned out we were right!
We rolled into the track at about 11 AM Friday morning and picked us a nice spot, saving some room for Woollybear and Frankster, as well as the three musketeers that Woolly talked into coming out to play. Ricky had been there before with his beautiful Camaro, but the other two were bringing out a couple show cars to do some grudge racing, basically. I immediately threw some hot dogs on the grill as has become our little tradition. These boys will work for food. We leisurely set up the pit and had some lunch. That done, we took the pig through tech and settled in to wait for beer-thirty to roll around. And it did. And Barry fired up that Orion and loaded up 6, count 'em, six racks of baby backs. Now, the thing about the Orion is that you can cook 6 racks of ribs to perfection in about 1.5 hours. No lie. If you don't know about the Orion check it out. https://www.theorioncooker.com/
I'm tellin' ya, we always have spectacular food at the race track. And this was no exception. The ribs were off the hook!
So what about racing you say. Well...Saturday would be qualifying day and we woke up to a nice steady rain which had started in the wee hours and pretty much kept up most of the day. So we sat. And we waited. And we looked at the radar. And we waited, and hoped. And then it got dark. And cold. Well cold-ER. It had been cold all day. So the long and the short of it- Saturday was a washout. Well, I mean, except for camping in the rain. That part was good. In fact we got hailed on at one point- and I can't even remember which day that was!
When Sunday dawned it was looking like not much rain in the forecast. So the plan was to get 1 qualifying run in, and then start eliminations. Juniors to run first and then being as Hot Rod is the biggest class (about 65-70 cars this week) they were going to have us run 2 rounds pretty much back to back and then work in the other classes.
Our qualifier was super quick- a 10.39, due to the extra low density altitude, so we dialed a 10.39 for round 1. My opponent (former E-Gas champ, Josh Wagner) red lit. I saw his red light, cut a sleepy .058 myself and ran it out the back door to a 10.36. A pretty stout run with my quickest 60 foot time ever of 1.410. It's always nice to get handed a "W" at the tree so you can use that pass for a little more data!
Things progressed pretty nicely. One or two really light showers and a lot of dark skies but the able crew at Famoso kept the track clean and dry. So before long we were called back to the lanes for round two. This time me and the wingman decided to dial a 10.37. I ended up paired with a 9.60 car- a scary-short-wheelbase Austin or fiat or whatever. Anyway, I'm leaving about 7/10 of a second ahead of this guy and trying to be first to the line. So I cut an .013 light and boogied on down there. As I was getting close to that finish line he was on my back bumper and coming strong, so I just kept 'er matted and snuck across .035 ahead of him with a 10.375 on my 10.37 dial. A fine race by any account! Man, I'm beginning to feel like I got my lost mojo back!
Back in the pits we were feeling pretty good about things and looking forward to round three. And then the skies got dark. And we stood around with Jeremy -the champ- Jennings and crew and looked at the skies. We kinda got mesmerized there- staring out at the squall that was headed our way. We just stood there contemplating it until the first raindrops hit. Then we all ran for cover. By the time I got to the motorhome I was being pelted by hail. HAIL! And it poured.
Well it was also approaching 3:30 PM and in these the short days, well it became apparent there was no way this race was going to finish today. I think ANRA head honcho Butch Headrick contemplated bringing us back next weekend, but in the end decided we would finish this race on the Friday before next race. Unfortunately, the next race is the 2021 Season Opener in April 2021!
I can't believe the dreaded year 2020 is going to last another 5 months. That is just cruel.
We'll be there!
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| Rain means watching football with Wingman, The Nuke, and the Legend. |
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| "Rain? What rain?" |
Flying Pig. Out.
