ANRA FALL NATIONALS - Looking For My Lost Mojo

My wingman Barry (aka not Dan) and I arrived at the Patch a little before 11 AM on Friday October 9th for the ANRA Fall Nationals. We are digging this new system with gates opening at 10 AM Friday. Used to be gates would open at 3PM and we'd be at the tail end of about 33 million rigs stacked in the adjacent field waiting to get in and pit. That system always resulted in a spectacular fire drill as everyone fought for "good" pit space. Not to mention there were countless people who must have snuck in on foot and roped off acres of pit space for themselves and their buddies. Needless to say, by the time you got your rig parked and squeezed the rest of the crew into the half space next door everyone was already pretty grumpy. Just a crappy way to start the weekend. Don't get me wrong- it's a small price to pay for the thrill of that 10.5 seconds of wicked acceleration! So under the new system we rolled right into the pits at about 11, picked some prime real estate with room for Woollybear and Frankster with the Nova and a spot for Dave "the wrench" Lee.  It almost felt like we had room. 

We had little that needed done other than pulling the oil filter and draining a quart...just because we were thinking we over filled at the last oil change. I like to run about a quart short of full.

While the boys did the heavy lifting I fired up the BBQ and got some hotdogs and sauerkraut stoked up.  They work hard for food. We leisurely completed pit set up over the next few hours, ran the car through tech inspection and pretty much called it beer-thirty. That evening we had a nice dinner of pork tenderloins with apple sauce, then settled into story telling and caught a good sunset.

Saturday dawned beautiful. The weather was - well, perfect drag racin' weather! So we went out for qualifier number 1 and I cut an .044 light and ran 10.53. Now, two things... 1 we were expecting to go more like 10.46, and 2 the .044 light just isn't good enough.  I felt like I did everything as usual and my lights usually average about .020.  Good news is we get 2 qualifiers so we can fix that.  Well, in Q2 I pushed the tree a little too hard and went .008 red. The car ran 10.51.  We retired to camp for the day and accepted that the car wants to run 10.5x and that's fine. We'll dial for it in the AM!

Back in the pit, Dave "the wrench" Lee went to work preparing for Saturday night "Track or Treat". ANRA racing is home to a large contingent of Junior Dragsters, so promoter Butch Headrick announced that we'd be "puttin' on the dog" for the kids. Way cool! They got fists full of candy and we had hamburgers!

Sunday. Race day! 

We were stoked heading into round 1.  The car was wanting to run low 50s so we dialed a 10.51. I'm guessing there were 80+ cars in the Hot Rod class. That means 7 rounds of racing and 80 points on the line. Let's get after this! 

 

We'll not exactly as scripted. I don't know what is going on. When the lights came down I let go the button and it felt like a stellar launch (which it was).  I hit my shifts pretty much perfect, caught my opponent around 1100 feet, backed up to his bumper then went across the line wide open.  I looked for the win light on my wall (darn bulb must be broke) and saw nothing but cold concrete. What the?

I can't handle these first round losses. On my way to the timing shack I considered quitting drag racing. (But I got over it within the half hour). Picked up my time slip and observed:  my reaction time was .044 to his .028, I took the stripe by .035 (as I should) but I broke out- running a 10.47 for the loss.  

Weird. 4 of my last 5 lights were .044. I have to get off that number. I have lost my mojo.

Has anyone seen my mojo?

So we got to load up and go home early. I guess on the bright side I had the quickest 60 foot time ever.

That matters 'cause it indicates it's not the car's fault my reaction time is off. It's the loose nut behind the wheel that needs fixing!

On Monday morning me and my wingman put the toys in storage and went out for a nice lunch and a couple DBA IPAs.  We looked high and low for my mojo. Haven't got it back yet but we have until November 7th when we line up for the ANRA Finals! And I can't wait!!

Flying Pig. Out.

ANRA SUMMER NATIONALS- Flying Pig Goes To School and There Is More To Life Than Drag Racing

The Flying Pig Racing team spent the weekend of September 26th and 27th at the ANRA Summer Nationals held at Famoso Raceway.  We rolled into the patch with the points lead in Hot Rod and high expectations of continuing the mini streak. (coming into this event I had won the last 3 ANRA races in which I competed) Of course we all know that "prior performance is not an indication of future success" or something like that! Isn't that what they say when you look at the historical performance of your favorite mutual fund?!

So let's just get this part of the story out of the way.

I got schooled in round one.  Period.  I mean jeeez. The guy in the other lane cuts a near perfect .002 light to my .044.  Then he runs me down, covers me at about 1250 feet, backs up to my bumper and we both go wide open across the stripe and he takes the win by .004. Unfortunately I wasn't familiar with the car and never caught up with the driver afterwards so I can't give him props by name. But he schooled me good.

So let's talk about the great food, great friends, and the many stories shared around the pits.  And this- the highlight of my weekend. I had the opportunity to meet a lady named Cindy Crenshaw-Martin.  Cindy was the guest of Dave (the wrench) Lee, his wife Jann and Aunt Gail.  Cindy was a bit of a motor head dating back to her high school days when her first car was a hot Camaro. Sounds like it was the real deal and she fended off a lot of proposals from dudes that wanted to drive her car!  Well Cindy ended up joining the Air Force after high school and was stationed in Germany.  While in Germany she lost both of her legs in the 1980 terrorist bombing at the Munich Octoberfest.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest_bombing  

So we were chatting about driving with hand controls, different types of controls, etc. and Cindy asked if she could sit in the race car.  Of course I said yes and then I one-upped her and asked if she wanted to fire it up.  After a quick instructional she held the ignition button and I thought she was gonna go through the roof when that thing fired up! I wish I had it on video because it was one of the best moments ever!! It made my day to see her excitement when she whacked the throttle a couple times!

There is, indeed, more to life than drag racing...

Cindy taking the wheel

So while we were short on racing success we were long on great times with great people!  We had Woollybear and Frankster with the Nova running HR and D Gas and then Zac got to make 3 passes in his crazy Topolino altered with a new alcohol injected motor completed at Woollybear's shop.  Zack was being wisely cautious by soft rolling it off the line using the footbrake not the trans brake as he gets comfortable with the speed and down track handling.  I think the last pass was a quick 10.05.  I suspect when he let's his hair down that thing should run 9.50s or better.

The pit was colorful at night with lot's of visitors and story telling. Met some great folks in the pit next door who hauled in from Salt Lake City to get some run time on their NE1 dragster.  Super nice folks. Anzalone showed up and told some great stories and Jim Data did a lot of data downloading.  Talk about a lifetime of knowledge and experience!

The Nuke feeding the fuel he bought me last race!
It's a standing offer: If I make round 4 he buys a jug!

The nuke sporting a new Tiffin, complete with
pink flamingo

Beautiful shot of "Lane Life"

Wingman bringing the driver a cocktail. 
#important jobs

FLYING PIG RACING KICKS OFF 2020 ANRA SEASON WITH VICTORY!

 The long awaited, much anticipated kick-off of the 2020 American Nostalgia Racing Association ANRA season took place on August 21, 22, 23 at the famed Auto Club Famoso Raceway.

I just got off the phone with my buddy Dragster Jeff and one of the things he said to me was "it's really really hard just to load up your stuff, haul it out there, unload all your stuff, go racin', then load all your stuff back up and get home safe with everything in one piece. You just don't understand how hard it is to actually WIN one!"  Amen to that, brother!

We are extremely grateful that all the work paid off and everything came together- culminating in the win in the Hot Rod class.

To Jeff's point- it's hard. Stupid hard. Here's how the weekend started: Wednesday, me and Kenny "the nuke" went out to storage and picked up the motorhome thinking we were getting a real early start on the load-n-go... so Kenny hooked up the race car trailer and plugged in the in-line brake controller  https://www.curtmfg.com/dm/echo-mobile-brake-controller I have been using, and when I tried to check it on the phone app it would not pair.  Further inspection uncovered NO power to the brake controller.  Now, I have been using this thing behind the motorhome for about a year, and supposedly it picks up power from the 12v accessory pin on the 7 way connector on the motorhome, right?!  Suddenly, no power.  Must be a fuse. I decided to tow it home without the trailer brakes (a couple miles) and troubleshoot at home.  Long story short, we could not find a fuse that fed that circuit.  I mean under the hood, under the dash, under the bed, under the stars...nada.

Well, I have an awesome mobile RV tech named Matt https://www.matsonrv.com/contact who had recently done some repairs so I texted him and asked if he knew of another fuse box hidden somewhere.  He responded he'd be up here in the morning and find it. So Thursday morning after 2 hours of looking we concluded we will never find it.  So let's pull a new 12v hot lead to that pin in the 7 way plug and call it macaroni. Boom!  Matt crawled under the bumper, and of course there was no access to the back side of the plug, so remove the plug from the frame, riveted of course, and pull the plug apart and guess what?!  THERE WAS NEVER A HOT LEAD TO THAT PIN! That's right. For the 1 year I have been pulling that trailer on that motorhome, the darn brake controller has been pulling power off of the little brake-away system battery on the trailer!  Drag racers are so dumb. Anyway, we got that squared away finally and the leisurely load up was now more of a rush.  Me and my wingman Barry (not Dan) were committed to getting on the road at 7AM Friday since the gates were set to open at 9 AM.  A new COVID related thing I guess.  

We did get on the road by 7:30 Friday morning and rolled into "the patch" around 10:30 to find absolutely no lines, no backup at the gate, no waiting.  We rolled right in and found our friends Chuck (if you don't share your toys...) and Cindy who had saved us a pit stall.  We were located just 3 rows from the lanes and had space for Kenny the Nuke to roll in with his airstream, and parking for day-tripper Dave the wrench Lee as well.  Chuck and Cindy weren't running The Hook this weekend, they literally came out to camp out and cook us a smoked rib dinner on Friday night.  Seriously great friends! I mean they hauled out the https://www.theorioncooker.com/ smoker and fired up the best dinner ever...smoked baby backs complete with a pot of beans, pasta salad and dinner rolls. In fact we had a couple of great dinners out there and were able to enjoy the time with some other Flying Pig Regulars- Woollybear with his badass D-Gas Nova and Gankster Frankster and a couple part timers Ricky and Randy with the beautiful mint green Camaro.

When qualifying came around on Saturday it was, well, weird.  The raging wildfires in California had been going for a few days and most of the state was blanketed with heavy smoke and falling ash.  Literally yellowish sky and the acrid smell of smoke hanging in the air. So we made our 2 qualifying runs on Saturday and had good consistency at 10.655 and 10.659.  The weird thing was that was a good 1/10 second slower than what the weather station was saying.  Seems that the weather station can not pick up the ash in the air.  Those ash molecules won't burn in your engine and they are replacing oxygen in the air.  Net: the car slows down a bunch! 

When Sunday dawned the air was quite a bit improved.  There were even some patches of blue sky. I'm guessing a few people got caught off guard by the improvement in performance and missed the dial-in a bit on that first round of eliminations. anyway, we dialed a 10.63 for round one and I won a double breakout affair with a 10.61 on my 10.63 dial. I also cut a .001 light, which looks good on the time slip but is clearly only 2/1000 of a second from a foul so...on to round 2.  

In round 2 my opponent fouled, I saw his red light so I ran it out the back door to a 10.56 giving a real indication of the improved air. So that information helped a lot and we dialed 10.58 for the rest of the day. The rest was kind of a blur as we marched through the field tallying up 6 round wins and a big ol' ANRA trophy!  The final round was an awesome race against long time tough competitor and super nice guy Tony Chivington. It was a blast to yuk it up with Tony in the winners circle.

While I was consumed with keeping the winning going in the Flying Pig Mustang I unfortunately didn't have time to see what Woollybear and Ricky were doing.  Rick went to the semi final in Sportsman an incredible accomplishment in his rookie season.  And Woollybear qualified number 2 in D-Gas and rode that pony 4 rounds to the semis in a class that boasts some of the toughest drivers out there.  Big congrats to both of those boys!

OMG! QUARANTINE DRAG RACING IS REAL

So, during the last week of April I caught wind of an event being put together that would enable a limited number of racers to get back to the track and compete for some big buck$.  Sounded really intriguing to me so I made a few calls and reached Dragster Jeff Crider, my long time Famoso Raceway friend and got the skinny. Seems you need to be a member of "Race Club" for starters.  So I started making some noise and ultimately got the call from Race Club promoter Jesse Adams with the official invite!  Now, the rules of Race Club are like the rules of Fight Club.  Rule 1: Don't talk about Race Club.  Rule 2: see rule 1.  You see this thing had to be on the down low to keep the attendees to a minimum, so as to ensure we could meet social distancing requirements and yada yada amid all the COVID 19 pandemic hysteria.  Everything was being handled very quietly.  The track and promoter had the okie dokie from local law enforcement and the powers that be at the county, but still there was no-one outside of race club with any knowledge of where, when, how.

However, the day before the deal, promoters met with NHRA and the sanctioning body decided that they would review the details after the race and maybe use it as a template for getting other tracks up and running again. So, there is some info out there, although most posts don't specify where this took place.  Those that know, know!

Me and my wingman Barry (aka Weldo, aka the twin) made the 6 hour pull on Friday, arriving around 5PM.  Jesse, the promoter had saved us a pit stall literally adjacent to the staging lanes and 100 feet from the starting line!  This is cool!

We spent the evening Friday checking out the facility, and watching the first race of the weekend go down- a $2000 to win affair- taken by a cat named Cliff Hall who proved to be a beast that weekend.
What we found that evening was a bunch of people enjoying racing, lots of free beer (corona and others), food and entertainment (a DJ and a fire pit and dance floor) all while maintaining appropriate social distance and caution! Truly a blast!

Me and B and the tree
Yes, he IS 6 feet behind me!

Wingman doin" what he does

Socially distant

Beer in the lanes!!

I bought into the Saturday race- a whopping $5,000 to win deal- which kicked off with time runs at around 3PM.  So me and B took a cruise around the pits just prior and warmed up the pig. Everything was hunky dory until I made the hit on the first time run.  The car left like it's supposed to, but then started buckin like a mad bronc.  I watched the tach drop to zero and then peg the rev limiter- repeatedly- like WTH? So I coasted it off the track and on the return road it was buckin and poppin and everything else and finally when I made the last turn toward our pit it popped and shut off.  I landed about 100 feet short of the pit with no power.  Nunca, nada. zip. I got a push back into the pit and we started noodling it and ultimately wingman found a broken wire at the solenoid.  Lucky for us it dropped out while he was checking connections.  Apparently the wire had come out of the crimp connector and was intermittently making contact. Thus the wild bucking and sporadic tach.

The culprit

Happy driver

So with that fixed we went back up and made 3 more passes: a 6.64, 6.65, and 6.68  with reaction times of .017, .005, and .028.  (oh yeah- this was 1/8 mile racing)

When round 1 came up I was ready to rumble.  There were about 25 no box (Pro) cars and about 32 box (super pro) cars.  Format was box vs. box and no box vs. no box until the ladder dictated otherwise. So I dialed a 6.66 and went up there and totally screwed it up! I guess I forgot to let go of the button. I was sitting at the line thinking WHY isn't my car moving. I felt like I was on time but apparently my thumb was stuck on the button and I cut a .151 light. 151 is good in rum.  Not good in racing. For the record I ran a respectable 6.668.

Cool drone shot

Lucky for me there was a buyback for 1st round losers so I got to fork out another Benjamin and try again. I dialed the same 6.66 for round 2. This time I had an ok .043 light to my opponents .042.  He dialed 6.72 and ran dead on .72 with an 8, while I ran dead on my .66 with a 7.  Now if you're pretty quick at math you might be able to figure out the results pretty closely but since the clocks at the track only show out to thousandths let me help you: I lost that race by 9 ten thousandths of a second.
That is the closest loss I have ever had. In fact, it won me the not so prestigious award for closest loser- a bitchin' Starrett dial caliper. So that was cool. I guess.

Meanwhile the racing continued and when it was all said and done that beast Cliff Hall (driving a "backup car" because he wrecked his Mustang last race) went the distance and collected the $5k winners check! That on top of his $2k from Friday night.  Nice weekend for that cat.

Awesome sunsets out there with Dragster Jeff

DJ music afterparty

Would I do it again?  In a heartbeat.
SLOracer. Out.