Another foggy start to the day today. I stayed the night in Delavan, Wisconsin, near the second checkpoint last night of Lake Geneva, so I still had a bit of a drive on the route to Great Lakes Dragway, and it stayed foggy the whole way. The fog wasn't so bad though that you couldn't see anything in front of you, so it was unfortunate not far from the track when I came upon the flashing lights of a police car ahead and saw a Dragweek participant on the side of the road along with a couple others pulled over. When I was at the track I saw a Facebook post from a friend of the person that explained that they had been the victim of a hit and run on the way to the track. Hot Rod announced a little later that the Dragweek competitor had called them and asked if it would be ok to be towed the short distance to the track where they could fix the damage since it wasn't too bad and make their pass. I'm sure the police wanted it off the side of the road as well. Hot Rod gave the ok, since normally a tow would result in a disqualification, other than just to get someone out of harms way. I saw a couple conflicting reports later of whether the hit & run offender was caught or not, so I don't know how that turned out. Accidents are a real and unfortunate possibility while on Dragweek and it seems like there is usually one each year. Here's a screen shot.
We had a good delay of more than an hour while they waited for the fog to lift, but eventually it did and they were able to get running and we had a pretty nice day after that. Great Lake Dragway had another good turnout of spectators this year. When they called Street Machine Eliminator to the staging lanes Jared and I were able to get paired up together again. It was fun running against his Crown Vic since we were close in ET's, although he was quicker than me each day. I was able to take a run video with my phone. I got a laugh when we pulled to the line and Brian Lohnes announced us as a "Clash of the Dragweek Titans" lol. Here's a link to the run video on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDaH4xjgjKkI ran a 15.218 @ 92.97 and was happy with that. Our route back to Cordova was officially about 200 miles, and today took us through some scenic areas and small towns. One thing that seems tradition on Dragweek is mistakes on the route maps, although Hot Rod always denies it's on purpose. On Monday at the drivers meeting Hot Rod announced that they had someone actually drive the route this year ahead of time, and told us there wouldn't be any mistakes, however a couple hours after people had started hitting the road I saw a report on the Dragweekers facebook page that there were issues after the second checkpoint with the directions, mostly with the published distances between turns. I warned Jared just as he was leaving, and in fact there were mistakes. One instruction called out a distance of 1.9 miles, when it was actually 19 miles, and so on. We also had a few areas in the first segment while going through the small towns with quite a bit of stop & go traffic. Also one area of road construction with single lane traffic, where only one direction goes at a time, with some wait time, but not too bad. Jay has pointed this stuff out in the past, it is a definite consideration on Dragweek making sure your car can handle either idling in traffic or being able to restart multiple times while hot. But as I said before, after the first checkpoint, other than the directions, the drive was very nice. Not long after it turned dark I passed a Ford dealership in Dixon, Illinois that was all lit up and my attention was drawn to the lone car on display in the showroom - a very nice looking Lincoln Mark V ! Those of you that followed my adventures last year on Dragweek probably remember I took my '78 Lincoln Mark V as my plan B. I had to turn around and go take a look. The dealership was still open and there were three guys working there. I talked to them and told them about Dragweek and showed them pictures of my Mark V. They said the dealer allows the locals with classic cars to put them on display periodically. Here's a few pictures.
I got back on the road after that little stop. I did wind up missing a turn at one point and went 10 miles down the wrong road before I decided it didn't seem right and stopping to check where I was. That of course meant backtracking the same 10 miles to the turn I missed, but that was my only real issue. I ran the rest of the way to Cordova to complete the route, then drove to the hotel in Bettendorf, Iowa. I didn't have any luck with the wi-fi though, so writing this report had to wait.
