Our journey begins at Brian's house. We left
for the World Ford Challenge, at Gateway International Raceway in
St. Louis, about 6PM Thursday night. Chris (PBMRacing), Kelly
(Notchme), Rich (Phreakfree), Brian (PurpleLX), and myself
(TenSec86) loaded our gear into a 31 foot rented Winnebago.
Our journey was quite uneventful for the first
250 miles or so, until we got to Marietta, Ohio. We were watching
Under Siege 2, with Steven Seagal, on the onboard DVD player so
thoughtfully provided by Rich. All of a sudden, I heard a loud
bang under the right front of the Winnie. I assumed Brian had run
over a retread from a semi, when he started to pull over. Brian
said to me "That sucker was huge! Did you see his chest?" Sitting
in the passenger seat, I had not been paying attention to the
road. It seems that a deer decided he wanted to play chicken while
we were running at 80+ MPH. This was not a good idea. We hit him
head on, and the deer cracked the front grill of the Winnie, broke
both of the right side headlights out, broke the heater box clean
off the firewall, and proceeded to empty its bowels from front to
back, all along the right side of the motorhome. Photos are
included for your viewing enjoyment. We're now 200 miles from the
track, at 5:37AM, on I-70, in Indiana. Not sleeping all night has
made for quite an interesting evening. Needless to say, we never
finished watching the movie.
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6:04 AM: Terre Haute, Indiana. A large bird has
just become part of the grill, right next to the deer guts. Our
second casualty of the trip, and we're not even there yet. The
saga continues...
7:15 AM: Stopping in Effingham, Illinois. We're
at a Blue Beacon truck stop, to make the motorhome
semi-presentable. We need to clean the poopie off the entire right
side. The deer did a little more damage than we had expected. The
whole nose cone of the motorhome will need to be replaced. There
are stress cracks running along the whole front, and the fender is
slightly pushed out at the bottom. Well, not much we can do about
it now. At least the bird did not do any further damage.
9:40AM: Somewhere approximately 15 miles from
the track. Just got done eating at Cracker Barrel. I ate grits for
the first time, not very impressive. It might have been the whole
packet of sugar. Chris slept in the mo-home, the rest of us went
in and gorged ourselves. On our way to Gateway, but it's drizzling
now. Hopefully it clears up. We all need showers. Yes, definitely
showers. And a toothbrush. More to come...
12:29PM: We arrived at the track about 11AM. We
made pretty good time, especially with our detours/animal deaths.
Right now, we're drying out. Raining cats and dogs at this point,
and I fear that our 1PM meet will have to be postponed a little
while. Forecast is for rain till about 5PM. Our new Hardcore50.com
T-shirts have arrived, and I must say, they look great! So...to
make a long story short, the day seems to be a wash. Hopefully the
rain stops soon, since it's getting hot in here. I'll keep you all
posted, hopefully throughout the day...
7:32PM Saturday: Been awake since 5:30AM.
Spent the remainder of yesterday drinking beer, and watching
DVD's. They called racing at about 1PM, so we had to find
something constructive to do. We all fell asleep at
approximately 8PM last night. A long drive, coupled with
copious amounts of alcohol, created a strong desire for sleep.
We spent most of the day taking pictures and video that we'll have
for you guys hopefully
the beginning of the
week.
12AM Sunday
morning: Just got done tucking Brian in, seems he and KJ Jones had a bout
with Mr. Jack Daniels. KJ & Crystal Jones met up with us, and so did some of
the other members, at the Performance Industry Photography trailer,
and we had a nice cookout. Drank some beer, bench raced, and
had a general all around good time! I grabbed the PIP quad, to
bring our cooler back, turned the corner in front of the Poopie
Express, and there goes the cooler. Beer's all shook up
now. Guess I'll go to bed.
11:30PM Sunday
night: We're getting ready to head home now. A long day
of racing, and some difficulty getting the round sheets, made it
real hard for us to get the results posted for you guys the way we
wanted to. Rich and Brian spent most of the afternoon in the
tower, Rich had some sort of connection with the lady in race
control for getting the round sheets. I guess they didn't like
my bald head, because when I went in to see if we could get copies,
the guy said he didn't even know where I could get them. Rich
goes up, and comes down 5 minutes later with all of them. Oh
well....next time maybe I'll have to wear a hat or something.
I think the tomato on my shoulders (sunburned head) might have
scared them away.
12:15AM Monday
morning: We're about 10 minutes out of the track. There
is some sort of obscene smell coming from the bathroom. It's
bad enough that it woke Rich up. I think we forgot to empty
the toilet in the motorhome, and it's full from a weekend of 5
people using it. Sloshing around, and there's nowhere to dump
it. ICK! I think I'm gonna hurl.....Hopefully we can
find a rest stop to dump this thing out soon. If not, it's
going to kill everyone in here. Seems that the Poopie Express
moniker fits us to a "T".
Casualties of the
event:
1 - Dead Bambi, on the
side of Route 70, in Marietta, Ohio.
1 - Dead Tweety, also
on Route 70, in Terre Haute, Indiana.
1 - Demolished
Motorhome, returned 5PM Monday. The motorhome had between
$7500 & $10,000 worth of damage!
1 - 1/2 Gallon Bottle of Jack Daniels,
with a bottle of Coca-Cola to go with it (Brian's dinner tasted
better on the way back up)
2 - Cases of Yuengling
Lager (Pennsylvania Crick Water, for those of you who don't know,
and the only REAL beer in St. Louis this weekend)
2 - Cases of Coors
Light (Way to go Chris!)
7:30PM Monday: I'm finally home.
Watched great racing (especially the return of Bob G.), met some
really great people (you know who you are), and just generally had
a kickass weekend. I want to send some thanks out to the
boss, Brian, for keeping it light even after Bambi wandered into
our path, Chris, for just being a positive person, and helping out
with the whole weekend, and Rich and Kelly for the pictures you
guys took, and keeping the fun going. This was definitely an
adventure that I'd like to make an annual event. Next time,
however, I'm flying!
Jason
