Bonneville Excursion 9/11/07 - 1st salt day, still no suit

This will be a little lean this evening. Gonna try to get to bed at a decent hour.

The short of it with the suit that I found out after calling two post offices in two states is that the hotel staff for some reason did not hold the suit, but instead told the post office, "They've already checked out. Send it back." I don't know what particular idiot was responsible for that statement, but I'm not happy. The postman even asked her, "Why would they send it if they'd already checked out?" She said, "I don't know, send it back."

It's en route to Indiana. We can't get to it to get it turned around. We have not suit. The manager returns tomorrow. We will have words. Somehow they're going to make me feel slightly better about this.

We went to tech inspection today and found that the suit we were going to try and use in its place will not work. Dammit. Our only recourse is to beg and borrow for the days that we're here, so that's what we're going to do. Andre is the king for going over to my house, getting a set of track pants, and FedExing them to us. He totally rocks any day of the week. I was not happy to find that his efforts were in vain. Track pants are not land speed pants.

Moving on, because I'm tired of telling that story, we spent the first day on the salt today.



You have to put a tarp down to protect the salt from vehicle fluids. To keep it down on the salt, you use big friggin' nails and pound 'em in. The nails we got at a hardware store and they're about eight inches long.



Funks getting his bike unloaded on the lift gate.



Yeah, it's a bit high up! You always feel like the back wheel is sure to roll off, and when it gets about three inches from the ground it rocks down on the unloading side, which is always a fun moment.



Here's the automobile tech inspection area. We spent most of our afternoon camped out a couple feet away getting our bikes teched.



The S gets teched. I passed on everything except our leathers, so at least I'm all good in that regard.



Funks snapped one of me after I got back from tech. I'm doing my best to smile here. Not happy about the suit situation.



I took a walk after teching while Andrew used our supplies to change his oil. Here are some of the cars that were out in the pits.



This type of car is known as a "belly tanker," because the original ones were all made from the belly-mounted fuel tanks of army airplanes. (You're looking at the back end, which looks a lot like the front!)



Everything looks good in primer.



My heart belongs the the traditional old rods, but there are plenty of later model cars like this Firebird running out there.



This is an English car called a Morris Minor. It's got a small block Chevy in it with a tunnel ram intake sticking up through the hood.



One good thing about renting a gargantuan truck is that you get a lot of shade if you park it right, which we were sure to do. You can leave your tarp down overnight, so we'll get this same spot tomorrow.



This Studebaker bodystyle is another oft-scene sight at land speed events. Its shape makes it a natural for high speed runs. Very sleek!



A coupe that's had the top chopped down very low to make it more aerodynamic. This one is running an awesome injected Model B Ford motor! I think the owner told me the record for the class was...178mph??!!! That's a quick old four cylinder!



Another classic roadster being helped through the pits by the team.

That's about it for today, kids. We'll get out on the salt somehow. Many thanks to the friends and family that are continuing to provide support. The whole suit thing is really aggravating and discouraging, and it's nice to hear from you.

Tomorrow is another day. Actually, tomorrow is the first day of racing! We will make this work!