May 9 - Florida : Sebring International Raceway

Today was the first day Taylor would be driving, so we got up nice and early to make sure we could get everything in order in the proper amount of time. 615am and we were greeted with a pretty solid view right out our window.

Nice view.

The hotel, Chateau Elan, is located right on the track grounds. It's situated on turn 7, "The Hairpin", and offers an awfully nice view. We lamented that we couldn't stick around to watch our fellow One Lappers navigate the course, but alas, we had too much to do to prepare ourselves.

Taylor figured the easiest way to get into the driving suit would be right when he got dressed, so we did just that. It was no problem. We had (reasonably sad-tasting) coffee and got dressed/packed/organized while Dad went to put fuel in the car for the day; we'd arrived with a pretty low tank.

That was easy.

Taylor and I wheeled everything down to the lobby and searched for some breakfast. The hotel offerings weren't free, so we decided to go with Clif bars that we'd brought. I called Dad to bring better coffee and some fruit, to ward off scurvy.

Game face?

Dad came back with gas, coffee, and fruit. We chatted for a minute with fellow One Lapper, Sean, whose partner, Matt, had left him at the hotel. He had to walk to the track, which admittedly, wasn't terribly far. We offered to give him a ride, but our car was crammed full of stuff, so he politely declined.

Load up.

Taylor talking to Sean, who was preparing for his walk to the track.

Across the street and over the bridge that crosses the track. We signed in and found an empty parking spot in the shade near the end of pit lane. It was one of the last ones and a fortunate find- it was going to be a hot and sunny day. All three of us were really excited to be at such a historic track. Sebring sits on the Hendricks Army Airfield that hosted B-17 "Flying Fortress" training during World War II and has been operating continuously as a race track since 1950. The "12 Hours of Sebring" is one of the biggest races on the Sports Car Racing calendar and is in it's 65th year of running.

Standard track waiver being signed.

Hallelujah! Shade!

As we were unpacking, Matt and Sean (yes, the walking Sean from the lobby) cruised by our pit with some tasty looking breakfast sandwiches.

“Well hey, guys, where’d you get those tasty tasty looking breakfast sandwiches?”

“The Snack Shack is open! Head on over and order ‘The Beast’. Don’t ask questions, just do it.”

“Did you guys do that? Is that what you’re eating there?”

“No.”

“……”

Pretty sure I wasn’t going to order “The Beast”, I confirmed with Dad and Taylor that they, too, wanted a breakfast sandwich and headed towards The Snack Shack, about halfway down pit lane. 

Ye Olde Snack Shack.

I asked the (conservatively) 400 lb. man taking orders:

“Hi there, what’s ‘The Beast’?”

“Double sausage, double bacon, double egg, double cheese on a large hamburger bun. I don’t think it’s what you’re looking for.”

My first instinct was that I had been challenged and now I had to order it. Fortunately, I’m not 15, so better judgement quickly prevailed.

“Roger that, I’ll just have 3 regular breakfast sandwiches with sausage.”

I tell you what, I was extra glad when the order arrived that I didn’t pull any nonsense. Even the regular sandwiches were massive. 

A lot of iconic names on the "Sebring Hall of Fame" wall at this historic track.

In fact, each of us ate our sandwich 1/2 for breakfast, then 1/2 for lunch, and were full after each meal. The fruit went uneaten.

Feeding #1 from the sandwich.

Nervous, but excited.

Having unpacked, eaten, and watched some of the fast cars make their way around, we helped Taylor get situated in the driver’s seat. He was nervous, but excited. Dad installed the new steering hand control that Taylor had designed after his last track day. Dad had machined it at his shop in California the week before last. The 4-point Schroth Racing harnesses tightened up nicely; Taylor felt pretty secure.

Dad walked up the stairs to watch from the terrace above the pits and I hopped in the car with Taylor, along with 3 cameras. We drove up to the grid near start finish; Taylor decided to start more near the back because he hadn’t driven on this track, he hadn’t done much track time with hand controls, and he’d done 0 time with the new hand controls he and Dad had put together. It was hot outside, 93 degF, so I sat in the car with the Ed/C on with Taylor and we just chatted. It was nice and relaxing. I took some headshots of Taylor; he was not amused, but he was strapped in so tight, there wasn’t much he could do about it. Andy, the One Lap staffer in charge of ordering the cars on the grid came by to talk shop.

Taylor's turn soon approached. I started two track cameras and wished him good luck.

Good luck!

As he pulled away, I stood near the start/finish with Brock Yates Jr., the organizer of the event, and a track marshal that had a radio. The radio was used to talk to the corner workers who were stationed out on the track to watch for anything that might be an issue.

Taylor made it around for the recon lap, then went flying by for his first lap.

On his second lap, we heard over the radio:

"This is corner 5."

"Go ahead corner 5."

"Yeah, car #58 has gone 4 wheels off in turn 5, then continued, for the second time now."

"Understood, thank you."

We're car #58. Oops. I told Brock I'd figured out what was up when Taylor got back, but he said he wasn't worried about it, and returned to the previous conversation. He was talking about the only time he'd kicked someone off of One Lap, in 2007. I was actually participating that year. It was a guy in a Charger that kept crashing, and taking no responsibility, so he was asked to leave.

"This is corner 5."

"Go ahead corner 5."

"Yeah, car #58 has gone 4 wheels off in turns 3, 4, and 5 now, then continued."

"Understood, thank you."

I assured Brock we'd get it straightened out, but he promised me he wasn't worried. Just stay safe and have fun.

Taylor continued on to take the checkered flag and finish!

Once he returned to the pits, Taylor explained that he couldn't turn the wheel properly in turns 3, 4, and 5 because of their design and due to shortcomings with the hand controls; that's why he went off during the morning session. The only way to negotiate those turns without going off-track would be to slow down to a crawl. We didn't want to push our luck with the officials, so we agreed that unfortunately, that's what Taylor would have to do in the afternoon session.

Even with the controls difficulty, Taylor beat the Miata he started behind- way to go!

It's a long, 3.4 mile, track and it was over 90 degrees outside at this point, so Taylor was feeling pretty wiped from the track time. Rightfully so. 

The announcers came over the track P.A. system and called for people to line up for parade laps at lunch, if they so wished. Seeing as how this is Sebring, Dad and I hopped in and hurried up to the line, while Taylor relaxed and re-hydrated in the shade.

The track is big and fast; it was cool to see it in all its glory. I've driven a shortened version of the course before, but this was the first time I'd seen it all. Dad was having a great time, and he even tried the hand controls for a spell.

Not as easy as it looks.

With the parade laps finished, we cracked our sandwiches back open and finished them for lunch. I guess "The Beast" would've covered us for dinner, too?

We did our best to cool the car before the afternoon session, as well as cool ourselves, drinking plenty of ice cold water.

The afternoon session kicked off nice and early, which we were glad to see; we had a pretty long drive ahead of us into South Carolina.

Love this car. He's in the first run group. I don't think he's in the running for the overall win, but probably top 5.

Despite the difficulties, Taylor was still having such a good time that he wanted to go check out the swag on offer, maybe pick up a t-shirt or hat. We cruised over with him, but none of us found anything that we couldn't live without.

Couldn't find anything we loved.

Back in the pits (which are along the front straightaway), we watched the fast cars go by and discussed the afternoon session. The car was behaving really well; good grip, power, and brakes. As mentioned before, the hand control setup still wasn't working right, but there wasn't anything we could do at the time- Taylor figures a full redesign is needed.

We took the opportunity to get Tom packed up and everything organized to leave as quickly as possible.

We started calling the U-haul trailer "Tom" after we discovered the right taillight doesn't ever turn off (unless you unplug it from the harness, of course). We suspect it has something to do with the significant body damage (evidenced by large cracks and large amounts of unsanded Bond-o) to the right rear corner. Anyhow, like Tom Bodett from Motel 6, he'll leave the light on for ya.

A looooooooong pit row.

Andy came over the loudspeaker to request that all remaining cars make their way to the grid. They wanted to make sure there was no delay in getting people run on track, then out the door and on the road. Taylor piled back into the car. I jumped in with him to head up to the grid to keep him company, make sure the cameras were placed and fired, and to help with any issues that might crop up.

Getting situated for the afternoon session.

The line in front of us was pretty long, so Dad had some time to relax in the shade and visit with some of our pit neighbors. Taylor and I chilled (literally- Thanks Ed!) in the car, inching our way to the front of the line.

I set up the two cameras again, but I'm pretty unhappy with the 4k action cam I bought just before the trip. The menus are finicky, the image quality isn't great, the colors are bad, and the mounts are cheap and flimsy. You get what you pay for, I guess. It's an AKASO Go-Pro ripoff that's $90 on Amazon. I set it up anyway, just in case the footage is halfway decent.

I'd find out later that the mount shook so badly that it was, in fact, totally unusable.

Waiting.

103 degrees in pit lane.

Finally it was our turn. I turned on the cameras, wished Taylor luck, and jogged over to join Dad on the terrace near our pit stall. It's so far that if I had walked, I would have missed the whole thing.

Taylor and the Volvo were looking good on track! After just the first lap, he had cut the gap to the Miata in front of him by half. It was going to be interesting to see where he caught and passed. I hoped it would be somewhere I could get a photo!

Go Taylor!

On his second lap by, I tried a shot using the "Panorama Sweep" setting on the camera. I'd hoped to catch more of a stop motion look, but clearly I did something wrong. You get the idea, though.

At this point, Taylor was nearly to the Miata. The pass would be on the third lap...

When art fights back...

A lot of the track was out of our sight, so we waited for him to come around the back straight, where our view resumed. We knew he would be by the Miata, the question was just by how much?

Surprisingly, and somewhat worryingly, we saw the Miata first. Taylor hadn't passed. Hopefully, Taylor hadn't crashed. Our nerves grew more on edge as time passed, and still no Taylor.

..........

There he is! 

Well, he hadn't crashed, but he had certainly slowed. Did something break on the car? He didn't come into the pits on the third lap; he continued around and finished. So nothing too bad could be wrong. Strange.

We made our way back down to the pits to finish packing so we could hit the road ASAP. By now, pretty much everyone had already left, which is never a good feeling.

Taylor made it around the cool down lap, but he was too exhausted to fight the hand controls to get around the super tight chicane they'd set up for the pit entrance. I ran down to meet him, jumped in the passenger's seat, and helped him negotiate back to our pit stall.

I asked him why the slowing on the final lap. The car was just plain too hot. With 100+ degree track temps, he was getting a coolant overheat warning, as well as transmission overheat warning. He made the right decision to back off on the third lap and just cruise around. The car cooled down quickly, so it was just a hot day and hard driving. We were glad it wasn't something more serious. The Volvo is a performance car, but at 4,000 lbs with no serious cooling/heat exchangers, it's not designed to do track days in a Florida summer. No matter, Taylor was happy with the performance and stamped the day a great time.

As he cooled off, pouring water on himself and drinking a bunch more, Dad and I packed the car.

Success!

Get in there, Pops!

Packed up and ready to go, we all hit the bathroom before jumping in the car to drive to our next stop 150 miles away- Grassroots Motorsports Magazine in Holly Hill, Florida. They are one of the sponsors of the event, so the organizers scheduled a checkpoint at their offices. You're awarded 50 points and a sticker to prove that you came through, plus they'd be serving pizza and drinks for dinner! It's a great magazine that supports this sort of event, so it's cool that we get to stop by and say hi.

As we were piling in the car after the bathroom break, Taylor asked,

"Has anyone seen my phone?"

Um, no. None of us had. When was the last time he'd seen it? Where was the last place? We called it, but it was on silent, obviously.

We checked and double checked the car, the trailer, our pit stall, the bathroom, the swag tent. 5 minutes. 10 minutes. 15 minutes.

We were all dying. This was eating into our transit time. Which meant our sleep time! Taylor felt terrible.

After 20 minutes, Taylor made the decision. "We gotta go. I was shopping for a new phone anyway." RIP phone.

I hollered over to Dad, "Let's go! We're abandoning it!"

Dad replied, "Nah, I found it."

?!?!?!?!?!

It had been laying in the dirt on the way to the bathrooms. Dad found it. It must have fallen out of Taylor's lap while he was off-roading in his wheelchair to the bathroom during the day. An amazing find!

We were glad to have found the phone, but moderately despondent to have lost 25 minutes. Ah well, that's One Lap for you. It's a bad way to live.

This was about 30 seconds before we realized Taylor's phone was missing. Final stretching.

Dad offered to drive first. At this point, I was flailing in the car to get the website up to date. I hadn't yet admitted defeat on staying current. That would come later in the week, of course.

Grinding out the updates en route.

Gas stop before the final leg to Grassroots Motorsports Magazine.

There was heavy traffic on I-4 (isn't there always?) around Orlando due to construction, so both the locals as well as Google recommended that we shoot due east on I-98 to pick up I-95, then head north to Holly Hill, on the east coast, about 60 miles northeast of Disney World. So we did. Traffic wasn't too bad.

Traffic is never as bad when you're not driving.

For some reason, the drive seemed to take forever. We were a little crabby when we arrived, but at least there were still some competitors in the parking lot. Not many. But some. We arrived around 7pm. The first competitors had gone through before 430p. Urg.

Not a real smile.

Factory Toyota team was still there. Taylor knew some of the these guys from school at RIT.

We were late enough that they were packing up as we ate pizza by ourselves in the lobby. It was as sad as it sounds; we just wanted to get on the road. The price would be paid in the morning, we could already sense it.

Not even bothering to smile.

We finished our pizza, got our sticker, said goodbye to nobody because we were alone, and hit the road by 730p. A 6.5 hour, 400 mile drive lay ahead of us.

Dad took the first shift as I continued to work on the blog. He cranked out a solid 250 mile stint. We stopped for gas, restroom, coffee, and hit the road again.

Good grief; another disastrous cup of coffee. I took over driving to finish off the transit.

The route to the hotel, er, motel, took us through some serious back roads. There were no reflectors, no streetlights, and heavy trees. This was exactly the reason we added the Bulldog LED driving lights. As soon as you flipped those on, it was practically as bright as day; the difference compared to even the high beams was staggering. We saw wildlife and road debris in plenty of time- no close calls.

The same couldn't be said for our fellow transiteers, however. We came across Brock and his posse about 15 miles before the hotel, er, motel- they had hit a deer. We would find out the next day that a bunch of people had hit things in the night during the transit.

We arrived at the hotel in Lancaster, SC just before 230am, totally exhausted. This was probably our worst arrival time of the event; it hurt.

Made it.

People were still arriving after we checked in, so we weren't the only ones feeling the burn.

Unloading into the room for the night. Tom tucked into a parking spot.

The mood was grim as we prepared for bed. The situation wasn't helped by the fact that the track was still 30 minutes away, in Kershaw, SC. We'd have to get up a little earlier than normal to grab breakfast and make it to the track.

All things considered, though, we were still in it. And that's worth celebrating, right? Right?

May 8 - Georgia : Road Atlanta

Up at 615a again.

This morning would be a little different; Dad and Taylor would stay back at the hotel to do some laundry, shower, clean up, and rest a bit. I would head to the track, complete the morning session, then come get them at lunch. The track was only 10 minutes away.

This is his awake face.

I grabbed some breakfast from the hotel and was at the track around 7am. After talking with a number of experienced competitors during registration, it became clear that Road Atlanta was the most dangerous track we would visit, with high speeds, blind corners, and unfriendly runoff areas. Since I’ve had the most track experience in the last few years, we decided on Friday that I would drive Road Atlanta. No problem.

However, I really didn’t want my first time driving the Volvo on track to be at Road Atlanta; it was going to be scary enough being on a world-famous track without knowing whether the next turn on the other side of a hill was left or right, let alone doing it in a car I’d never driven. We all agreed, then, that I would race Memphis International to get familiar with the car, which I did yesterday. Unfortunately, Memphis would have been a great track for Dad or Taylor, but One Lap can be tough like that. So it was me for Road Atlanta.

Turns 11 & 12 are famous at Road Atlanta. You go flying under this bridge without being able to see the track because it goes hard downhill afterwards. Hard downhill and to the right. That’s 11. Turn 12 is at the bottom of the hill, a hard right, that leads onto the front straight. You’re carrying a lot of speed and if you get it wrong you go off track straight into a wall.

Even all of the talk about this situation didn’t properly prepare me for the reality of this.

Actually super steep and blind.

The picture doesn’t really do it justice. The hill is really steep, and you can’t see the turns at all until you’re well past the bridge, at which point you’re committed. Yikes.

I reached the paddock, unpacked, and snapped a massively out-of-focus picture of myself.

Unpacked.

Step aside, Annie Leibovitz, there's a new sheriff in town.

I’d been trying to make time to watch some video online of other people driving Road Atlanta. I was hoping to at least memorize if the next turn was right or left, but I was proving to be a slow learner. I’d be watching the video thinking, “Okay, next is a left, then another left,” and it would be a right-left, or left-right, or right-right. I was doomed.

As I was sitting in the passenger seat contemplating my upcoming demise, I was approached by a young lady that I'd never seen before..

“Are you Damen?”

…”Uh, ya, hi there?”

“I’m Ashley, a friend of Taylor’s. We were on the race team at RIT together. My husband, Ed, is a couple minutes behind me, he’ll be here in a few.”

Nice! Taylor had arranged to meet up with Ashley and Ed Gliss. They live in South Carolina and had taken the day off to drive down the 100 miles to hang out with us and cheer us on! I decided that watching any more video was unlikely to improve my destiny at all, so Ashley and I sat and visited until Ed arrived, then we all sat and visited. 

Ed and Ashley both took an immediate interest in the tires on the Volvo- the Bridgestone RE-71Rs. There was much scowling.

Come to find out, Ed and Ashley both work for Michelin Tires. Ed was even a test driver! I had no idea; with those kind of friends, why the hell were we on Bridgestones?! I hassled Ed:

“Hey thanks for the hook-up there, chief!”

“Well, I had no idea you guys were doing this, let alone need tires for it. I would have been happy to help!”

Oh. I see. So we blamed the situation on (conveniently absent) Taylor, and moved on. Both Ed and Ashley did confirm, however, that the Bridgestones were good tires, so I felt better.

Soon, it was my turn to go on track. I was nervous, and now I had an audience!

As before, when I went out on the recon lap, I tried to go pretty quickly to get the best feel I could for the car and how it performed on the track. Seeing the track at speed more closely represents the timed laps, too. Flawless plan, right? Especially at tracks you’ve never seen that have a bunch of blind turns, right?

I’d watched some instructional videos on how to setup for turn 11 before the bridge. Look for the colors on the bridge, put the car in the middle, then put the right tires on some yellow painted line as you go over the hill. No problem.

So I went flying under the bridge on the recon lap, placed somewhere I thought was good, and out over the hill.

I came over the hill going pretty fast and saw the track sort of off to the left, but pretty straight. So I aimed for that.

Well, that wasn’t the track, that was the pit entrance. The track turns hard to the right.

“Oh, darn it!”

I saw the road to the left, the track track to the right, and a beautifully manicured triangle-shaped piece of grass in between. I had to make a decision.

I was worried that if I bailed out onto the pit road, I wouldn’t be able to get back on track properly for my timed laps, and we would be penalized or disqualified. I wanted to make it around.

The grass looked like a plenty nice place to visit, so I braked hard as I could in a straight line, which took me onto the grass, and then gently turned the car back in the direction of the race track. I made it back on and continued around to get in line for the start. The view from the stands is great for seeing that piece of track, so Ed, Ashley, and the other 200 people at the track got to see my impromptu gardening. Great. I would later hear that I wasn’t the only person to visit that patch of grass, which made me feel better.

Just like I planned.

Going off track is not a great way to boost confidence, so I felt pretty awful during the timed laps. I was slow and scared. In fact, I was caught on the last lap by a turbocharged Miata that started way behind me. I moved over and slowed to let him by. My time was trash anyway, the least I could do was not hold him up.

I finished my laps without any more drama, but I knew it had been a bad performance. My suspicion would be confirmed later- 57th place. Ribbons of shame.

I wasn't being slow on purpose- it was my first time seeing the track. Yikes this place is scary!

On the other hand, that track is really a great one. I hope some day I can return to do it justice.

I stopped in the pits long enough to have a laugh/cry with Ed and Ashley, then left to get Dad and Taylor from the hotel. They were ready to rock when I got there, so we were back to the track in no time. Taylor confirmed to me during the ride that the thought never crossed his mind to ask Ed about tires. We were so busy in the time leading up to One Lap, I’m sure this was just one of many things that all of us let fall through the cracks. Oh well, next time.

Ed later confirmed, however, that they didn’t even make the size we would need, so no harm anyway.

While Ashley, Ed, and Taylor caught up, I watched some more track video. The afternoon session couldn't really be worse than the morning, but I was pretty nervous about it. The event organizers announced over the loudspeakers that there would be parade laps at lunch. Parade laps are a slow drive on the track, following an official, so you can see what the track is like. The race drivers of the day weren't allowed to participate, but Dad drove Taylor, Ashley, and Ed around on the parade lap so they could all see the track. They agreed it was really sweet and not for beginners.

Ready to parade lap...safely and cautiously, of course.

We all sat and visited, and Ashley and Ed mentioned they had brought food for us- score! Ashley made a crazy delicious pasta salad and had some fresh sliced apple. It was a hot day and the fresh food tasted amazing- we were so lucky! They are both track day pros, and it sure as hell showed. Thanks Ed and Ashley! 

Ashley had to leave shortly after lunch to take care of some work obligations, so we said our goodbyes- we hope to visit again soon!

Dad, Taylor, Ed, and I made our way over to the covered viewing area to watch the fast cars do their afternoon event.

Dad, Taylor, and Ed.

There are some seriously talented drivers in seriously fast cars in this thing. It was made very clear even from our limited viewing spot. I soon left them there to prepare for my own laps.

I didn’t want to hold anyone up in the afternoon session- it messes up their time AND my time- so I moved to the back of my run group. I dialed the recon lap pace back a bit, and stayed on track for the start.

I had a much better session. I knew the track better, and I was starting to feel like I almost knew where to go, but 3 laps is pretty short, so I finished without being anywhere near the car's potential.

Nonetheless, I improved to 51st and dropped 20 seconds off my time from the morning. Even though it wasn’t a great showing, I was happy. I had fun and felt like I was racing, rather than just trying not to crash. Like I said, I really hope to come back to this track some day.

Back in the pits, we packed up quickly to prepare for our drive to Florida.

We thanked Ed for his company and the food, and we piled in the car to leave.

As we were leaving, we saw Ed hunched over the engine of his Ferrari with the hood up.

“What’s he doing over there?”

“Looks like he’s recharging his A/C...”

“Wouldn’t that be nice...”

Our A/C was clearly not doing the job properly, as mentioned yesterday. As we rolled by, we shouted at Ed.

“Are you recharging your air conditioner? Got any more of that stuff?”

“Ya, got a bunch in the trunk.”

!!!??!?!?!?!?!!

“OMG we’re saved!!”

At this point, it was well into the 90s and we were looking at a miserably hot drive until we could find an Autozone to repair/recharge the a/c ourselves.

Sure enough, Ed had some extra R134 refrigerant. I popped online to find the low-pressure port location on the Volvo (underneath the coolant reservoir, strangely enough), we busted out some tools and Ed filled ‘er up.

My new socket set. So organized. Much glory.

Ed! Ed! Ed! Ed!

Holy moly, the A/C was freezing cold!!

Praise the Ed!!

We were ecstatic and henceforth called it the Ed/C. Thank you so much, Ed, you’re a real hero!!

Relaxed, cool, and unbelieving of our good fortune, we hit the road to Florida, some 500 miles away. We stopped for gas and food.

Tempting tamales on gas station rollers...mmmmmmm

Well, we found an Arby’s/Popeye’s/Gas station combo. We decided on Popeye’s and had an almost decent meal. 

Tracking down chicken + biscuits.

Don't get the seafood. We're at a gas station.

The biscuits, though, were magnificent. Flaky, moist, buttery and salty. Majestic.

Car + people fueled up, ready to roll on.

We pressed on through the night towards Sebring, in central Florida, about 85 miles south of Orlando. It was flat, featureless, and then dark. They did have a turnpike that was over $20 to drive down. Zoinks.

Sony RX100 taking some sweet pics during transit.

We made it to the hotel a little after 1130pm to find another group talking shit out front. Nice to see you too, guys.

They said it was only because they loved us. How sweet.

Chatting with Matt. Matt was cool, not part of the shit-talking receiving party.

The nutcases driving this thing on the event arrived first, so they got to park in the lobby. Apparently they were getting delirious from heat exhaustion while driving through Florida. Brilliant.

We visited with some cool people for a little bit, headed up the room, got ready for bed and were asleep around 115am.

Taylor’s driving tomorrow at this historic track, so we’re all excited!

The biggest smiles we could muster at the time.

May 7 - Tennessee : Memphis International Raceway

Up at 630am again. Ready to roll at 7. We were feeling the burn. Badly.

Packing up at the hotel.

We wanted Chick-fil-a for breakfast, which we saw on the way to the hotel, but it was Sunday. No Chick-fil-a. So we went to Hardee’s. Taylor wanted a breakfast burrito, so I asked the cashier for a breakfast burrito.

“You wan dapohcuhlips?”

Wait what?

“Dapohcuhlips”

She pointed to the menu.

Oh, I see, the APORKalypse Breakfast Burrito. Obviously.

The end is upon us.

Well of course we’ll take the Aporkalypse. Taylor later reported that the pork flavor was overpowering. Too porky. And so the legend remains.

We were at the track, chowin down by 7:50am. I’m so unused to getting to the track early. During the One Laps I did in college, we spent so much time repairing the car, we’d arrived at the hotel between 3-4am, sleep for a couple hours, then flail our way to the track, barely making it in time for our run group. Then repeat the next day.

As we were unpacking, I realized that because Memphis is a short race track, about 1.8 miles and 8 turns, I actually had time to do a track walk! A lot of people bring razor scooters and bicycles to see the tracks (some of them are up 3.4 miles long), but I decided to go for a jog around. I didn’t have a bike or scooter. 

Setting up for the day.

I certainly got to see the track, but I was really overheated and sweaty when I got back to the pits. I suspect that will be my one and only track walk.

We finished unpacking and setting up the ez-up shade. Dad ordered this. So crazy smart; I assumed it would be too much effort to put up and tear down each day. The one he ordered is super light and easy to use.

We finished setting up just as the first cars were headed out on track. This was the first time we would see them on track, so Taylor and I went over with Mike and Chris to watch a short section of track. Definitely some fast and loud cars. I have some cool video for later.

Watching during the morning session.

The morning session was going to be used to determine our running order for the rest of the week. Now, that may not seem too important, but that’s the opposite of the truth. This is pretty much the most important factor on One Lap. In the morning, everyone gets to the track around 8, the first cars start at around 830am. We run a morning session, then have lunch, then do another round in the afternoon. As soon as you are done with your afternoon race, you can pack up and leave. That means the first car in the run order can leave the track before 1pm. The last cars end up on track well after 230pm and usually leave around 3pm. This extra time translates directly to sleep. The sooner you get to the next stop, the more sleep you get. With 500-700 mile drives between tracks, sleep is in precious short supply.

So, the results of this morning session in Memphis were of dire consequence.

In the meantime, we needed to keep an eye on our tire wear, so I took a picture for reference. 2,800 miles, 1 wet skidpad, and 1 autocross on them by this point.

Hang in there, tires.

We started by car number again, for the last time, so we were towards the back. Expectations were pretty low for the Volvo, so my fellow competitors recommended I go to the back of the run group. No problem.

I’d never driven the Volvo on a track, and I’d never been on this track, so expectations were low from myself as well. Try to keep in on the track and shiny side up. The format was drive one lap as a warm up, then stop in a line at the start/finish line. From there, the flagger would give us the green flag one by one, and we would complete 3 laps as fast as possible. The time that counted would be all 3 laps cumulatively, not just fastest lap.

I tried to drive the warm up lap pretty fast, to try to get a feel for how the Volvo behaved. Dad had reported that the car had a massive and surprising amount of grip; I was finding the same thing on the warm up lap.

We lined up, me last, and finally it was my turn. We were off!

The Volvo was proving to be great on the track! It was decently fast on acceleration, stopped great, and had tons of grip in the turns. Not knowing the track was definitely hurting the elapsed time on track, but the car was really great. So much fun!

I didn’t go off track and had a ton of fun- success! Dad got some short videos that I hope to post some day.

Way to go, Volvo!

Back in the pits, we were all smiles. The car looked great and ran great. People were coming over to tell us how much they loved the car and how surprised they were at how fast it was. I guess nobody believed us when we previously told them it was decently spicy.

The results were posted- 50th place out of 68! We were so happy- the average car in this event is a 500hp Corvette, so to beat 18 cars was a huge win in our book. More people came over to marvel at the meat/speed wagon!

Once everyone had run in the morning, there was a lunch break. I decided it would be a good time to address my Ribbons of Shame.

Shame.

I reviewed some internet posts about how to remove the passenger door panel so we could inspect the damage, order parts, and repair. I found some good instructions, Dad joined me to help, and Taylor went to get us lunch. The team was firing on all cylinders!

The door panel came off nicely and we inspected the window mechanism. It appeared that 1 of the 2 clips holding the window to the regulator (which raises and lowers) was broken, and one of the metal arms of the regulator itself was bent. Too bad the suction cup was so high quality. Usually I get cheap junk which would have just popped off. Classic.

Dad and I were able to reattach the clips to at least hold the window in the right place, and Dad bent the regulator arm approximately back into shape. We tested the fix, and it worked! Ribbons of Shame be gone! The regulator wasn’t fully fixed and will need to be replaced, but for the rest of the trip it will be fine. The window will stay in place. We just need to remember to not roll it down.

Ribbons be gone!

We reassembled the door and enjoyed the Polish Sausages Taylor retrieved from the snack shack. Even more relieving was that I would be able to stop telling the story to everyone who saw the duct tape, which was every single person. Yay.

While we were waiting our turn for the afternoon session, a fellow competitor stopped by to ask if he could borrow some jack stands. They had blown the motor in their car during the very first track event. We were happy to let them borrow the jack stands, and we went over to inspect their carnage. It was thorough. The oil they drained from the engine was full of metal shavings; it looked like glitter. This is evidence of a problem that cannot be fixed without removing, disassembling, and rebuilding the entire motor with lots of new parts. It wasn’t looking good for these guys.

Bad way to live, man.

Actually, for those familiar with the YouTube channel, Road Kill, the car in question belonged to them. It was their old Pontiac Firebird. Their version of the story ought to pop up on their channel at some point in the future. I’ll link it here when it shows up. While they were diagnosing/loading, one of their teammates interviewed Taylor for the Road Kill livestream.

Our surprising result from the morning meant we got to move up in the run order. In fact, we ended up in a run group with Porsches and Corvettes!

A fast group of race cars.

The protocol was the same for the afternoon session: one recon/warmup lap, then 3 timed laps. Again, the car felt great, and I had a really fun time driving. I felt a lot better about the second session since I knew the car and track much better.

Apparently, the Corvette behind me switched to a faster driver in the afternoon, so despite leaving 10 seconds after me, he caught me near the very end. I beat him to the finish line by a couple feet, but his time was a lot faster than mine. The organizers try to prevent this sort of situation because it slows both cars down, but when someone is surprisingly fast or slow, passing does occur. I chatted with the driver, Pete, once we came back to the pits. He was so nice and excited, saying how much fun we’d had racing so closely. I was glad he wasn’t upset with me for holding him up. I suspect we’ll be hanging out more during the week, especially because we will be racing in the same group frequently.

The results came back from the afternoon session: 43rd- even better! There had been some mechanical problems with multiple cars already too, so some weren’t able to post any time for the second session.

Happy with our performance.

Normally, we would pack up and drive out as quickly as possible to the next track, but we were to do the one drag racing event for the week. There would be one attempt for the fastest time, then a tournament-style event called a bracket drag.

Relaxing before the drag event.

Really briefly, a bracket drag race is a two car race where the slower car gets a head start. The length of the head start is determined by the two drivers. Each driver guesses how fast his car will go from the start light and tells the race starter. If one car estimates 10 seconds, and the other 15 seconds, the slower car gets a 5 second head start. If both cars leave at the perfect time, have no mistakes, and their estimates were correct, they should arrive at the finish line at the same time. However, nobody’s perfect, so someone will arrive first and be the winner. It’s a way to allow fast and slow cars to compete against each other. If you happen to finish faster than your estimate, you’re disqualified. That’s called “breaking out”. If both cars break out, the car who broke out by the smallest amount is the winner.

Over 90 degrees, so Taylor cooled off in the (semi) shade.

Dad did a lot of drag racing back in the day, so we were happy to let him do the driving. Everyone got in line to do the first part which was just going for your lowest time. This would also help you come up with your estimate for the bracket drag.

Well, Dad was so busy watching the driver in the lane next to him during his first race, he completely missed the start light. He eventually figured it out and launched for his 1/4 mile pass.

14.552 @ 98mph.

It was really hot, so times for everyone were pretty slow. Well, except the GT-R’s running in the 10’s. The Volvo would be a lot faster in cool weather.

Right at home.

The bracket drag was elimination style, so each race, 1 person of the 2 would be eliminated until no-one was left.

Dad was up against a Dodge Challenger Hellcat (707hp) for his first round. He actually ran really well: 14.6 vs his 14.4 estimate. That would have beaten a lot of people, but the Hellcat got within 0.1 seconds of their estimate, so Dad was eliminated. Oh well, that just meant we got to pack up and head out to the next stop- Road Atlanta in Georgia!

Pack em up, move em out.

On our way out, we saw the 3rd fastest car in the event, a highly modified Mitsubishi Evo 9, being loaded onto a trailer; they’d broken the crank in their engine. They were hoping to swap in a new engine and meet us in Florida on Tuesday to continue. Poor guys, we hope to see them soon!

Hope they can make it back.

We loaded up and hit the road for our next stop, Road Atlanta in Braselton, Georgia. We stopped right outside the track to top off with gas. It was hot out and the a/c seemed to not be working properly. It was moderately uncomfortable. We'll try to get a can of freon at Autozone or something to see if that can help. Taylor never really noticed, living in Seattle. Imagine that.

Our drive to the hotel was about 450 miles, or 6.5 hours. Unfortunately, we were going to lose an hour again. This should be the last hour we “lose” for the trip. All gains from here on out.

Dad was driving and we found a few fellow One Lappers out on the highways. Everyone likes to drive at different paces, ranging from the actual speed limit, all the way to definitely-jailable pace. We end up somewhere in between.

Definitely not speeding.

Dinner became the topic of discussion (again), so I started searching ahead for a food and gas stop.

KFC!

We’d been trying to coordinate a KFC stop since we left Seattle, and it looked like there was one in the perfect spot for us- score! We sang songs of celebration and merrily imagined what we’d order. It wasn’t long before we arrived.

Getting out to experience the glory.

KFC isn’t particularly fast, so I volunteered to get an order started for us while Dad and Taylor got out of the car. I entered the restaurant to find a grim scene. 

There was one lady sitting, clearly agitated, and one man standing at the register, waiting to place his order.

There were 2 workers milling around in the back, laughing, yelling, and not preparing any food.

My happiness drained away.

After 2 minutes of standing there, nothing had changed. The seated woman finally got up. I asked her how long she’d been waiting on her order.

“20 minutes!”

I asked the man how long he’d been standing there trying to place an order.

“10 minutes!”

I steeled myself to deliver the bad news to Dad and Taylor. We needed to try somewhere else. Who knows how long we’d be stuck there.

They took it hard. There was disbelief and disillusionment. Dad had to see for himself, so he went in, only to return and agree. We had to move on.

Back into the car, we silently soldiered on to a Hardee’s down the road and unloaded. The Aporkalypse poster on the window mocked us.

Not happy to be here.

The food was actually pretty good. We all had chicken. Dad and I had ordered the same thing, but the chef only made one, so I had to wait while they made a second for me. Dad went and filled up the gas tank while Taylor and I finished our meal.

Back on the road.

We made it to the hotel by 11pm and were greeted out front by bunch of fellow One Lappers drinking beer and telling us that we looked rough and this wasn’t even the long drive.

Thanks, guys.

Nice to see you, too.

I maintain that we did a good job. We took a few minutes in the room to clean up, organize, and regroup. I unpacked all the camera and computer stuff to recharge, and offloaded footage to a hard drive. Fresh batteries and empty media cards to start tomorrow.

We were in bed by 1230am, ready to hit Road Atlanta, a greatly feared and respected race track, in the morning.

May 6 - Indiana : Wet Skidpad @ Tirerack, Autocross @ Grissom

May 6 - Day 1 - Wet Skid Pad + Autocross

Dad thought we needed to get up at 530am to make it to Tire Rack’s headquarters in time for the first event of the day: the wet skidpad.

I thought 630am would be fine, so we settled on 630. We got up and had everyone ready with everything packed in the car and driving out of the parking lot in 30 minutes- nice! A huge improvement over the 2 hours it took on Thursday.

Ready to roll!

We stopped by McDonald’s to pick up breakfast to go and drove the 10 minutes to Tire Rack.

Once there, we unhooked the trailer and unpacked the car to prepare for the first competitive event of One Lap- a wet skidpad test. This test is to measure how much grip the car has while going around a 200-ft diameter circle. Knowing the exact size of the circle, then measuring your fastest time around the circle, you can math your way into the amount of lateral acceleration the car can generate. The faster and grippier your car is, the higher your score.

We were assigned parking according to our number, 58. Car number 57 next to us is a blue Ford Focus RS, a 400hp AWD car that has some serious potential. Car 59 on the other side of us is 2 young Asian brothers named Chris and Mike in an older Toyota MR2 Spyder. This is their first One Lap. They’re really cool.

Everyone was unpacking and visiting. The weather was a bit chilly, but sunny. Spirits were high. Nobody had blown up yet.

Team Photo

A large number of locals had shown up to watch and send us off, so there was a good energy around as the skid pad event got started. The order was by number, so we had a bit of time to wait and watch. Taylor and I walked around a bit while we ate our McD’s, scoping out some of the really neat cars. We also visited with a really nice guy named Melvin, who contacted us via the Volvo forum. He lived about an hour away and had come over to watch the first couple events and hang out. It was great to meet him and pick his brain for tips on the car. Thanks for coming out, Melvin!

Catesby Jones's 1000hp GT-R

Dad was to do our driving in both events for the day. We’re just playing it by ear on who is driving what, seeing how we’re all feeling about the event as the week progresses. We all watched as some of the wild and fast cars went around in their circles. It was a wet skid pad event, so they had turned on the sprinklers to soak the racing surface. It doesn’t look like much to the spectator, but it can be a bit hairy trying to control the car.

Almost time to get in line

Dad got in line, and I mounted up an action camera to the inside of the front passenger side window to capture the in-car action. Taylor and Dad figured out how to disable the traction control to keep the car from interfering with itself. I sat in the passenger seat as Dad waited to go.

There was an announcer talking about the competitors, their cars and their scores, so I decided to roll down the window to hear what was happening. 

BAM! SLAM! CRASH! SMASH!

Me: “ONONONONONONONONO!!”

Dad: “What on Earth?!”

I furiously fumbled at the window switch, but it was too late. I’d forgotten that I’d used an industrial strength suction cup to mount a camera to that window, so when I rolled it down, the suction cup got caught on the door and something in the electric window mechanism broke very badly. The window fell down into the door and couldn’t be rolled back up.

NONONONONONONONONONONO. 

Dad was less than 3 minutes from his event start that had him driving through sprinklers. The interior of the car would get soaked! And what did that mean for the rest of the week?! I was panicked and mortified. How insanely embarrassing! I frantically jerked the window around in the door to try and pull it up into the opening.

Dad was saying we should skip this event so we didn’t soak the interior of the car. What a way to start! I felt awful. We had about 2 minutes to make a decision.

Luckily, I was able to pull the window up and into place. But if I let go, it would fall back into the door. Someone held it up while I sprinted back to our parking spot to get some duct tape. I made it back and put 3 pieces of duct tape around the top of the door to hold the window in place so Dad could compete in the event.

At least he was able to go, but I felt just horrible. What a bone-headed move. Ugh. The duct tape would come to be known as my “Ribbons of Shame!”

Behold. Ribbons of SHAME!

Taylor and I positioned ourselves to watch Dad go around. Around and around he went, first 2 laps clockwise, then 2 laps counter-clockwise. He did an excellent job- we finished 34th (0.692g for those familiar with skidpad measurements)! Way to go Dad! What a polarizing start: a truly dumbass move followed by a super solid score!

Around the wet skid pad. Go, Dad, go!

We hustled back to our parking spot to pack up for the drive to our next event; an autocross at Grissom Airforce Reserve Base some 82 miles away. Our packing was quick and efficient. We were on our way by 920am.

We drove south from South Bend to Grissom ARB near Kokomo, Indiana. Melvin came down as well. It was cool to see all the One Lap cars on the road. We were officially on our way!

Car 61 on the way to Grissom

An autocross is a small race track that is setup with cones in large parking lots. The turns are normally very tight, and max speeds are typically below 70mph. Laps last around 60 seconds and each car is released one at a time. Autocross cars are usually small, light, and very darty. Autocrossing is a very specific skill in the racing world. Most of the One Lap cars are designed for big road courses, so this would be interesting. This would be the only autocross event of the week. Sort of like an appetizer.

We arrived, unloaded, and got in line. The event wasn’t going to start for a little bit, so the competitors were out doing a “track walk”: walking around the track to get a feel for it. Dad went out to do the track walk while Taylor and I hunted down some cheeseburgers that came with a pile of pulled pork and BBQ sauce on top: the 944 burger. Gluttonous.

Hanging out at lunch.

The order was again by car number, so we were near the back; 58 out of 68 cars. The top 10 - 20 cars or so are known to be the really fast cars, and the event organizers take a random guess at speed based on the car entered for the rest. So roughly the cars get slower as the numbers go up. There are definitely exceptions, especially when a car is heavily modified or the driver is particularly talented. We’re low on talent in a 4,000lb family wagon. Thus, car #58 / 68.

Serious car = serious number

The fast cars were completing the lap in about 49 seconds. As everyone went, times naturally got a bit longer as we progressed through. The hand controls on the Volvo that Taylor uses were designed for street driving, not racing. He has a hard time getting the car quickly around tight turns just because of the design of the controls, so the autocross wasn’t a good fit for him. While I certainly could have done it, I really wanted Dad to race. He hasn’t been able to participate in any racing for a long time and he really misses it. I wanted him to drive as much as possible as I’ve had a ton of track time in the last few years. He agreed.

Having not been on the track in so long, plus the fact that he’d never raced the Volvo, Dad took it pretty easy on his first lap, just to get a feel for everything and not go overboard. We had 3 runs. His first lap was around 61 seconds. I got some good in-car video, which I obviously won’t post right now because I haven’t had any time to edit or even watch the whole thing. Sorry.

Our new friends Mike and Chris Lin, car 59, went for their first run.

50 seconds. 

Wait, 50?!

That was a top 10 time!!

Chris claimed that he had done some auto crossing before, but we smelled some b.s. We would find out much later, using some Google-fu, that Chris is a National Championship level autocross all-star. The ultimate sandbagger. How funny! Great driving out there, Chris!

Car #59 Toyota MR2 with Honda engine, Chris Lin the Sandbagging Auto-x champ, Mike Lin, Taylor

Dad was excited for his second run because he knew the car and course better, and was ready to push harder. Taylor and I meandered about, talking with fellow One Lappers and checking out cars. Not a bad way to spend a day.

Dad was ready to go for his second run, and I had relocated the camera to the front bumper to get some action shots. However, because I’m a 6-time All-Star and undefeated People’s Champion of Morons, I didn’t turn the camera on. Classic.

Dad ran a 59! Very nice! We were moving up the standings. At this point, Dad had me pull up the video from his first run to see where he could make up time. I popped the card from the camera into the laptop and he did some observing.

Dad studying.

The third run came up quickly. I wouldn’t forget to turn on the camera this time! Good to my word, I went to turn on the camera right before Dad went out. The camera beeped at me and flashed the memory card light. Remember the last time we saw the camera card? Yes, folks, back in the pits in the laptop. My legendary ass-hattery was growing at a prodigious rate. No footage from the third run.

However, Dad ran a 57.6, good for 60/68! He was improving at a wild rate, but unfortunately we only got 3 runs. Good work, Dad!

We packed up, said our goodbye’s to Melvin and his own sweet Volvo V70R, who had joined us for the autocross. He gave us some excellent parting tips on the car, as well as his number. He’s a valuable resource that I hope we don’t have to use! The drive to Memphis was 547 miles away, about 9 hours with stops. We left around 2pm.

Packing up to head to Memphis.

We jammed our way south, stopping a couple times, including once for dinner at Panda Express. Normally, these sort of longer stops are very ill-advised for One Lap. Your stop time comes directly out of your sleep time, and we’re short on sleep all week already. However, it’s absolutely critical that we get Taylor out of the car for some period of time during the drives to make sure his skin stays happy. You and I can shift around in the seat quite easily, so nothing falls asleep and the blood flow is good. He can’t. We knew going into this that our stop time would be longer, but I don’t care. We want him along, so we’re doing it. That’s that.

Panda express dinner stop.

One of our gas stops had a restroom door that was so narrow, Taylor couldn't fit in the door. They recommended going across the street to the stop that had a bigger bathroom. Taylor didn't feel like piling back into the car, just to go across the street, then pile out again, so he went to wheel across the street. Dad went with him, dodging semi-trucks. It wasn't as risky as it sounds.

Just headed to the bathroom.

We arrived at the hotel in Memphis at 1140pm. A great arrival time by One Lap standards! That will seem pretty early compared to other times later in the week.

We were staying at a Double-Tree, a Hilton property, and because Dad stays with them so much for work, we had no problem getting the room we requested. VIP! Others were not so lucky and were having trouble getting their rooms.

We said hello, goodbye, and goodnight to some fellow competitors that had arrived at a similar time, and we piled into bed just before 1am for a 5.5 hour sleep. 

Made it to Memphis. Good night!

Memphis International Raceway in the morning- the first full road course event!

NEXT POST: May 7 - Tennessee : Memphis International Raceway

PREVIOUS POST: May 5 - Indiana : Registration

ALL POSTS: One Lap of America 2017

May 5 - Indiana : Registration

Registration Day

The schedule called for a registration day at the Waterford Estates Lodge in South Bend, Indiana. Tire Rack, one of the largest tire distributors in the country, is headquartered in South Bend, Indiana. Tire Rack has been the title sponsor of the One Lap event for the past <insert large number> years, so the event begins and ends at their facility.

Having gotten to bed so late, and not being sure of the exact schedule, I told Dad and Taylor to sleep in. I would get up at 8a and go check in for us to see what needed to be done for the day. I haven’t done this event since 2008, so I wasn’t sure what, if anything, had changed.

I got up at 830a, got dressed, and headed toward the lobby, where registration took place. I myself felt like a runover sack of meat, but I was wildly pleased that we made it to the start. Many things had to go right for us to get there in time, so I was thankful for the combination of luck and perseverance. Proud, you might say.

Made it!

The parking lot seemed awfully empty, and I learned why. Registration entailed signing a waiver, paying, and picking up the required stickers to be placed on the vehicle. You then had to put the stickers on the car, get sticker placement and helmet and race suit eligibility checked. You had until 3p to get that done. Damn, I could’ve slept in too.

Not many people yet.

Since Dad and Taylor weren’t there to sign in with me, I didn’t even sign, pay, or pick up stickers. I stopped briefly to dine at the “free continental breakfast” (1 crusty old bagel, a half functioning toaster, and a glass of cloudy water), then went back to the room to take a nap.

I cruised by the front desk on the way back to pick up a package that had been shipped to us at the hotel. One of the most important items I needed to pack from my house was a HANS (Head And Neck Support) device. It’s a piece of safety equipment that keeps your head from moving too far from your shoulders in the event of a crash. It’s a life saver, literally. I remembered to pack a backup microphone for my backup microphone, but I left the HANS device at home.

Honestly, I didn’t even realize I’d forgotten it when we packed up in Seattle. Dad did.

Dad: “Hey, where’s the HANS device?”

Damen: “Well, shucks, Pa, it seems I may have left it at home”

I frantically called my exquisite wife, Ryann, in a furious panic. She’s an angel among angels, and she immediately dropped everything to ship the HANS device via UPS Store to the Waterford Estates Lodge in South Bend by Thursday. Thanks, Ryann! And big shoutout to the guys at the UPS store who helped her get it packed and shipped super quickly for a great price! Thanks guys! It arrived in time and in perfect shape.

Awesome Ryann + Awesome UPS Employee = HANS device

Once back in the room, I hopped back in bed. Taylor and Dad were still out; they never even knew I left. As I laid there, I started thinking about what else I might have forgotten to pack, and I settled on a racing suit. Taylor had ordered one, and I saw it in his apartment back in Seattle, but I never saw it go in the car or trailer. I started to panic. But I didn’t want to wake anyone up about it since we were so behind on sleep. I deliriously searched the internet to see if there was anyway I could overnight a racing suit to South Bend so we’d be okay for Saturday’s start.

While I was scouring Amazon shipping options, Taylor woke up.

“TAYLORDIDYOUBRINGTHERACINGSUITIDIDN’TSEEITINTHECARORTHETRAILERWHATSIZEAREYOUINEEDTOORDERONELIKERIGHTNOW?!”

“Ya dude, it’s in my suitcase”

Well, okay then; all good. It was 10am.

We all got up and got ready. Dad and I went to complete the registration process while Taylor got ready.

Dad gets swag.

Dad gets stickers.

The parking lot was filling up with competitors, and they looked pretty serious. 1000hp Nissan GT-R’s, loads of Porsches and Corvettes, even some fully stripped out and caged race cars. We had seen the entry list before arriving, so none of it was a surprise. Still, it was quite a sight. Part of the fun of the event is getting to hang around awesome cars. This year would be no exception.

A couple thousand horsepower between these chaps.

The Volvo looked tame in comparison, but we were anxious to unleash the Swedish Beast within anyhow.

On the way from Seattle, we had maintained a growing list of things to get once we were in South Bend. Dad would hang out with Taylor a bit while I went to Walmart to get the goods. When I got back, we’d sticker up the car, get our inspection done, go get the Last-Minute Spare Tire, and be back in time for the driver’s meeting at 3p. It was a little after 1130a.

I went to Walmart for cold medicine, Tylenol, ibuprofen, folding chairs, duffle bag, soap, batteries, oil, oil filter, rags, carwash, ziplock bags, laundry detergent, and a storage tote. It takes like 10 seconds to type, but it took me an embarrassingly long time to get at the store. The longer I was there, the angrier I got, and the worse I shopped. And I’m a terrible shopper to start. I didn’t get out of there until after 1240p, so I called Dad to tell him I was going to pick up the World’s-Most-Expensively-Shipped Spare Tire. Walmart was halfway there.

Grocery-getter gettin' groceries.

The timing actually worked out pretty well. Thanks to Tire Rack for having the tire at the front desk and getting me in and out of there in less than 5 minutes. They were really busy and went out of their way to speed things up. In fact, when I walked in, I saw one familiar looking tire behind the front desk. I told the sales rep, "Hey I think that's my tire."

Rep: "Wouldn't that be nice and easy..."

Me: "No, for real, i think it is."

*Rep checks tire*

Rep: "Well okay then. That was was nice and easy."

No dude, for real, that's my tire.

Back at the hotel, Dad, Taylor, and I went out to apply all the stickers to the Volvo. It was super windy, so having an extra set of hands to help was nearly required. I set up some cameras to capture video and time lapse of the sticker job, and some day I’ll be able to edit it all and put it on here. I’m so far behind on updates right now as I cruise down I-75 in Florida on Monday, May 8, typing as fast as I can and uploading pictures at AOL Dial-up speeds from the back seat of the Volvo while Dad drives and Taylor watches track videos to prep for tomorrow.

The stickering went well. The Volvo was now officially a race car!

Stickers = race car

It was 240p when we finished.

We hustled over to the tech area. Our sticker job was approved, and the tech inspectors spray painted our tires with the manufacturer name to both advertise and ensure that we didn’t swap tires during the week. One of the few rules states that you must complete the entire event using the same set of tires. Exceptions will be made for flats along the way, but you better keep the dead tire to prove it was a legitimate flat. If you change tires, you’re disqualified.

Tech inspection and tire marking.

3p drivers meeting in the conference/ballroom of the hotel. Everyone was excited and in good spirits. The organizer and head of the event, Brock Yates Jr., told everyone to not be an idiot and it would be a good week. If you were an idiot, he’d throw you out. That was about it. I took a bunch of video during the meeting, as I hope to do during the week as well. Seeing how the trend is going, I expect you won’t see it for quite some time. Sorry, I’m just too slow to keep up with all the content we’re generating. I hope you’ll check back on the site even after the event is over to see some of the cool stuff. Photos, video, interviews, track video, time-lapse, and slow-motion.

Driver's meeting.

After the main drivers meeting, the new people stayed behind for further explanation of the logistics of the week. I sat with Taylor and Dad to listen and practice my cinematography skills. There was another guy taking video at the same time. His name was Walter (probably still is), and I’d hang out with him later in the evening.

With our required tasks completed, we went to have our first meal of the day at 5pm. We went across the street to Steak and Shake for some super mediocre food.

Visiting with the event photographer, Steve Rossini

Off to dinner.

Dad's mayonnaise soup, er, cole slaw.

After dinner, we worked on cleaning the car, putting on some extra stickers, and getting organized. I went through nearly a full bottle of wash and wax trying to handle to mess of the meat wagon. I got it sort of mostly clean and threw the rag away. There was no saving it.

More stickers = more racecar

While I was packing/cleaning/stickering, I noticed a video drone flying overhead; a DJI Mavic. Now, I’m a whatever-comes-below-amateur wanna-be photo/video enthusiast, so I was eager to see this relatively new and very well-reviewed drone, in action. It was Walter!

Walter wasn’t actually participating in One Lap. He was part of a media team that works for Falken tires. Falken was sponsoring two cars in the event (#4 and #34), and they had sent along a team to film what will be a short documentary/marketing piece. He’s a really nice and interesting guy; I hope we get to talk cameras more during the week!

Dad came out to help me clean/pack/sticker, and Taylor stayed in the room to try to diagnose/solve our engine cutting in/out problem via internet research/phone-a-friend. It was looking like a fuel-pressure sensor, but he was still gathering opinions and data.

While we continued on the car, we also did some laundry. We’re hoping to make it through the week without triple-wearing garments, but also not ruling anything out.

We think we worked out a pretty good packing configuration, but I’m sure it will evolve during the week.

We ended the night chatting with fellow competitors in the parking lot until it got too cold to be outside. There’s a lot of interest in the Volvo, and even more interest in the Unicorn Trailer! It seems like a lot of people tried to get this trailer, but were unable to. We better keep it locked to the Volvo hitch.

One of the competitors is a Swiss Chocolatier by the name of Dubler. He handed out delicious chocolate to all! Dad killed the photo by eating one before I could photograph.

We were late to bed again. The theme persists.

The first event starts Saturday morning at Tire Rack at 830a. Wet skid pad. Then on to an autocross about an hour away. We’re ready!

NEXT POST: May 6 - Indiana : Wet Skidpad

PREVIOUS POST: May 4 - South Dakota, Minnesota…

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May 4 - South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana

South Dakota to the Starting Line

Another 4 hour sleep. We got up at 8a.

Well, our alarms went off at 8a. It was a tough wakeup. We started very slowly. In fact, it took us nearly 2 hours, until 10a, to get on the road. That did include a continental breakfast, though. Well, Dad and Taylor had biscuits and gravy; so just breakfast I suppose.

Enjoying the morning sunshine before sitting in the car for 15 hours.

With the nice morning sunshine, we were able to observe the carnage of our meat collision the night before.

Not mud.

Oh goodness.

The pictures don’t convey the smell, obviously, but it was pretty potent. In fact, our fellow hotel guest’s dog noticed from across the parking lot and came over to see what the snack buffet was all about.

He knows what we've done.

We held our noses, packed up, and vowed to do some hazmat cleanup later in the day. Taylor volunteered to drive first. We had a very long, very flat day ahead.

Hills in South Dakota

Taylor put in a nice first stint. The drive was uneventful, other than the fact that we had no fuel gauge still. We paid good attention to mileage and range previously, so we stopped with plenty of fuel left in the tank. We’ve been averaging about 20mpg with the trailer. The speed limit has been 80 for quite a bit of it, so we’re happy with that figure. We go about 250 miles between stops, which has us refilling with about 1/4 tank; the wide open country has some large stretches with no fuel, so we don’t run too low.

Pretty rare on gas station bingo.

I was particularly struggling with our curing deer jerky odor, so I went in search of something that I could use to clean the car, at least a little bit.

Please help.

My search yielded a snow tool and windshield washer fluid. I’ll spare the details of the cleanup; I typed it up, but then deleted it. Too graphic. I was able to get a satisfactory amount of cleaning done and we’ll leave it at that.

We hit the road again.

The time changes have been killing us, as it always seems to hit right before we land at our hotel for the evening. Arrival is at 3am, but then we lost an hour so it’s actually 4am. 2am-3am, etc. 

I knew we would be losing another hour about 50 miles outside of our destination for the evening, so I set my watch ahead by that hour early in the morning. Trying to psych myself out of the sadness.

Dad seized the opportunity as well and declared it was time to plan a meal immediately, rather than in an hour. We started planning as we (finally) left South Dakota and entered Minnesota.

Our strategy had developed into finding a city that closely correlated to a good gas stop, then Google Map search for restaurants. I looked ahead to find a highly reviewed establishment called “Pizza Ranch”. As we would learn later, they are not rare. At the time, however, we (especially I) got wildly excited by the descriptor “Pizza Buffet”

Pizza Buffet!

4.4/5 stars on Google (with 40 reviews)!

I started the chant over an hour before the planned glory:

“PEE-ZUH RANCH! PEE-ZUH RANCH!”

We counted down the miles until we arrived. It was open! Taylor and I unloaded as Dad went inside to check out the scene.

I could tell right away that something was wrong when he returned. Mostly because he said the awful words, “No buffet.”

“NO! HOW CAN THIS BE!?!?”

Well, while we set our watches ahead to tend to our own mental states, Pizza Ranch did nothing of the sort. The buffet wouldn’t be open for at least another hour. We were eating at 330p.

No buffet = no smiles.

The restaurant was open, so we ordered a regular pizza. To be fair, the pizza arrived and it was really delicious, so we didn’t go without. Dad even got a salad buffet.

Happy and full, I hopped behind the wheel and drove us deep into Wisconsin for a Pilot Travel Center gas stop; a bit over 3 hours. While I was driving, I suddenly remembered that we needed to pick up a new tire to replace the one we killed in Seattle. We definitely wanted a spare to take on the journey with us, as the Volvo only has a donut spare.

With Tire Rack (the title sponsor of the entire event) closing soon, I needed to call and reserve one that I could pick up in the morning. Their headquarters are in South Bend, which is why the event starts and stops there. The first and last event are held on their tire testing track.

Happy that I remembered, I called and inquired about 1 extra tire.

Bad news.

They didn't have any in stock, and the east coast warehouses were closed for the weekend.

Ugh, why didn't I remember to do this Wednesday or Thursday? Very frustrating. As I was trying to come up with a plan (where might we be able to ship the spare to along the route), the salesman said he could overnight me a tire from Nevada, because they were 3 hour behind and hadn't shipped for the day. The tire cost $145. Shipping would be $117. Double ugh.

I couldn't think of a better way to assure we would get the tire when we needed it, so I told him to go ahead and get it. I could pick it up on Friday after 1pm. I'll keep this all in mind if there ever is a next time; just get the new tires for the event installed in South Bend on registration day. There's plenty of time. 

Expensive mistake, but I was glad that we'd have the tire.

We arrived at the gas stop as the sun was setting.

Fuel and bathroom; back on the road with Dad behind the wheel.

The sun set and we drove into Illinois.

Then into Chicago.

One last stop for fuel at a toll road “Oasis”, and we made the final push into South Bend.

Success! We arrived at the Waterford Lodge Estates hotel at 210a EDT on Friday morning. 

We unloaded quickly, took a team photo, and went to bed.

Registration opens at 8a. About 5 hours from the time we hit bed. Lots to do on Friday: more cleaning, stickers, technical inspection, drivers meeting, pick up a spare tire, get organized, get sleep. Final tally for the trip in: 2,154 miles in 50 hours, including stops and sleep.

Taylor would show how happy he is if he was conscious.

NEXT POST: May 5 - Indiana : Registration

PREVIOUS POST: May 3 - Montana, South Dakota

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May 3 - Montana, South Dakota

After going to bed so late, 430a, we slept until 915a. Not a great amount, and we certainly felt the burn.

To make matters worse, the coffee maker in the room was on the fritz, so there wasn’t enough coffee to go around.

Doom.

On the plus side, we found a beautiful day outside. Crisp air and blue skies. Large trees and clear streams.

Beautiful day

We piled in and were driving out of the parking lot by 10a. Our first stop came 1.5 minutes in. 

Those golden arches!

Coffee, juice, water, egg mcmuffin, sausage mcgriddle, sausage-egg-cheese biscuit, hash browns. An All-American-Road-Trip-Hall-of-Fame breakfast.

We set off east again, picking up I-90 towards Bozeman, Montana.

Great scenery in Montana

Before he broke his neck in the dirt bike accident, Taylor was heavily involved in the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) program. During his 5-year degree program for Mechanical Engineering, he became fantastically good friends with the core group of people that shepherded the program to success.

One of those people is named Matt Smith. Matt works for Cummins Diesel in Jamestown, NY. His parents live in Bozeman, Montana, right off I-90. The RIT FSAE group was so close that the students and the parents were all friends.

When Matt Smith’s dad, Bruce, heard about our One Lap adventure, he contacted me to both wish us good fortune, and, extend an invitation to visit them at their home, if it fit within our plans.

Originally we were concerned that we would hit Bozeman in the middle of the night, but with our late start out of Seattle, we didn’t get anywhere close. On the plus side, it meant that we would be in Bozeman right at lunch time. We synched up with Bruce and he hosted us for a delicious burger cookout on their beautiful back deck.

So much better than gas station corn dogs...

Dad enjoying the fresh air.

It was such a treat to sit out back in the sun, talking cars, eating fresh grilled burgers with a stunning vista view of the Gallatin Mountains. It was an extra bonus that Bruce recognized our time plight and had the burgers all cooked and ready to eat when we arrived. Thanks again, Bruce!

Sad that we couldn't stay longer.

Dad drove us out of Bozeman about half an hour then stopped for gas. Taylor was up for a driving stint, so he loaded into the driver’s seat.

Taylor sliding in to the driver's seat.

Dad had purchased a cup of coffee at the gas station. Upon removing it from the cup holder for his first sip as we were headed down the highway, he found the cup to have a hole in the bottom. So he burned himself with leaking hot coffee and had to toss the liquid out the window amidst a stream of elegant prose.

Another stop for fuel and some replacement coffee. Back on the road with Taylor at the wheel.

He cranked out a couple hours while we planned our stop for the night somewhere in the middle of South Dakota. We didn’t feel like a total repeat of last night, but at the same time, stopping too early in Rapid City would leave a 1,000 mile day for us tomorrow. Too far.

We settled on a Best Western in a town called Murdo, just inside the Central Time Zone. So we’d lose an hour again, unfortunately.

With the rest of the day planned out, we stopped for dinner around 7p in Sheridan, WY. The original plan was Jimmy John’s, but I noticed a Qdoba in the same parking lot. Craving some Mexican food, I campaigned the team. Success!

We had a good meal at Qdoba, where I finished uploading the blog post for Tuesday.

Long dinner stop while I used Qdoba's wi-fi to upload

A stop for gas, a quick adjustment of the Bulldog LED spot lights, and we were off into the night. It was 8p.

Feeling energized and inspired, Dad ripped off a monster driving leg, landing us at a Pilot Travel Center just outside of Rapid City at 11p.

I hopped in the driver’s seat to finish off the day. All was well until we came over a rise in the road going 80mph (the speed limit) and there was a dead deer sprawled across our entire lane.

“Oh, darn it.”- Taylor and I at the same time.

There was no way around it, so I stayed the course and we plowed straight into it. 

WHAM!

It made a terrible noise that woke Dad up- “WHAT WAS THAT?!”

We were less than 15 miles away from the hotel, so we nervously continued on. The only symptom we could see so far was the gas gauge quit working. Not great.

We lost another hour (now in the Central Time Zone) and arrived at the motel at 240a.

Best Western in Murdo, SD

I grabbed a flashlight before exiting the car to survey the damage.

No damage to the front bumper. Good.

We walked to the back of the car to find the front of the trailer covered in blood, meat, and fur. It was pretty graphic.

The back of the Volvo had blood spatter and fur.

Dad wiping meat out of the trailer chains and wiring.

I nervously got down on the ground to survey the underside of the car.

The smell was what really got you. Chunks of meat and fur pressed up against the exhaust pipes. It looked like a thin cross brace got a little bent and scooped up a bunch of organic matter. Very grim. 

Unable to find any bad damage (other than the gas gauge being inoperable), we declared ourselves fully grossed out and headed to the room.

A standard bed-time procedure followed and we were asleep by 330a.

A long day lay ahead on Thursday- 865 miles to the One Lap start in South Bend, Indiana.

NEXT POST: May 4 - South Dakota, Minnesota…

PREVIOUS POST: May 2 - Seattle, Idaho…

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May 2 - Seattle, Idaho, Montana

Packing and departing Seattle

Dad and I finally got to sleep around 230a Tuesday morning, with the plan set to get up at 7a to start the busy day of procuring, packing, and driving east.

We didn’t make it to 7a as the heavy construction crew outside our window got a bright and early 630a start.

Dad agrees: very loud.

We showered, packed, and went downstairs to enjoy the continental breakfast. Going hungry is never part of our plan.

Continental

We exited the hotel, ready to start on our errands. The first order of the day was to pick up the Volvo towing/trailering wiring harness and control module. Because it was a special order from just yesterday, it wouldn’t arrive at the dealership for pickup until 930a. We had a little bit of time to kill.

Volvo inspection

Harbor Freight was one of the planned stops for the morning. Tools are a crucial part of the One Lap journey. Murphy’s law (roughly suggests) that the tool you don’t have is the one you’ll need, so we loaded up at a Harbor Freight on the way to the Volvo dealership.

Tools!

Next stop was the Volvo dealership parts department. Our ordering process for this wiring harness was so last minute, we definitely had some concerns.

Fortunately, the parts were there when we arrived and were indeed the correct part numbers. Hooray!

The world's most expensive trailer light harness

So far everything was going according to plan. Which was the perfect time for a problem.

Uh oh.

Dad was driving at the time. We were headed to pick up the trailer from Uhaul. He had been a bit concerned about a vibration in the car that felt an awful lot like unbalanced tires. But that didn’t make much sense, because the tires were installed and balanced just last week.

As we were cruising along the freeway, his concern increased dramatically. With reason. The car was moving all over the road, the vibration grew strong, and the steering response became very odd and detached. It was so extreme, that we pulled over to the shoulder on the freeway to examine what might be the problem.

It became immediately clear that this wasn’t a safe spot, so we proceeded carefully off the freeway and into a motel parking lot. I got out of the car to find the right rear tire was completely flat. No wonder the car felt funny!

The Volvo has a small donut tire for a spare, but we set about swapping it onto the car.

Lots to unload to get to the spare.

We had our Harbor Freight load in the back, so we busted out the new race jack, and Dad had the wheel swapped in no time at all.

We figured that while we had the back of the car taken apart, we might as well install the trailer towing harness we had just picked up. The instructions were clear and straightforward; plug and play. At least we hoped. We wouldn’t really know if it worked until we got to Uhaul to get the trailer.

Back on the road to Taylor’s apartment, Dad and I set about planning our new rest of the day. The tire delay and harness install had cost us about 30 minutes. Now we had to squeeze in a visit to Discount Tire to get the 5th (and last) race tire swapped with the now dead race tire. This would cost a lot of time, but there wasn’t much choice in the matter.

We met up with Taylor in his parking garage- I haven’t seen him since Christmas.

We spent a few minutes getting organized- Taylor would stay back at his apartment to finish packing and get some food. Dad and I would take the spare Bridgestone RE71R along with the dead tire and wheel, get those swapped, have all 4 wheel/tire combos rebalanced to see if that helped the vibration, get food while we waited, go get the trailer, back to Taylor’s to do final packing, then hit the road. It was 1145a.

Dad fishing out the spare tire.

At Discount Tire, Dad and I explained the situation to the tech, James, who got us set up with an appointment. He estimated it would be 1.5hrs until we would be out of there. It was 1230p.

James and Dad discussing the upcoming event

There was an Applebee’s in the parking lot near Discount Tire, so we had a relaxed lunch. There wasn’t much we could do besides wait.

Lunch!

Tired of Applebee’s, we walked back over to Discount Tire to check progress. The techs were just finishing putting everything back in the car. We reloaded and set off to pick up the trailer. It was 145p.

The trailer was out in front at the Uhaul station. Taylor’s pre-inspection was accurate: the trailer was beauty, but the tires and wheels looked in decent shape.

Inspecting

As usual, the Uhaul experience was brutal. We were there over an hour. It took forever to get the paperwork signed, and then forever again for the Uhaul employee to flip the ball on the ball and ball mount we purchased. 

Good news though: the trailer wiring harness works! A very important piece of the equation; we were relieved. We paid an eye-watering $308 for the harness, but we couldn’t have gone without it. The ball mount was an interference fit in the receiver on the hitch, so we broke out the freshly purchased Harbor Freight 4 lb sledge hammer coaxed it into place.

Finishing the hookup

We drove back to meet Taylor and to do final packing. While planning the trip, it was a difficult and stressful process to nail down this particular trailer, so we were working on plan B, which was to not have any trailer. The other Uhaul options were just too dire for towing dynamics and fuel mileage. With 7,500 miles to travel, cutting our mileage in half would be horribly expensive. 

As we aggregated everything that needed to be packed, it became very clear that plan B would have been almost impossible. Just too much stuff. So thank goodness all the trailer details worked out.

Plenty of room.

The packing went pretty quickly, thanks to Taylor’s work during the day, and the fact that Dad and I were pretty much packed since we had to fly to the start. All packed and ready to leave. It was 530p. 

About 5 hours later than we’d hoped.  Most of that time was spent with the flat tire repair and Uhaul drama.

Right before heading out.

We declared victory and hit the road.

Headed out.

On the way out of town, we stopped by Blue Origin to drop off keys with Taylor’s good friends and co-workers, Dave and Alice; they’re taking care of Taylor’s cat, Crenshaw, while we’re away. They also put in a ton effort to help get the car ready for the trip. A huge thanks to both of them, as well as Anthony Salvo, another excellent friend who helped prep the car, for their wildly generous and thorough help- Thanks guys!

We stopped for gas and were 20 minutes down the road when Taylor realized we had left the East Coat EZPass in his desk. We consternated whether or not to turn around to get it, but ultimately decided to take the pain early and save the time during the trip. Both Taylor and I have experience with the toll booth lines and delays; we were in agreement that it was worth it to go back.

Right before we realized we forgot the ezpass

Turning back to get the EZPass cost us about an hour. Our final departure time out of Seattle was 630p. Ouch.

The drive into the night was relatively calm. We have discovered some sort of hiccup with the car: at a feather-light throttle load at around 80mph, the engine will briefly cut in and out. The strange thing is the inconsistency. We can’t induce it ourselves, it just happens. Our first guess is the Mass Airflow (MAF) sensor. We’ll pick up some cleaning fluid and give it a good cleaning when we can.

On the road in Washington.

The scenery was nice as the sun went down and we continued towards Idaho on I-90. We started planning our stop for the night. The difficulty is the lack of places to stop. The towns that have hotels are very far apart in this part (Montana) of the country. Our options were to stop in Spokane, Washington around 1030p, or to push deep into the night to arrive in Missoula, Montana around 230a. 

The decision was Missoula. But first, food. Arby’s at 930p in Moses Lake, Idaho. Taylor and Dad went with the Smokehouse Brisket sandwich. I went French Dip. All was delicious.

Arby's!

Major props to Dad for driving all day. Between the errands and the first 6 hours of the journey, he got us going in solid fashion. I took over just before midnight to take us into Montana.

In preparation for driving deep in the mountains late at night, I bought us some Bulldog Lighting LED lights. A pair of their 4” spots, mounted on a steel license plate mount (thanks to Dave and Alice for doing the install!). 

Light!

The lights work amazingly well. What a difference. I’ll try to get a picture of them on and off a bit later in the trip. I was really grateful for the extra light.

After one final stop for gas, a lock for the trailer, and some energy drink, we landed at the DoubleTree in Missoula, MT. Dad travels a huge amount for his job, so he has a fat stack of Hilton points- thanks, Dad, for using points to pay for our rooms!

We arrived right on time at 240a. 

But wait, all our phones said 340a.

Wait.

Noooooo!

We lost an hour to a time zone change. Talk about disheartening. With great sadness and great tiredness, we finally got situated in our room at 400a. We had a hard time wrangling someone to check us in at the front desk. Pretty empty at 340am.

We look how we felt.

After discussing the options for timing to get to South Bend (and lamenting our late start out of Seattle), we laid down to sleep at 415a. The plan was to get up at 9a, leave before 10a, and try to make it to somewhere in the east part of North or South Dakota.

A couple long days of driving lay ahead, but we’re optimistic.

NEXT POST: May 3 - Montana, South Dakota

PREVIOUS POST: May 1 - Houston, Seattle

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May 1 - Houston, Seattle

Travel day!

Both Dad and I are flying today to meet Taylor in Seattle, WA. Or more specifically, Kent, which is just to the southeast, where he lives and works. I’m flying in from Houston, and Dad is flying in from San Jose, CA. Dad is scheduled to arrive around 7pm, and I won’t make it in until midnight.

Taylor was working yesterday to get the Uhaul trailer sorted out. I’ve been calling the local (Kent) Uhaul dealer for weeks in an attempt to secure a “Sport Trailer”. It’s an aerodynamically shaped fiberglass bodied travel trailer. It’s designed to be much easier to tow than the brick-shaped cargo trailers that they otherwise offer.

The unicorn of trailers!

Unfortunately, when you actually try to reserve one, you’ll find that they are incredibly rare. I discovered somewhat late in the planning process that Uhaul tried a small batch of these as a test product; they proved to be unpopular, so Uhaul ended the experiment without ordering any more, but kept the small existing amount in circulation.

Given Uhaul’s inability to say with any certainty that we would have one for our trip, we decided that Plan B would involve no trailer and some extremely lean packing. Normally, a One Lap crew would easily be able to pack in a car as cavernous as the V70R, but we have some extenuating circumstances that would really push that. Taylor’s main wheelchair takes up a large amount of space, and we also need to bring his shower/bathroom chair. Plus 3 people’s worth of regular stuff. And a full-size spare tire. And spare parts. And tools. And an EZ-up tent to keep Taylor out of the rain. And chairs for grumpy old Dad. And a full production crew’s worth of camera gear. And 3 full-size humans.

While we would be challenged to get everything in without a trailer, it was appearing as though we had no choice in the matter. Then, by what must be divine intervention, a sport trailer popped up in the Seattle area from a one-way traveler on Saturday. What a stroke of luck!

We pivoted back to plan A. Dad was glad because he could bring his pillow.

Taylor made the journey over to check the trailer out on Sunday, hoping that it would be in reasonable shape for the 7,500 mile journey. His cursory inspection (tread on the tires, etc) went okay, so he went to get the wiring harness for the trailer installed on the car. It seems whoever installed the hitch didn’t do the trailer wiring. My best guess is they used it for a bike rack instead of a trailer.

Unfortunately, the Uhaul location couldn’t help him get his car wired up. Taylor and I both set out on the internetz to see how easy it was to splice into the wiring.

Turns out, not easy at all. We were unable to find anybody who had ever done it. Volvo makes a special wiring harness and control module that allows a trailer to play nicely with the car. We figured this out this morning.

In a mad panic, I called all the Volvo dealers in the Houston area to see if they stocked the parts. Nope. So I called around in Seattle to see if they stocked the parts. Nope.

The trailer plan was fading fast until a dealership in Tacoma said they could source the parts by 9:30am Tuesday. Eureka! Of course, we’ll be paying approximately double what we could have got the parts for online, but we’re lucky to be able to get them at all. Not to mention, a week ago we were pretty sure we wouldn’t have a trailer to tow. Oh well, the first of many mild-moderate emergencies that make the One Lap experience.

Before I flew out, I filmed an interview with my wife, Ryann, talking a little bit about the trip and what we’re expecting. I’m hoping to put all the footage together for a documentary when this is all done.

Screenshot of Ryann's interview

I’m typing this on the plane, about an hour out from landing in Seattle. I’ve been lead to believe that Dad arrived okay and helped Taylor get a new batch of spark plugs installed.

We’re planning on getting up early to round up tools and supplies, wire up the trailer with the new harnesses, pack, and leave town. South Bend is 32 hours of driving away (2,100-ish miles), so we can’t afford to leave too late to make registration at 8am Friday morning…

Thanks for reading; stay tuned!

NEXT POST: May 2 - Seattle, Idaho, Montana

PREVIOUS POST: April 16 - Prologue - Washington - Track Test Day

ALL POSTS: One Lap of America 2017

April 16 - prologue: Washington : Track test day

The One Lap of America is an extreme event held every spring where around 70 teams compete in 18 car racing events at 8 different race tracks spread across the United States over the course of 8 days. You race in the morning, race in the afternoon, then immediately pack up and drive up to 1,000 miles to the next race track and do it again the next day. There are really only a couple of rules: no support vehicles (so you drive the race car on the track and on the streets to the next track, no trucks/trailers), and you must use street tires. I did it a few times in college, and while it can look like actual torture from an outside perspective, it’s a dream trip for a large swath of car enthusiasts. Each time I did it, I always thought it would be just the sort of thing to do with Dad and my brother; they’d love it.

However, it’s a hard thing to do. It takes a lot of time and effort to prepare a car for that sort of punishment, it takes nearly two full weeks of vacation from work, and between hotels, race car parts, food, and fuel, it’s expensive. It can seem impossible just to make it to the starting line, but with huge amounts of family help, we’re gonna give it a shot for the 2017 event.

When we originally considered the idea of doing One Lap, Taylor wasn't sure if he wanted to do it. It's going to be hard. It's super hard for all entrants to make through a week of racing, driving and repairing on very little sleep. Now imagine doing it in a wheelchair with all the medical bullsh!t that accompanies a complete C5-C6 spinal cord injury. Paralyzed from the chest down. Fingers don't work. One tricep doesn't work, the other one 10% of normal.

After some soul searching, Taylor decided he would join Dad and me. Soon enough, we started considering the possibility that Taylor could do some driving on the track. His car, a 2006 Volvo V70R, has hand controls. Taylor had over a decade of racing experience before his accident. Why not?

Taylor contacted Brock Yates, Jr., the event organizer, to ask if he could drive the track events. Brock said if he successfully completed a track day using hand controls, he'd be good to go.

So on Easter, Taylor did just that. He signed up for the Advanced High Performance Driving School with Proformance Racing School at nearby Pacific Raceways.

The school building

The first part of the day was classroom instruction, followed by cornering and braking drills.

Classroom instruction

A decent turnout for Easter Day

Track time commenced in the afternoon. Taylor was happy to find that the Schroth Rallye4 racing harness held him in place well enough to focus on driving. Because he is paralyzed from the chest down, he has no control over any core muscles, so he would fall over without such a setup.

Buckled in

On track, Taylor was very pleased to find the old groove coming back. The speed is returning, as he was catching cars on track.

We're going to make a couple tweaks to the setup that should allow him to get through slow corners more easily. Otherwise, it was a fully successful day.

Race car

As far as the car is concerned, we've had some work done to get it in shape for the event. The big 100,000 mile service was recently completed. We added a Eurosport Touring Exhaust, high-flow downpipe, and IPD anti-roll bars.

We weren't able to get the Hilton Stage 2 tune, K&N Intake filter, Ferodo DS2500 brake pads, or new rotors before the track day, but those are coming. 

Which is good, because Taylor got the current setup decently overworked.

Blue rotors = too hot.

Victory

This is a huge milestone. The idea of getting back on the track after such a terrible injury is overwhelming. Really amazing stuff, bro. Nice work.

NEXT POST: May 1 - Houston, Seattle