May 14 - South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana

We got up reasonably early at the Hampton Inn in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. A full day of driving lay ahead. Our goal was to make it 800 miles to have dinner with the Smiths in Bozeman, Montana.

Not too much to report for the majority of this transit day. Drive, gas, food, drive, gas, food, etc.

Still loving the breakfast buffet life.

Taylor volunteered for the first shift.

Crossing the Missouri River in South Dakota.

At this point, we were getting some complaints from the Volvo that a brake pressure sensor was malfunctioning. No problem.

Well, except the cruise control would quit working. The alert would go off and we would pull over at a rest area to stop, turn the car off, turn the car on, then resume with cruise control working again.

Then we'd do it again.

Then we'd do it again.

Wildly enjoying the cruise control, which was working at this particular moment.

Gas stop in South Dakota.

Gas stop in Wyoming.

We paired a lunch stop with a gas stop in Wyoming. It was a total fiasco. Dad and I got some fish from a Long John Silver / A&W combo restaurant. It sounds so stupid now. Why would we do that? It wasn't particularly edible. Worst meal of the trip, right here folks.

Taylor got a bacon cheeseburger with an extra large side of gloating.

**Shudder**

Gas stop right after lunch, before hitting the road.

Once we turned into Wyoming and Montana, the scenery became really nice. I've included some shots here for posterity.

Giant blades for wind turbines being transported on a train.

As we gained elevation, over 5,000 feet as we crossed Montana, the coolant sensor in the Volvo started complaining about low coolant. Not a great sign, but once we checked, it wasn't really low at all.

We topped it up anyhow, just for good measure.

Gas / coolant stop in Montana.

Cruising into Bozeman, MT.

As we traversed the country, another one of Taylor's best friends from the SAE racing team in college, Tyler, was in the midst of his own (much longer and much more relaxed) monster road trip. Tyler and his girlfriend, Liz, had quit their jobs, ended the lease on their apartment, bought a van, converted it into living/driving quarters, and set out on a months-long journey criss-crossing the U.S., visiting friends and landmarks across the country. In fact, I'd had a really nice dinner with them as they passed through Texas in early March!

Tyler and Liz had been at RIT in Rochester, NY on May 6 for the introduction (or, "unveiling") of the RIT Racing Formula SAE race car completed during the '16-'17 academic year. Following the unveiling, they were meandering their way towards Seattle to see, amongst other friends, Taylor. Maybe you can see where this is going...

Taylor was texting with Liz early in the morning and by lunch time it was becoming clear that, given our relative travel vectors and barring any unforeseen stoppages, we would be in Bozeman around the same time! The plan was on for a full dinner party! Liz even decided it would be fun to keep the plan a surprise for Tyler.

Having traveled 6,000 miles in the meantime, we made it back at the Smith's. We arrived first, and parked on the other side of the road, facing the opposite direction from our first visit. Symbolism and all that.

I really like this picture for some reason.

Tyler and Liz arrived to great fanfare and excitement- we cracked open some cold ones and enjoyed each other's company. Tyler was only mildly surprised due to some strange behavior from Liz as she tried to stall for time, waiting for us to catch up on the road.

Tyler, Bruce, Dad, and Taylor.

I recorded a bunch of video- should be edited and ready by 2025.

Bruce and Jeanne, our illustrious hosts for the evening, provided an outstanding homemade meal of pulled pork and all the fixings. It was the first non-restaurant meal we'd had since the burger cookout the week prior! The food tasted great.

Not a great picture, but I guess I was too busy eating to get a better one.

After eating and sharing many stories, we went outside to pack up and check out Tyler and Liz's travel van.

Thanks Bruce and Jeanne! The stop was wonderful; we said our goodbyes and hit the road to make Butte, MT for the evening. It was only 85 miles, but we were so exhausted and full, it was a surprisingly miserable drive. We all were wishing we'd just stayed in Bozeman for the night.

Nonetheless, we made it to our hotel for the evening some time after 11pm.

Just (!) 590 miles, about 10 hours, tomorrow to Seattle, and that'll wrap the show. No celebrating yet, though. Don't want to jinx it.

May 13 - Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota: Skidpad + Banquet + Depart

Sadly, the last day was upon us. Dad would drive the event this morning, although it was only a skidpad. A repeat of the very first event, only dry instead of sprinkler-soaked. 

Our finely tuned morning routine took us to McDonald's across the street. We celebrated by ordering what must be the unhealthiest food by weight: Sausage Egg & Cheese McGriddles. Plus hash browns. 

Back to where the first event and kick off was held: Tire Rack Headquarters. Parking was in our assigned and numbered spaces- right next to the MR2 Lins! Everyone was dropping off their trailers and making their way across the skidpad to line up for photos, so we did the same.

We were directed into place and got out to visit while everyone else parked. 

Photographers on the roof of the building in the upper right.

Dad and Taylor visiting with Howard, the syrup magnate.

All competitors made their way to stand next to their cars and wave. The top 10 finishers (at least with one event still left) were parked up front.

Once the photo was finished, cars were driven back to the parking lot and parked to wait for the skidpad event to start.

Finishing breakfast, waiting to start the last event.

As mentioned previously many times, we had some concerns about the tires lasting to the end. Expectations were fully bald tires by this point in the trip, but as you can see below, we had some tread left for the journey home- yay!

Maybe someone can benefit from this photo in the future: Bridgestone RE71R's after a full One Lap event, plus a 2,100 mile highway journey from Seattle.

One of Taylor's good friends from college, Matt Smith, drove out to meet us and say hello! If he sounds familiar, that's because his father, Bruce, hosted us for burgers in Montana on the journey out!

Matt, Taylor, and Freddie, a fellow competitor. Thanks for coming to visit us, Matt!

The run order was the reverse of the overall standings, so we were running pretty early. Dad got in line and ran the short skidpad event.

And with that, we completed the 2017 One Lap of America! Dad's run was good enough for 55th place with a 0.894g average of both directions. We were in close running with the Civic Si in the overall standings, and Dad beat them, so we held on for 59th place- yay Dad!

We did it! All events completed! Dad parked in our spot and we wandered around, visiting with friends. Everyone was in high spirits to have finished such a grueling event. Nice work to all!

Taylor in the aforementioned high spirits.

Because we went so early, there was plenty of time to enjoy the morning.

Matt and Taylor discussing the car lineup.

Film crews out in full force, me included!

Dad, always sensitive to anything amiss in the force, was concerned about a vibration that had slowly crept its way into existence on the Volvo; he suspected a tire out of balance, which wouldn't be unreasonable given the punishment we'd inflicted.

Fortunately, we were at one of the largest tire service centers on the planet, so we scheduled a quick appointment to get the tires rebalanced. After all, we were going to leave for a 2,100 mile road trip to Seattle in just a couple hours. Tire Rack has outstanding customer service and were as helpful as ever; the Volvo was in a service bay for tire balancing before lunch.

Volvo ready for a tire balancing.

Inside Tire Rack, a massive warehouse and service center.

After dropping the Volvo off inside, I made my way back out to Taylor and Matt to watch the front runners make their skidpad runs.

Happy as ever to have his picture taken. Again.

The last of the competitors to run the skidpad. The wagon was given #1 as a wink, nudge sort of joke. They were in last place.

Watching the fast guys go.

Once everyone had finished, the winners were settled. It was our friend, Hugh, in the red 1,000 horsepower GTR with the victory! Congratulations, Hugh! He's a really nice guy and engaged us in friendly conversation throughout the week.

My favorite car, the black Porsche, took second, and the crazy guys in the Ariel Atom took third. Well done, chaps!

The winners.

The event was officially over. 

However, tradition held that whomever felt like destroying their tires was free to line up to do burnouts for the crowd. So the crowd gathered and many lined up to try their hand at a crowd-pleasing drift and/or burnout.

Most failed.

The Roadkill crew did not.

Chris Lin and I were filming from the crowd. I was experimenting with the slow motion setting on my Sony RX100 V. A better photographer/cinematographer would have nailed the following shot. I messed up the focus. Sorry about that.

Once the burnouts were over, everyone made their way over to the storage warehouse side of Tire Rack for the closing banquet and awards ceremony. It smelled very strongly of rubber, but the food was good. 

In the food line.

More importantly, there was beer. Even a local brewery that was pumping a couple select drafts!

In the beer line.

The Lin's were looking lonely at a table by themselves, so because we were sure there was no way they could possibly be sick of us, we joined them.

Mike + Chris.

To be honest, the ceremony was pretty odd. A lot of goofing off by longtime competitors with a huge amount of inside jokes. I'm sure it was awesome for them. For those of us on the outside, it was just strange.

But hey, food + beer!

I spent some time hanging out with Walter, the Falken Tire cinematographer, talking racing and cameras.

Walter grabbing some B-roll footage with a cell phone.

Yo Dad!

Brock Jr. presenting awards.

Losing interest in the inside jokes...

After an hour and a half of the gong show, we decided we ought to hit the road. We hoped to make it to the edge of South Dakota for the night. Preferably before 3am. This time the time changes would be in our favor, though!

We said our goodbyes to those that still remained. Many had snuck out before us and the parking lot was pretty empty.

Hooking up Tom for the last time.

We hit the road again, aimed for Seattle. By this point we had become salty old highway pirates, unfazed by the never-ending asphalt seas before us. Finely tuned road tripping machines, forged in the fires of One Lap.

As such, not a whole lot to report from the road during this section. There are some pictures though.

Gas stop at an Oasis off the Illinois Toll Road leading into Chicago. Expensive toll road at that.

At some point, Taylor lost his sunglasses. Matt Smith donated a pair for the journey back. Thanks, Matt!

Our dinner stop came in Wisconsin. We tried to make engineer a Pizza Ranch pizza buffet dinner, but it wasn't meant to be. None were close enough to hit that glorious buffet window.

So we stopped at a B.A. Burrito Co., a Wisconsin burrito chain that puts Mac N Cheese, among other things, in burritos.

None of us were interested in a Mac N Cheese burrito. Well, more like we weren't interested in the consequences.

Dad finished pretty quickly, then took the car for a gas fill up around the corner. Once Taylor and I finished, we sat outside and watched the sunset while we waited for Dad to return. It was nice.

Taylor looking majestic, living and loving that #modellife.

The Wisconsin farmland was picturesque as we made our way west. I'm sure a good photographer could have generated some seriously nice photos as we traveled during the golden hour of lighting.

We cruised into a Hampton Inn, brought to you by Dad's Hilton Honors rewards points, around 12:30am Central (yay for the hour gained!). After a smooth check-in, we were in bed before 1:30am.

While a celebration to commemorate our successful completion of One Lap might have seemed in order, the 1,500 miles and 22 hours of driving loomed large. 

We were pretty proud, though.

May 12 - Michigan : GingerMan Raceway

At some point during the night, we had to turn the room HVAC off. The grinding noise was too overwhelming. We woke up at 630am hoping we hadn't caught too many diseases. Taylor was to do the driving for the day, so we all got ready and helped Taylor into the driving suit.

I was running low on clean clothes, but I still had some new t-shirts to crack open, thanks to Taylor.

10 points if you get the reference here. Hint: it's a Blue Origin shirt.

The weather outside was looking perfect- a nice change from yesterday's gloomfest.

Packed up and headed to breakfast. Hotel equally terrifying in the day.

Breakfast was served in the lobby and it was buzzing with One Lappers. I enjoyed my 87th hotel-buffet-breakfast-waffle of the trip. Just as good as the first!

Ready to roll. Taylor was being dramatic; the weather was great.

The track was a few miles down the road. Everyone was in high spirits as the end approached- we'd all made it to the last track event! We parked next to our amigos Chris and Mike Lin in the Honda-powered Toyota MR2. They'd had a really strong showing the previous day in the rain- 12th place in both the morning and afternoon! Well done, chaps.

Unpacking for the day.

Just some race cars.

With everything unpacked, we had some time to relax and enjoy the day before our first session. Dad was still pretty horribly sick at this point, so he sat down for a bit. We both arrived in Seattle sick, seemed to heal up a bit, then swapped sicknesses. Taylor caught one or both colds somewhere in there, so we were all 3 sick at this point. Nice.

I walked to the grid to watch the fast cars. It wasn't far away.

So sweet. The Porsche took first place in the morning rain session yesterday.

After some time, I walked back to the car + Dad + Taylor to help get ready for the first run.

Relaxing in the morning shade.

Getting ready.

Way back in Memphis, the Roadkill crew blew their engine. They'd spent the week getting their car put back together in hopes of making it back before the finish. We'd heard over social media that they planned to be back for Michigan and sure enough, they made it! Their production crew was out in force and they were glad to be back.

Welcome back, Roadkill!

Dad was battling through his bubonic plague and helped Taylor get in the car. I was not particularly helping, but taking a bunch of photos and video.

Can you feel my help from here, pops?

I was running around with my video camera and Steadicam setup. I'm really terrible at using it, so I don't actually have much usable footage to show. I did manage to get the Contour action cam setup for the on-track stuff, so here's a video from that showing some footage of Taylor:

Taylor wasn't happy with the session. The hand controls weren't working well and he didn't know the track. He admitted to having a little fun, but mostly was just frustrated. The novelty had worn off and he wanted to get back to a competitive speed.

We brushed it off and focused ourselves on the next important task: lunch. Taylor and I chatted with Mike and Chris beneath the EZ-up while Dad went to stand in the lunch line. Chris told us about his experience at the GT Academy, a racing competition that qualifies through Playstation- it's incredibly competitive and difficult to get into, so clearly he's got mad talent! I tried to qualify in 2014, but never got anywhere close to the top 32 drivers. Maybe top 32,000...?

Taylor + Mike + Superchris

Dad taking one for the team, waiting in slow-moving lunch line.

The lunch line seemed interminable, but Dad's hunger should never be challenged. He made it through and scored some delicious cheeseburgers. Actually, they were pretty exceptional- good smoky flavor and a solid char on the outside without being overcooked. I wished I'd ordered a double!

Nomz.

As the afternoon session kicked off, it started setting in for everyone that we were near the end. A melancholy nostalgia brewed in the pits.

Starting to get sad already.

Taylor and Dad watched along the front straight while I fumbled around with my steadicam and video setup some more. The weather was perfect and music played over stereos across the track.

As the groups went out, we started to prepare for the afternoon session. Taylor buckled in and moved the car to grid.

Last track session for the Volvo :(

Bulldog LED Lighting ftw!

We got Taylor as situated as possible and wished him luck. He was off.

Yay Taylor!

Taylor finished successfully, but he was angry upon return. Everything in the car had been fighting him- there are just too many things not designed properly. He knows what to fix going forward, but it didn't help with the current frustration.

However, it shouldn't be lost that we made it through all the track events! Great work Volvo, and great work team! I think maybe it was lost though. Taylor was pissed and Dad was on the precipice of death.

Well, I think we did well!

With the short track and efficient crew, the afternoon session finished pretty early. And, it was less than 75 miles back to the hotel- the Waterford Estates Lodge, back in South Bend. Brock, the One Lap Chief, decided to open the track up for competitors to run additional laps if they wished. Many lined up to participate.

We did not, for two reasons.

1. Dad was very ill at this point. We needed to get him to an urgent care or hospital. It was clear that he had a really bad sinus infection- his eye had turned completely red and the area around was swollen. He was downright miserable, so he needed attention.

2. Additional laps add a significant amount of wear to the tires. We were already concerned that we would barely make it back to Seattle with the present wear, so there was no interest in pushing farther.

With that non-starter decision, we packed up and started looking for urgent care facilities near our destination hotel. 

Tom's view.

For their own reasons, mainly fatigue, other competitors hit the road as well- some in search of beer. We agreed this was a good plan and would try to meet up with them after we prevented Dad's death.

With less than a two hour drive, we didn't even have time to open our drinks!

On the road and happy for a short drive to refreshments.

We found a CVS near the hotel and headed that direction. At this point, one of the angels in our support network mentioned they had an unused Z-pak refill with CVS from a recent sickness; we were welcome to use it so we could skip the doctor visit to get antibiotics.

Hallelujah! Dad was saved!

We called the prescription in to the CVS in Indiana where it would be waiting for us when we arrived. Miracle of miracles, it worked out and we had Dad on an antibiotics course in less time than a normal gas stop.

For liability reasons, said angel will remain nameless, but you know who you are - THANK YOU!!!

We would have to reassess later in the night and in the morning- if Dad wasn't better, we'd be headed to the hospital. But this was an excellent start!

A little extra pep in his death march after picking up the Z-pak!

Happy to have this problem solved for the moment, we cruised in to the hotel to find some of our friends out front. It was barely 4pm!

Happy to be back.

Now, we'd been hearing all week about Howard, driving a Corvette Z06, and his maple syrup shots.

No kidding.

He's from upstate New York and harvests and bottles his own maple syrup each year- about 20 gallons worth. Each year he brings some down to share with One Lappers- I think this was his 25th year of participating in One Lap. Maybe 35th? He's a salty old Lap Dog, that's for sure.

Howard, maple syrup dealer.

He serves the shots in small plastic shot glasses. At some point in years past, they lamented the syrup that was wasted by remaining stuck to the glass after the shot. 

There must be a solution.

Of course- a bourbon chaser! After the syrup shot, one swishes a shot of bourbon, Buffalo Trace in this instance, to get the last bits of the syrup- then down the hatch!

It sounds odd, and maybe it is, but it was wildly delicious!

Aunt Jemimah's High Fructose Blend, this is not. The syrup has great flavor and isn't overly sweet and clingy- great stuff! I wanted a bottle (of syrup) for myself!

"Howard, where do you sell this stuff, I'd love to buy a bottle to enjoy and support the venture!"

"Oh! I don't sell it- I do it for fun, then give bottles as gifts to friends!"

--Howard turns to talk to someone else--

Well, okay, I see. I guess I need to work harder in the future to make the friends list I guess? No syrup for us this trip.

No matter, he gave us ice cold beer following the shots, I certainly wasn't complaining. In fact, even teetotaling Dad was old-man-peer-pressured into a shot of both syrup and bourbon! It was a good group that had gathered- stories were being told and everyone was happy to be there.

It was a bonafide celebration, even though technically we still had one more event the next day: a repeat of the skidpad event, though, in the dry. A couple 30-40mph circles. So the event felt mostly complete at this point.

Hanging out, drinking beer, doing syrup shots. As one does.

An early finish photo.

Competitors continued to trickle in and join us as the afternoon progressed.

This GT-R was one launch control mess-up away from winning the whole thing.

The white GT-R's exhaust. Rocket nozzle?

It started to get mildly rowdy as some chose to do burnouts in front of the hotel.

A super sad one-wheel burnout from the Roushcharged Nitemare Truck. Seriously, their name, not mine.

A much more productive burnout. Not from the truck.

After a bit, we went back to the room to change, then headed to the bar to meet up with MR2 Mike + Chris Lin. Amazingly, I didn't take many photos of our bar time. The one photo does confirm that we ate food, though.

Hang in there bro.

While we were in the bar, the Griswold's in the Ford Station Wagon, car #1, bought us a round of Yuengling beer- a northeast brew. They loved the Volvo and were super cool all week. Cheers!

Despite our fervor to party, everyone was exhausted, so we finished up relatively early and made our way to bed.

Last day tomorrow :(

May 11 - Virginia : Dominion Raceway Park

I woke up at 630am - 8 hours of sleep in the bag! I felt positively supercharged with energy. Dressing quickly, I went and looked out the window to find the forecast had come true- it was absolutely pouring down rain. Dad and Taylor would be staying at the hotel for the morning session to get rested, cleaned up, and stay out of the wet. I would head over to the track, do the morning race, then come get them at lunch, as we did in Atlanta.

Not dry.

I didn't know if the race track had garages, like some of the previous ones, but I planned to be at the track super early to try and get a spot, just in case they did. I grabbed a bagel and some coffee at the breakfast buffet and was out the door before 7am. Dad and Taylor would swing by to get my suitcase out of the room later, so I didn't even have to wrangle that to get to the track.

I wasn't the only one with the same idea; the hotel lobby and parking lot were busy with competitors. I hopped in the car and made my way across the interstate to the track- Dominion Raceway in Thornburg, VA. Damn it was wet. I guess we'd find out how the Volvo did in the rain! Theoretically it should be good- plenty of weight and all-wheel drive. The wet skid pad showed we had decent wet traction, too, so if we didn't place well, it would be 100% my fault. Which is nice.

I was one of the first few at the track- yay! But, no garages. Boo. So now I was at the track more than 3 hours before my run group, in the rain, without my team.

At least I wasn't working on the ground...

I decided to be social and parked next to one of the few people there- car #7, a very well driven, lightly modified $120,000 650hp supercharged 2015 Corvette Z06. They were 6th place overall. The driver was on the ground in a puddle, working on the front corner of the car. His co-driver stood beside him in the rain. 

It was still raining as I parked and started to unpack. Because of the rain, and the fact that my camera isn't waterproof, I wasn't able to take many pictures of the day- sorry about that.

The first thing I did was make a break for Dad's magical EZ-up. It did great in the sun, now we would test the rain performance. I had my rain jacket on, a last minute $20 Costco purchase. It paid for itself quickly.

As soon as I had the shade up, I introduced myself to the co-driver-in-the-rain. It was Tina, the wife of the Corvette driver named Chris. I told Tina to please make use of the shade/rain cover/EZ-up; there was plenty of space for everyone. She was incredibly grateful and I was no longer by myself! As we introduced ourselves, another Corvette pulled up- this time an early 2000's Z06. The two people in this car, Chris (another one) and Jennifer, were good friends with the Corvette folks I'd just met; all four of them were from Oklahoma City and had been racing together for years. In fact, the Corvette that Chris came in used to belong to Chris, who came in the Corvette. They shared a mutual friend who helped them with their race Corvettes, Chris, who was back in Oklahoma. None of whom should be confused with our friend in the MR2, Chris.

I'm not making this up.

Oklahoma Chris's friends, Oklahoma Corvette Chris and Oklahoma Corvette Chris.

I tried to make it known that the EZ up was open to all, so we had a pretty solid group of people coming and going as the rain stopped and started. It was fun to meet a new group of people- most of them from the fast part of the race.

Chris in the blue, older Corvette had a problem at Road Atlanta and crashed pretty hard into the wall, breaking a bunch of components in the right rear of the car. They would have been out of the event, but an unlikely series of fortuitous events meant they were able to keep limping along. Some kindly man near Road Atlanta had a graveyard of crashed Corvettes, and he offered up some parts to allow Chris to continue. They had been running quite near the front, but the dilapidated state of the car meant they were now running much more cautiously and mostly just hoping to complete the event. But they were here!

As everyone finished unpacking for the day, Brock, the race organizer, called a meeting to discuss the day.

Meeting time.

We were originally scheduled to do the morning and afternoon sessions, as we had been doing, plus an event on a small NASCAR-style oval. Brock explained that because it was wet, we would not be doing the oval. Too slippery with no run-off area, so too dangerous. The morning and afternoon sessions would continue as normal. The crowd dispersed to prepare for the first run.

On my way back, guess who I ran into- Chris and Mike Lin in their MR2! They'd pulled an all-nighter to get back; the problem was a bad catalytic converter. The element inside had detached from the walls of the container, so it was tumbling around in the exhaust and blocking the flow- no wonder they were down on power. Overnight, they had disassembled the converter, removed the offending material, welded it back together, then reinstalled everything to make it back. They even did some tuning to get everything running nicely on the way to the track. Nice work guys! You can read about their adventure here: Chris+Mike+MR2

It was rainy and there was standing water on the track, but as they made their way back to the pits after their morning run, the fast guys mentioned there was a decent amount of grip on track. I guess I'd find out for myself.

Tonight's drive from Dominion to the next track, Gingerman in Michigan, was over 700 miles. With that in mind, I made my way up a bit early, to try to get in an earlier run group. That way, we could leave a bit earlier than usual. My plan succeeded, and I ended up about 3 runs groups higher than normal- score!

I watched a bit of the front straight as cars went by, and soon it was my turn to go out for the morning session. It was still raining. Here's the video from the morning:

47th place! And that includes having to slow way down in the second turn because the Factory Toyota team spun, causing the yellow flag. The Volvo felt great and I was happy with our result.

I stopped briefly back by our pit space to drop off the helmet, then made my way back across the freeway to pick up Dad and Taylor at the hotel. I stopped first for gas, that way we could get on the road quickly after the afternoon session. Dad and Taylor were ready to go when I arrived.

Taylor and Dad were pumped about our placing in the morning, too.

None of us had eaten anything all day. I hadn't seen anything available to eat at the track, so we decided to stop by the Taco Bell in the parking lot, grab something to go, then eat at the track.

Dad hadn't eaten Taco Bell in about 20 years, and now he was having it for the second time in a day; Taylor and he had eaten some after I went to bed the night before. Dad's so lucky like that. Taylor and Dad got XXL burritos and I got a quesadilla. The food was ready, and we popped across I-95 to the track and unloaded.

The track staff had opened up some of their facility to let people get out of the rain, so we decided to park in the area and head inside. Turns out, they have some sort of indoor music venue, for concerts; they're going for total entertainment destination: road race course, race oval, music venue, go kart track, and bar and grill.

Parked in front of the concert hall.

We assumed everyone would be inside eating, but there was literally not a single person in there. Strange, but we found a table and ate our Taco Bell in peace and dryness; no complaints. Well, except I didn't get a quesadilla. I got some sort of burrito, which actually was better than the quesadilla I planned. So no complaints then.

Delicious?

At some point, Dad went to find a bathroom. He found an elevator near the bathroom. An elevator that led to the bar and grill. 

Where the party was raging. They had food, drinks, music, etc. All right above our heads as we ate Taco Bell in silence. Whoops.

Well shit - there's the party.

We settled in and visited with friends.

The wife of one of the top drivers, Ann, stopped Taylor to chat for awhile. She was with her husband, Andy, in the new Nissan GT-R. In fact, they still had the paper plates on the car. They'd bought the car on Monday in Austin, TX, driven to South Bend, IN by Wednesday, got the 1,000 miles service on Thursday, then were stickered up and registered on Friday.

Originally, they'd planned on bringing a 2012 McLaren 12C.

McLaren 12C - image credit: https://www.pinterest.com/sigmararo/

Unfortunately, the McLaren had continued a streak of misbehaving. It broke the Friday before One Lap and needed repair. Ann was furious with that car, telling us that it had experienced over $90,000 in warranty repair work during their ownership. Andy, who was doing the track driving, had already come to hate the GT-R- Ann told us that it was for sale if we were interested. Not even 2 weeks old! He'd been having problems with the electronics on track, causing huge losses in time.

Soon the call was made to start the afternoon session. It was still wet, but the rain had stopped. It would be a bit drier this time around. Taylor and Dad decided to stay and watch from the bar, which was covered and dry with a good view of the track. I headed back to the pits to pack up and get ready for the afternoon run. We wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible to start on the 12 hour drive.

Since I didn't really unpack all that much, due to rain, it was pretty quick to get packed back up and ready to go, so I took some footage of some fast cars. Even in the wet, they move along purdy good.

With a shorter track and some hustling officials, our turn came up quickly. I slotted in line behind Pete in his C5 Corvette Z06, and in front of the Dubler crew in their HHR's. The high spot in the run groups meant we would get out of the track nice and early!

A ferocious clan of HHR's.

Yo Pete.

And we were off! Here's the video from the afternoon session. Always searching for a new camera angle, what do you think?

We placed 47th again! The conditions were drier, so everyone was a bit faster. The Volvo ran great, again.

I drove to the pits, packed up the driving suit and helmet, hooked up the trailer, and drove up to meet Dad and Taylor near the bar and grill.

No exaggeration, we were driving out of the track less than 15 minutes after I'd finished on track- it was 1:45pm. We'd become seasoned pros! On the road to Michigan, we were pretty pleased with the day so far, but it was 700 miles to the next stop.

A normal route would have taken us up near Washington D.C., but traffic was super bad. Brock had planned for this and suggested a squirrelly alternative route that went pretty far west of DC. We decided to give his route a shot, and it wasn't too far off the traditional route before Google recognized and suggested that this was, in fact, a much faster route.

After around 170 miles, we decided to take a quick stop for food and fuel. The gas gauge still wasn't working, and we weren't sure how much fuel was burned on the track. Better to be safe than sorry. Towns at this point were few and far between, so we settled on the cluster of gas stations and fast food restaurants at the bizarre intersection of I-70 and I-76 in Pennsylvania. I say bizarre, because 70 goes over the top of 76, then ends at a stoplight. You then have to putter your way through 300 yards of town, and get on a cloverleaf on-ramp to 76 west. I guess they didn't feel like paying for an interchange?

I thought we wanted some real food, so I first directed us an even goofier way to a standalone McDonald's that had a tour bus in the parking lot. Yikes. Dad had thought we were headed to a McDonald's / Gas station combo, so he voted that we move along, because we still had over 500 miles to go. I couldn't fault the logic, so we didn't even stop the car and meandered our way to a Shell/Subway/Dunkin' Donuts/Travelers' Oasis (?).

Needless to say, a lot of people stop for gas and food at this point, so we saw a number of competitors at the few gas stations along the 300 yards. I thought some Subway would be easy on the stomach, so I quickly grabbed a sandwich as Dad filled the car.

Taylor, on the other hand, chose to go big. He went to Dunkin' Donuts and loaded up a BIG N' TOASTED®. Straight from their website:

---

GO BIG FROM THE START

Two eggs, Cherrywood Smoked bacon, and American cheese layered between two slices of Texas toast— our Big N' Toasted® doesn’t go light on breakfast. (Neither should you.)

---

Well, he ordered one. Allegedly. 

I was sitting in the driver's seat and had fully eaten my Subway, thinking, "What is going on in there?!" I'm not a fast eater.

Dad went in to check on him. When they asked where the sandwich was (there was no line), the workers replied, "What sandwich?"

"This one I ordered right here on the receipt?!"

"Ooooooooohh. Oh yeah. Okay we'll make that."

?!!!?!?!??!

I sat in the car and watched One Lappers come in, fill up, and leave. And another one. And another one.

Once Sir Dunkin' figured out that there was a sandwich to be made, Taylor was out of there in 2 minutes. Eesh. It would have been faster to get in line behind the tour bus at McDonald's.

Oh well, we packed up and hit the road again.

I was behind the wheel for an hour and a half when we were passed by some of the front runners- Chris and his wife in the Corvette and Chris and his wife in the Corvette and the Ariel Atom. I picked up our pace and jumped in with 'em.

Pickin' 'em up and puttin' 'em down.

At first it was invigorating. They were definitely covering ground. Like a lot of ground in a small amount of time. A lot a lot of ground. Like, I'm definitely not going to put any numbers on the internet amount of ground. We were getting moderately concerned that Tom the trailer was going to explode behind us, but it was hard to deny the progress we were making. Until we hit a reduced-speed double-fine construction zone. And they didn't slow down.

I tapped out. 

Back on cruise control and I could breathe a little and remove the death grip from the steering wheel. Tom bounced happily in the rear view mirror.

We saw a few other competitors come and go on the Pennsylvania / Ohio turnpike as we made our way west. The weather was calm and we were treated to a nice sunset as we stopped for gas at another oasis.

At this point, the Volvo had started throwing some brake pedal sensor fault, which killed the cruise control until you stopped and restarted the car. Taylor did some research to determine that it wasn't anything critical, so we could continue on. Just add it to the list. Oh, and we were getting intermittent low coolant warnings. But the coolant wasn't low. But we topped it off anyway.

On the plus side, this particular oasis had a Starbucks! Real (enough) coffee! We were stoked and indulged accordingly.

Back on the road, we had just 270 miles to go. One more stop and about 4 hours. It was 9pm, so we were looking good! Dad hopped back in the driver's seat and drove us into the night.

It was smooth going to the next gas stop about 30 miles from the hotel. The timing was good; we wouldn't have to stop for fuel in the morning before heading to the track. I took over the driving to take us to the finish.

Ta da!

We made it just before 1230am! No sweat! In fact, when we got there, 40 rooms had yet to check in for the night. Short stops (well, except for Taylor's Breakfast Overload) and a clean exit from the track had left us in an awfully good spot.

On the minus side, this was definitely the flea-baggiest hotel we'd seen. By a lot. It was foul- it looked like The Shining, felt like The Shining, and smelled like 2-week old road kill soaked in a bath of Grandmother's perfume.

Come play with us...

Other than that, it was a nice place.

After briefly visiting with some friends, we got ready for bed. One last kick in the, er, eye, before bed- through our window, we spotted a shiny new Hampton Inn right across the street, laughing at us. Grrrrr.

A successful day complete, we drifted to sleep enjoying the aforementioned sweet smells, and the dulcet tones of the room's A/C fan grinding itself to a fine dust.

May 10 - South Carolina : Carolina Motorsports Park

We set our alarms for 6am. The track was 30 minutes away and we refused to skip breakfast so that meant about 3 hours of sleep. It was a quiet event, getting ready for the day. One foot in front of the other, we were out the door by 7am.

Packing up.

There weren't any pull-through parking spots at this motel, so I had unhooked Tom to put him in his own spot for the night. There wasn't much room to maneuver the car and trailer together, so I did everything manually, lifting and pushing the 1,200lb trailer uphill into a parking spot at 3am. I was so exhausted I got light-headed and nearly passed out.

I decided in the morning to have Dad move the car nice and close to Tom first, so I didn't have to repeat that dance/trauma at 7am. We hooked everything up, drama free, and set off in search of breakfast.

Dad drove and I found a McDonald's on the way. We started leaning towards McDonald's more and more; the time spent in each of the stores is consistent and short. The food comes out quickly and we can be on our way; other joints have a huge variation in experiences, mostly to the negative side.

This particular McDonald's was rammed full of people; the double drive-through had lines 4 cars deep.

No matter, Dad and Taylor parked Tom and the Meat Wagon off to the side while I went in to transact. As usual, the order came out hot and fast. Even the coffee was decent. Praise be.

Praise be.

A few minutes were wasted when Dad left the car to go inside and help me carry the order, but I had already left with the full order out a door on the other side of the restaurant. I got to the car and there was no Dad. Taylor explained the situation, so I went back inside to get Dad, but he had left out another door. Cue the circus music.

Believe it or not, we got it sorted out and hit the road for the track. The scenery was really quite nice and the sun was shining. We made it to the track in plenty of time, signed the waiver, and moseyed on in.

And mosey is indeed the word. The track grounds are all soft green grass and big leafy trees. Well, except for the the ~20 car garage that was fully occupied by the big kids. Instead of being lined up in a parking lot, competitors were parked all over the place- usually under trees on the grass! The vibe was great; we found a spot under a big tree next to our amigos, Chris and Mike Lin, who were killing it in the standings in their superbly well-prepped MR2.

Mike and Chris Lin with their MR2.

Chris and Mike weren't particularly happy. Well, Mike was, because he's cool like that, but Chris was pretty grumpy. The MR2 was having engine performance problems; low power, especially at higher RPM. They had some ideas on what might be causing it, but were going to run the morning session and go from there.

We unpacked slowly and sociably, chatting with friends and fellow One Lappers as they strolled by. Our late night suffering all but forgotten, we all remarked that it wasn't a bad way to live, sitting in the sun at a peaceful racetrack on a sunny day.

As had been happening all week, Taylor and I hassled Dad to get out on the track and race. Dad was worried that he was too rusty and therefore a risk to the vehicle; he'd crash or hurt the car, then we'd be in a bad situation.

Well, too bad, Dad. Between Taylor, me, and fellow competitors remarking how enjoyable and safe this particular track was, he finally relented and started looking at a track map. We probably should have a had a more serious conversation about the racing duty split before the trip; not having a plan meant nobody studied any of the tracks, which made us seriously slower than we could have been. I believe the Volvo is a top 45 overall car; our driving just wasn't up to par.

Enjoying the nice day.

After making an attempt to figure out which direction the track goes, Dad suited up, adjusted the seat, and headed up to the grid. Taylor and I followed him up, I snapped a few photos, then left them in line to change cameras.

Ready to go.

Well he's just happy to be here!

Strategy meeting.

When I returned to our pit area, I found Mike and Chris packing up the MR2. I asked Mike what was going on.

"Yo guys, where you going?"

"The car has no power at higher RPM. There is definitely something wrong. We're going to go to Chris's house near the next track to try to diagnose and fix whatever's going on. Don't mind Chris, he gets really grumpy when the car is not behaving."

It was clear that Chris was indeed, quite grumpy. His house is about an hour north of Thursday's track, Dominion Raceway, in Virginia. Not too far out of the way, but they had a long afternoon/night ahead of them if they hoped to make the start tomorrow. This wasn't lost on any of us, and optimism was in short supply. In fact, Mike asked if we'd be swinging by Cleveland at any point; he might need a ride to the airport.

I wished them luck as they fired up and pulled out of the track. I really hoped they'd make it back. I grabbed the video camera and made my way back to the grid.

Good luck, Chris and Mike! Hope you get it solved!

Taylor was hanging out with the timing crew under an ez-up; it was getting hot, fast. Direct sunlight was pretty much already unbearable and everyone was already sunburned. I hopped in the car with Dad to get out of said sun, chat, and take a little footage. Soon enough, it was our group on track- good luck, Dad! I put together a short video around the morning session:

Click to play video!

By the time Dad came off track, Mike and Chris were gone, so Dad pulled into their premiere parking spot in the shade of a large tree; score!

Amazingly, he even admitted to having a good time! Here's the onboard from the morning session:

The track is decently tight, with only one or two tricky spots, so he just took it easy there. With the morning session handled, it was time to think about lunch, and possibly swapping out the suspected-faulty fuel pressure sensor.

Unwinding from the track session.

Taylor had diagnosed our engine cutting in and out at light throttle loads (right around 80mph - the speed limit for almost our whole trip out to South Bend) during some down time on Friday, registration day. He ordered the part to fix it (a new fuel pressure sensor) and had it shipped to the hotel at Sebring. Yay for Amazon Prime! It was waiting for us at the hotel and we planned to install it at Carolina Motorsports Park.

But first, lunch!

The Volvo needed gas as well, so I volunteered to drive into town, less than 5 minutes away, get gas, and pick up lunch. Google maps revealed a Bojangles; fried chicken and biscuits! Dad and Taylor requested chicken tenders, a bold choice, and I hit the road.

There was a gas station right outside the track on the right side of the road, so I popped in to fill up first. I had the car parked and ready for fill-up when I noticed that the highest octane they had was 90. 90?! No way. We're high performance, we need the good stuff! I sealed everything back up and headed for town.

Even though the drive was short, the trees and road were really sweet. I tried to take a photo and not crash. I didn't crash, but the photo is no good; better than a good photo + crash I suppose. I guess you'll have to just take my word for it- beautiful road.

Nice road.

I quickly happened upon a Shell station with 93 octane. Much better. So I filled up. As I did, I saw there was a Subway next door. Maybe a reasonable sandwich would be a better choice than fried chicken and biscuits...

Volvo gettin' the good stuff.

I quickly banished such nonsense, finished at the Shell station, and zipped over to Bojangles to fulfill our true lunch destiny.

I would find out later from the MR2 Lins (who are from North Carolina) that Bojangles is the business, so I'm glad we didn't skip it. I selected something like the 200 piece homestyle chicken tenders box with biscuits, mashed potatoes, fries, gravy, BBQ sauce, honey mustard, ranch and a random chicken and rice bowl that the guy in front of me in line had that looked good. Satisfied that there would be enough for 3 people, I made my way back to the track. Dad and Taylor were right where I left them. I couldn't blame them- it was insanely hot in the sun, breezy and pleasant in the shade, and peaceful and quiet while nobody was on the track. The will to nap was strong. The fried chicken and biscuit buffet didn't exactly perk us up, either. The fuel pressure sensor would have to stay in the box for another day.

Yay Bojangles!

Nap time.

Soon, the fast cars were back on track. Dad and I managed to peel ourselves out of the chairs to take a little video of them flying by. Zoom.

Dad making his way up to watch.

The car at the end there, a highly modified 1200hp Nissan GT-R, broke his rear differential. Noone knew it at this particular time, but this would be the end for this car. The car could not be repaired in time to continue.

We visited and relaxed off and on until it was Dad's turn for the afternoon session. We were so lazy, we hardly packed anything before he went out. It could wait. Right?

Visiting with friends.

The weather was hot. Taylor attempted to cool off.

Ready for the afternoon session.

I mounted the camera on the rear bumper for no particular reason; change of scenery I guess.

Dad's lovin' the selfie.

Here's the video from Dad's afternoon session:

Taylor and I watched along the front straight again, in the shade. It was hot.

Dad had a good session, no incidents.

Nice work!

The drive for the night was our shortest one yet- about 400 miles to Virginia (6 hours or so), so nobody was too panicky about getting packed and out the door. Especially us. The track was short, so everyone was done in pretty short order. We packed and were on the road by 230pm. I drove first while Dad napped; racing in the heat, even just a few short laps, can definitely add some fatigue. Coupled with our cumulative lack of sleep, we were all pretty tired. I had 160mg of caffeine from a Monster Rehab Energy Drink, so I was good for the first leg of the journey.

Ready to roll out for the short 400 mile drive to Virginia.

We encountered some One Lappers on the freeway, but again, they were doing triple digit speeds, weaving in and out of traffic. I really wasn't interested in that, so I dropped back, hit the cruise control, and enjoyed the particularly scenic drive. Taylor made for excellent company.

We stopped for gas after 230 miles. Apparently the station we found was the only one in the area, as we watched multiple One Lappers come and go. The gas pumps were fighting us- we were all having our credit cards denied at multiple pumps. What were we going to do?! HOW CAN WE PAY WITH NO CREDIT CARDS?!?!

Oh wait, gas stations have been accepting cash for centuries. So I paid in cash and we were on our way, Dad at the wheel.

The drive was smooth and short- we pulled into the hotel at 842pm- hallelujah! In fact, everyone in the event knew the arrival time would be early, including the organizers, so the race track across the highway kept their bar and grill open late for an informal One Lap get together. 

By the time we were checked in and situated, it was well after 9pm. Dad had scored us two separate rooms, so we would each have our own bed. It came down to weighing an 8 hour sleep vs. partying late.

Repairs for some fast cars.

I was so exhausted I told Dad and Taylor that I couldn't even stay awake to get dinner, which we hadn't eaten yet. I was going straight to bed. They agreed that a good night's sleep was in order, but they popped over to the Taco Bell in the hotel parking lot first for some food.

Ready for sleep.

Exhausted, but elated at the prospect of my first full night of sleep in over a month, I was out. It looked like rain in the morning, but we'd worry about that later...

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

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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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