RE: IML: Great Race Report 8- Imperial Expeditionary Force (61)

[Jeff Ingraham <jeff_ingraham@xxxxxxxxx>]

Kudos John!
No Picture but nice story!
Thanks for Letting us "Ride along"
All the best!
Jeff ingraham

http://www.hutchnews.com/news/regional/stories/race070206.shtml


Great Race crosses Kansas
Classic cars stop in Dodge City during trek to
California
By Tim Vandenack
The Hutchinson News 

tvandenack@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

DODGE CITY - When he reached Dodge City on Saturday
morning, the first task for John Corey was to clean
the dead insects that had splattered onto the grill of
his 1961 Imperial during the drive from Wichita.

"They're easier to get off before they're ripe," he
explained, polishing the classic auto built by
Chrysler to a gloss. "We try to keep it sharp."

Don't be sidetracked by such vanities, however. For
Corey, who is from Melrose, N.Y., and others
participating in the Great Race auto competition, the
main thing is keeping pace with the master timer's
clock - with an eye on the $270,000 in prize money.

"It's a precision driving event," said Steve Hedke, a
Santa Clarita, Calif., driver who was maneuvering in a
1929 white Ford Roadster. "It's not designed for top
speed."

About 100 drivers are competing this year, and they
stopped Saturday morning in Dodge City en route from
Wichita to Garden City and Pueblo, Colo. The annual
competition, which features classic auto- mobiles,
started June 24 in Philadelphia and ends 4,100 miles
later on Saturday in San Rafael, Calif.

On Saturday, Corky Coker of Chattanooga, Tenn., one of
about 100 drivers in the Great Race auto competition,
changes a pair of spark plugs in his 1937 Shafer 8
Indy car during a stop in Dodge City. The car race
started June 24 in Philadelphia and will end in San
Rafael, Calif. Photo by Tim Vandenack.

The stopover here drew plenty of visitors who admired
the shiny cars longingly. There were tailfins, a 1922
Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, old style open-topped Indy
cars, Corvettes, a 1930 Ford Model A, rumble seats, a
Studebaker and much, much more.

"These are cars. These are automobiles," Spearville
auto buff G.W. Thomas said with a sigh. "They don't
make them like this anymore."

Each day in the Great Race, drivers get a new
itinerary, instructing them to travel certain speeds
for prescribed periods of time. The assigned speed
might also change at landmarks on the roadway - a city
limits sign, for instance - requiring drivers and
their navigators, who typically carry stopwatches, to
pay close heed.

Race organizers will have determined beforehand how
long it takes to travel each stretch of the course at
the prescribed speed or speeds, and drivers must
finish as close to that time as possible. Along the
way, they must adjust their velocity to compensate for
slow-moving tractors, turns and stop signs they
encounter, not to mention their own auto's particular
pick-up and braking capabilities.

"It is a little intense," said Dennis Vande Voort, an
Oneida, Wis., man who is serving as navigator in a
bright red 1955 Thunderbird. He said he keeps the roof
down on the convertible, even if it rains, because
it's easier to see the various signs and other
landmarks that indicate when to change speeds.

"It's absolutely a dead serious competition," said
Wayne Stanfield, a Great Race organizer. "It's as
serious as the Indianapolis 500."

Still, the drivers keep it lighthearted.

Corky Coker of Chattanooga, Tenn., driving a 1937
Shafer 8 Indy car, explained how the elements impact
him while on the road in the open-topped vehicle.

"When it's real sunny, you get sunburned," he said.
"When it rains - that's the most frequent question we
get - you get wet."

07/02/2006; 02:33:21 AM

--- John Corey <jcorey@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Well.  Humbled by Life again.  If Pride Goes Before
> a Fall, then I guess we were proud going into today.
>  We figured after two good days that we were
> dialed-in.  Today's run was a LOOOONG one, mostly on
> US 50, from WIchita, KS to Pueblo, CO.  There's no
> better cruiser for that run than an Imperial, so
> were looking to do really well and move on up in the
> rankings!  We executed perfectly, too, with not a
> single uncompensated error: we figured at the end
> that there was no way we'd be over 30 seconds error
> - MAX - and we hoped for a 10.  We were crushed to
> see 1 minute 21 on the clock as we pulled in to
> Pueblo!  Early on every leg, and pretty near
> proportional to the leg lengths.  I think we messed
> up our speedo calibration.  You'd think a couple of
> engineers could work a simple instrument, wouldn't
> you?  Sigh.  We sure can't blame it on our car
> today!  
> 
> We placed 60th today; 15th in Rookies.  Bleeaaah. 
> I'm feeling very annoyed with myself and Dave is
> almost as put out as I am (he needs more sleep, so
> he's put off his mad til morning).  We fell to 65th
> overall and to 13th in Rookies.  There are still
> five other rookies within a minute or so, so we
> aren't doomed to the bottom, yet.  
> I'll write in brief notes, because it was an
> interesting day (until we got our score, anyway).
> 
> 1) Kansas is flatter than a pool table and the roads
> go straighter than a parolee in a police station.
> 2) It was hotter than a blow torch today.  The local
> bank showed 101 F at our afternoon pit stop.  There
> were 8 DNFs today and a lot of those were heat
> related.  WE each drank over 5 litres of water
> today, and still found little need for restrooms!
> 3) Great heat mirages!   The road shimmered like
> water ahead.  Ha!  Just hot asphalt.  It's easy to
> see how the early settlers went nuts seeing those in
> their heat and dehydration.  We ran top-up all day
> in hopes of keeping our faculties functional through
> the whole stage (prior days had shown us that the
> last leg was where we made all our significant
> errors).  That seems to have worked, anyway.
> 4) This is cattle country and we passed feedlots and
> rendering plants.  Feedlots make a lot of flies -
> but how they get into cars passing by at over 50 mph
> is beyond me!  It's clear why the ancients thought
> flies just appeared out of thin air.  Of course,
> once they're in the car, they can't find a way back
> out.  They just flit about annoying the hot, tired
> people there with them.  
> 4a) Rendering plants are really odiferously
> malodorous in the summer heat - 'nuff said!  On the
> other hand, we passed one field that had a strong
> and very nice scent of lavender!  We couldn't see
> any source, but it was sweet strong - most
> refreshing.
> 5) We hit one of those summer thunderstorms that
> seem only to come in the high, dry plains.  The wind
> whips up a visible wall of dust ahead of the storm
> (and we drove into it); then the lighting crackles
> all over the darkening sky and you can see torrents
> of rain ahead and above in the clouds- but none
> makes it to the ground because it evaporates faster
> than it falls!  That evaporation cools the air as if
> all the heat's oppression were broken by a cool
> revolution in the sky!  We felt it fall from over
> 100 to the low 70's in no time at all.  
> 6) The wind here comes continually from the south. 
> It shapes the trees (almost all of which stand alone
> as arboreal sentries over grassland and fields). 
> They mostly look half knocked-over in the steady
> blow.  Today's storm gave us high headwinds from the
> west, twisting the trees and power lines in new
> directions.  One let go in front of us and we had to
> leave US 50 and detour on to local unpaved roads for
> many miles (or around one block, in local scale). 
> One other car had a flat in the rough, but we made
> it through OK.  While there, we flushed a pair of
> wild pheasants!
> 7) Today we left Wichita, passed through Dodge City
> KS, Garden City (?) KS, and Lamar CO.  It's amazing
> how fast the land use changes  right at  the
> Colorado line - from irrigated fields to sage brush.
>  We learned that there is a century-old water rights
> deal in effect that prevents Colorado from drawing
> 'Kansas water' and so prevents irrigation there.
> 8) We ended in Pueblo, CO.  It's home to all US
> government publications, y'know - I wonder if
> there's a huge Indiana Jones style warehouse around
> here someplace, where they  keep all those free
> publications, just waiting for us to write and
> request one?  We didn't see it, but the old downtown
> is very cool.  The train station (Atcheson, Topeka &
> Santa Fe Depot) is a redstone beauty - all restored
> as a meeting and banquet hall!  I could stand to
> live in this town!
> 
> Our car ran beautifully today, as we knew it would. 
> The heat never bothered it at all (it never ran
> above normal range). AS usual, it attracted an
> appreciative crowd both at stops and honking and
> waving all along the route.  We've arranged it with
> US flags in the windshield bar receivers when the
> top is down.  A perfect parade car!  Still no
> official photos on the GreatRace website (is that
> photographer BLIND?!), but we were interviewed by
> the Hutchinson News in Dodge City, maybe he'll post
> some in tomorrow's paper there (see
> www.hutchnews.com).  We're all out of handout
> postcards of the car, and I tried to get new ones at
> the all-night Kinko's in Wichita, but it turned out
> to be far away late at night.  Sleep seemed the
> better option.  Refilling will just have to wait for
> our rest day in Durango!  Sorry, Kids!
> 
> The sudden dust and rain today got the car filthy. 
> We did a wipedown 'wash', but it needs a real bath. 
>  Not tonight.  Off to bed! jc
>   
> 
> 
> 



-----------------  http://www.imperialclub.com  -----------------
This message was sent to you by the Imperial Mailing List. Please 
reply to mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and your response will be 
shared with everyone. Private messages (and attachments) for the
Administrators should be sent to webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To UN-SUBSCRIBE, go to http://imperialclub.com/unsubscribe.htm