----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2006 12:25
AM
Subject: RE: IML: Great Race Report 8-
Imperial Expeditionary Force (61)
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
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