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Imagine this is 1107, except the parts are 30 miles away from each other and we leave for the race in two days.

Bob reports that, come hell or high water (probably “hell”), the engine will be back together Wednesday night, tops! We’ve got tires down at Dixon & Son Tires in Watsonville that need to be put on rims we’ve got around here someplace. That plus cramming everything back in 1107, loading the trailer and driving to Prairie City Friday afternoon. Where it will rain all weekend. No problem.

I’m totally lifting this from the October issue of Dusty Times and will probably do federal time for it. Thank you, Troy Robinson of Koenig Racing and Total Chaos, for the Class 11 writeup (recounting everyone racing the VORRA Fallon 250 night race where we got stuck in a box canyon at 11 p.m., blocking about 100,000 horsepower worth of race vehicles for a good 30 minutes).

The Class 11 victory went to Gary Herrod (1112, the green one). Herrod and co-driver got stuck in the silt once and learned that they can lift front and rear ends out of the silt onto a more firm part of the track. Herrod even managed to stay in front of a “certain racing truck” during the rough section for quite a way due to the thick dust until the truck was able to get the top speed up and make a clean desert pass (I’m not mentioning any numbers here!!) At the finish, Herrod had a 52 minute victory over second place.

Bob Messer (1177, the silver one) was running third place most of the day with some long first laps. He gathered it up in the end and finished second place. At one point as they were cruising along they pulled over for a car and later found out it was a pass for position but got the place back a few miles later.

Richard Palasik (1107, the white one), had some misfortune during pre-running. The ball joint broke on the car and while this is normally not a big deal for the 11s, it wasn’t without drama. During repairs a pry bar slipped, smashing Richard’s hand, sending him to the hospital for stitches, antibiotics and a thumb splint, but not before they fixed the car to drive it out of the desert. During a test run they determined that he can’t drive without opposable thumbs, so a relief driver was put in. The race starts and they take a quart of oil a lap (normal for an air cooled, isn’t it?) and make a pass on the aforementioned Messer, only to pull over a few miles later to add oil and get passed back – they didn’t realize it was for position and they were on the same lap. Oh yeah, one other note. On their way to third place, the steering wheel came off just before check point one at top speed (45 mph). Doesn’t that only happen in cartoons?”

Things are gonna get interesting in the post-season.

P.S. Photo of the ‘sploded VW is from an art installation by Damian Ortega.