Live Trip Map Day 16: August 30, 2009
Parading On Track
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Sunday's start time was switched from an early 7:00 to an even earlier 6:00 but we made it. August 30,1999
The folks at Cliff Findlay Auto Center and a roll of racer's tape had the car ready to head out of Kingman with the Corvette caravan. No, silly, that's not it in the picture. I made another side trip to Phoenix to pick up another friend, Denny, for the drive to Kentucky. We had planned to connect in LA but those plans were scrapped with my drive into the canyon.

After regrouping in Wendover, we were escorted across the salt flats by about twenty cars from a local Corvette group.

We were joined at Miller Motorsports Park by the Pacific Northwest caravan. We started with about fifty cars. We made a brief stop in Rocklin, California, on the first day and someone said we would be leaving with about 200. That claim seems to have been off by a bunch. The combined group at Miller Motorsports Park wasn't much more than 200.

We got to watch some cart racing...

...and visit the museum. Remember the Rip Chords? If your copy of their "Hey Little Cobra" album is still in decent shape, check out the cover. This is the car that posed for the cover shot.

After a little music...

...we headed out for a parade lap. We entered the track and moved to the start/finish line in a sedate single line. Then we lined up three wide for a group photo. We were supposed to stand by our car for the photo and, after extensive milling about and individual picture taking, almost everyone did just that. The couple in the pace car behind us did not. They may have had a good reason to stay in their car but it almost looked as if they were perturbed at taking a wrong turn and getting caught up in this huge traffic jam.

Once the appropriate number of photos were taken from the starter's stand, we moved out single file for the parade lap. We did a full lap without stopping then continued around the track to exit at the point we had entered. I had expected a slow crawl around the track but that wasn't exactly the case. Cars spread out and the pace climbed so that my speedometer was briefly in three digits. I wisely took no pictures during that phase.


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