Wow. Just freaking wow.

So, We FINISHED!

Yeay! (The crowd goes wild; roses and kisses from hot chicks... um, cocked-eyebrow-spouse is not amused, scratch that, kisses from super-cute-jubliant-spouse just fine with me)

We surpassed every single one of our goals, and beat all my previous team's records.

A) We got to the track before the race started,
B) We passed Tech without grave warnings of death and mutilation,
C) We stayed out on the track for more than 2 1/2 laps!

Not only that, but we actually FINISHED THE RACE!! HOLY CRAP!

THAT part is what surprised all of us.

I checked the trip odometer which I had reset at the beginning of the race, and assuming it is correct (Not likely, it's is an MG after all) we completed a hair over 506 miles. Not too shabby for a rusty and forgotten project car we found at a closed MG garage.

Friday morning we woke up and stopped off at an auto parts store on the way to the track. Since it was next to Choke in the Box I decided to get myself a breakfast burrito, which apparently is becoming another running gag for me in this whole 24 Hours of LeMons thing.

While waiting for my food I noticed Matt and his Free Range Racing "Stack-o-cars" fueling up at the gas station next door. I recognized his 24 feet of race cars on 20 feet of trailer setup from his blog. That and the Spotted Owl on a stick mounted above the cockpit.

"Hey, it's the Free range Guys" I said to my Groggy teamate, Hey-WOW-man Chong.

"What?" He mumbled back, not really caring what I was talking about. "Hey man, we still need gas."

"RIGHT!" I said.

The events that followed are a little fuzzy in my mind, but we watched Matt pull out onto the highway in one direction, which I had assumed was the another direction, but hey-WOW-man assured me was the right direction.

But then after we fueled up, we got turned around and completely went the wrong direction.

Which, just happened to be the RIGHT direction. I noticed this as we tried to turn around in a tiny used car lot on main street in wonderful Fernley NV. Thinking that the round-a-bout intersection we crossed was a bad sign, we were trying to head back to the freeway. As I finally got our rig turned around, I saw Matt and the free-range-stack-o-cars go zipping by from the other another direction and turn down the road we were facing.

"Huh. That must be the way to the track".

It was a scant 5 minutes earlier that we had realized we knew how to get to Fernley, but had overlooked getting "directions" to the actual race track.

"FOLLOW THAT OWL!" I decreed.

"Hey wait a minute man, those people are waving at us to follow them instead." said Mr. Chong. Several cars going the other way were honking at us and waving.

"WHAT? But those dudes are going the wrong direction!" I said flabbergasted.

"I dunno, but they doo seem pretty insistent, all waving at us and stuff..."

So I pulled over again, and thought to myself... "Self, they did not even have a race car". Hmmm...

Then I decided SCREW them, I'm following the owl. And as I puled back out in front of traffic, I noticed in my mirror what appeared to be a camper door swinging open in the wind.

"Oh... I think I know why they were waving at us..." I said as I pulled over yet AGAIN.

By the time Kevin got back from shutting the rear door on Brownie "The Worlds Greatest Crappy RV", Matt and the Free range racers, the Owl, windmill and stack-o-cars were long gone.

So guessing at which way to go, we headed down the road, on the road to somewhere.

Just as I said to hey-WOW-man that we should just go a few miles further before turning around, we saw what looked like a racetrack up in the hills. Not only that, I saw an OWL perched above a red stack-o-cars going up the driveway.

"YES!" we high fived each other.

Once we got to the gate we checked our names on the list. "Who is driving?" asked the tired lady with the list. "We both are" I replied. But Kevin was not listed. We tried his first name. Nope. We tried his last name. Nope. "Who is driving?" the lady asked again. "We BOTH are" I said in frustration.

"You forgot to pay for him" she said.

"No, I'm broke because I DID pay for him!"

After conferring with the other gate checker for a moment, we were told that we would have to report to LeMons HQ to straighten it out.

So I got my wrist band, and a dirty look from hey-WOW-man, and we proceeded through the paddock looking for a space to set up camp.

But there WERE no spaces. Everything was either occupied or taped off with caution tape. When we got to the end of the pits I realized we were in a bit of a bind. The Last thing I wanted to do was to piss of my pit neighbors, but we REALLY needed a place to park.

Just then I saw a teammate from my previous LeMons race at Thunderhill, who was wearing a "Staff" T-shirt this time around. "Hey Armand! Hows it going?"

We decided to go chit chat, figure out the parking and also the "list thing" when Free-range-Matt came storming up from the other side "THERE'S NO PLACE TO PARK!! *&^% everybody is being a #$^% and #$%^ #^$% #$%^..."

I stood next to him and nodded my head in agreement. "We" were on a roll.

I had not met Matt yet, but had conversed with him through our blogs. We were supposed to wander over and say "Hi" to each other sometime during the race. But this was even better.

The LeMons folk ponderded the problem for a few minutes, then told us we could have the spaces closest to the penalty box. EXCELLENT! They even gave us space for the Snowspeeders and Knights of the Round Table/Stick-figure racing teams who had not arrived yet.

Then we moved on to Kevin's issue of not being on the list.

We found him under Kevin "Hey WOW man".

Ahem. Kevin shot me a look of YOU IDIOT.

Organizer Nick said "I remember you..."

And everyone said "oooOOoooo".

Perhaps not the BEST way to start a LeMons me thinks. Funny, I changed our entry forms right after they sent out the threatening email about nicknames in quotations. Must have been just a moment too late with the last one...

After getting Hey-WOW-man free on bail, we set up camp and I found out that all the MR2 teams were especially cool. We pooled our canopies and made one big common area, which would come into play later in the weekend.

Then we looked at our race car and thought "Holy Shit".

We are Here.


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