One Lap of America May 6 to May 13, 2006
Article provided by David Goodman.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8

Friday May 12, 2006, Day 7
From Putnam Park we were supposed to travel to US 41 Dragway to do our annual drag racing event. Because of the wind and rain the track owner canceled the event. This was fine with us we were cold and exhausted and that just meant we would get some extra sleep. We drove through Chicago Rush hour on our way to Road America and outside of town in Northbrook Ryan spotted a Ruth's Chris steakhouse off the highway. We stopped for our best meal of the event so far, I've gotta say that was one of the best steaks I have ever had.

As we rolled into town, the wind was wailing and throughout the downpour there were flakes of snow. We completely unpacked the car knowing we would leave all our gear at the hotel like we did yesterday. After a decent night's sleep and after bailing the car out in the morning we headed to the track. The weather was cold and rainy again today. It seems like every time I'm up here it's raining. Road America is a very long racetrack with a lot of very unforgiving cement barriers. That combined with the wet weather produced lots of bent metal and crunched fiberglass. A Mazda RX7, a Dodge Viper, one of the Subaru STI's, and the 65 Daytona replica all crashed with damage. Not to mention the countless spins.

Given my abilities, it takes better than 10 minutes to drive three hot laps on that track in the rain, and it's a long 10 minutes. The goal going into these two sessions was simply to bring the car back in one piece. No need for heroics, I knew we had locked up the vintage foreign championship; all we had to do now was bring the car back to the Tire Rack whole. Despite all of my care, in the second run session, a little too much throttle coming out of the chicane in turn 11 led to a high speed tank slapper.

There are lots of varieties of on track spins and mishaps. Some where you simply turn the car around 180° or dribble it slowly off the end of the track in a braking zone, and some where you're in such a position, or you are going so fast, that if you lose it completely there is no way on earth that you're not going to hit something, and hit it hard. This tank slapper, had I not caught by some miracle, was one of the latter variety. Allot of thoughts go through your head as you simultaneously try to save yourself from, and prepare for, impending disaster. Wow, this is the same place the Viper and the Daytona crashed, man it's a long way home in the cab of a flatbed, this is gonna hurt, this is gonna be expensive, this is gonna suck and a million others. Thankfully, three flailing, 100 mile an hour, corrections were enough to get the car straightened out again.

If the amount of adrenaline in your brain isn't enough to convince you of the severity of what just happened, you can usually look to the nearest flag station on your cool down lap to get a good idea. Most times, the corner worker will be looking at you, clapping, jumping up and down, and giving you the thumbs-up at a level commensurate with what they thought your chances of dying were in that particular incident. This particular corner worker was doing all four with a serious smile on her face. Outside of the obvious serious damage and injury that occurs from time to time, I'm sure that is one very entertaining job.

Returning to the paddock after the second run session I was actually happy we were done with the track events. One more skid pad, some celebrating and then home to relax. The trip back to South Bend was uneventful, we stopped in Northbrook again with a bunch of other One Lappers, had another nice dinner and rolled into the hotel around 11:00 PM. A few drinks at the bar, some intense discussion about next year and it was off to bed around 1:00 AM. continue>