My friend, fellow drag racer and Mopar enthusiast, as well as famous webmaster,  Marvin Herbold invited me down to Phoenix to do some racing with him.  Since we had such a long winter here, the lure of 100 degree temps and seeing different tracks and race cars was big.  So, the plan was hatched:  I couldn’t take alot of time off work,  I wanted to pack in as much racing as possible,  and had to keep the costs down.   I took Friday off work, and drove down to Langley Thursday night.  I had booked a flight out of Bellingham to leave at 5:40 AM Friday, and Marv picked me up at Noon or so.  We picked up his trailer and had time to relax in his pool and soak up some of that gorgeous AZ sunshine.  I got to meet Marvin’s wonderful family consisting of twin boys Zander and Xavier, daughter Willow, and wife Shelley.   He had a points race at Speedworld raceway, which was about 45 minutes away.  Due to the crazy heat, most of the racing in AZ at this time of year is done at night. 

  We got to Speedworld and got ready for time trials.  Speedworld is an older track on the out skirts of Phoenix, and it is great!  They run regular bracket races and two separate points series: ADRA and the regular Summit-type where drivers will form a team and go to an ET Finals.  They seem to have a good following of bracket cars and Friday night Tuners.  I noted one plated Honda Civic sporting a decent sized turbo that ran 10.74 at 134 MPH.  I also saw the blue Camaro of Scott Kilbourn.   PINKS fans will remember him as the “fill-in” car at an episode filmed at this track back in 2006.  He ran against the van of Kenneth Herring. 

  Anyhow…. time trials went fine, but I noticed Marvin cutting some pretty serious red lights.  We spent a bit of time working on techniques to cure this, and I made adjustments to the car to slow things down as well.  Round 1 came and went with a win and things started to roll from there.  His lights were in the .040s and .050s and the car was dead on the dial.  There was one interesting run in the semis, where his opponent went -.0002 red.  Yes, they register R/Ts down to the ten-thousandths, and that guy just went red by two of ‘em.   Marv made it to his first final round ever and found his own red bulb by a respectable  -.012.  After he picked up his first trophy, we loaded up and headed home for bed.   It was now 12:30 and  I had been up since 2:30 AM.   

  The next day,  we headed for Southwestern International Raceway in Tucson.  This was going to be my chance to run his car, a 73 Duster with a 340 in it.   We arrived really early, about 2 PM, and, after getting un-loaded and breezing through Tech, we wandered around looking at the local hardware, and watching the Big Wheel class.  Yes, I said Big Wheels.  I don’t have the details of this class, but it appears that it is for young kids - as young as 3 or 4, and they can race anything from tricycles, to the plastic Big Wheels.  They run for 60 feet, it’s all heads up, and an absolute RIOT to watch.  They qualify, get laddered, and race off.  Of course, R/T is a factor, so we saw many holeshot wins.  Way too cool. 

  I was running in Sportsman class.  It is more similar to Pro bracket at Eagle, as you are allowed transbrakes and two-steps,  but the bottom of the class is 12.0.  Marv’s car has a 2-step, and we figured it would run 12.60s, so it seemed like this was a god fit.  Time trials for us began at about 6PM, and the first thing we noticed was that it was way slow.  A quick check of the air density showed us to be running in just over 7000 feet of DA.  The car was a clean 4 tenths slower than it was the night before.   Once I realised that the car was working fine, I didn’t really care.  My first 2 TTs netted me a couple of tight red-lights: -.003 and -.007.   A quick front tire adjustment put me in the right direction.  The third time trial was something called “Run for the Money”.  You paid $10 and put a dial on your car.  If you ran closest to the dial, you got the cash.  I dialed 12.90 and ran 12.902, so I collected $175 for this.  Nice!  I managed to go 4 rounds in eliminations, and down to the final 6 cars,  until I lost lost to last years track champ on a breakout.   I went up to the tower and collected $30 more for the 1/4 final finish.  We loaded up and watched the finals before heading out. 

  Since it was already 1:30 AM, we drove straight to the airport in Phoenix, as I had a 6:15 flight.  I was able to catch some sleep in various spots while waiting for the flight, then on the plane.  I picked up some souvenirs for the family during my 2 hour wait in the  Seattle airport, then drove home from Belligham.  I was home in Quesnel by 7:30 Sunday night.  I was worn out, but wow, was that fun!  Thanks again Herbold Family.  Marvin has videos of all of the runs that were made in the car from both Friday and Saturday, and entries on his own Blog www.herboldracing.com .  They blog entries are:  My First Trophy and Southwestern International Raceway Trip    The inside videos are fun to watch.

  Yes, this would be our THIRD race in May, and the second in a row that we were going to be at the track for 3 days.  This is one of the bigger races at Eagle Motorplex , and one of the only where we will geta chance to see a good selection of NHRA Stock and Super Stock cars.  

  Rose and I both took Friday off so we could be at the track that night.   Rose got most everything ready and went off to boot camp, and then we picked her up in the MoHo on the way out of town.   Chloe was bringing her friend Jessica along this time. 

  We parked that night and just went to bed because it was well after midnight when we arrived.  There was a Test and Tune scheduled for Friday as well as Gamblers races for both Electronics and Non-Electronics.   I hadn’t done anything to the Dart over the past couple of weeks, and it came out of the trailer working great.  There was a crazy tail wind of almost 15 MPH, so it was running 12.80s in drive at almost 108. 

  Chloe made a couple of runs in the Jr and it was fooling with me again:  Both runs were 10.59s at just over 60 MPH.  Since I had just gone through the clutch, I liked to believe that it was the changes I had made that gave it this consistency, but I know better than to believe in this car after only 2 runs. 

  I went into the No-E  Gamblers race that night and did well.  I was able to win it and collect $200 for the effort.   I had some really fun races!  In the semi finals, I raced the way cool SS/AH stick car of Peter Willie, from Victoria. (there is a shot of his car in our Vegas Photo Gallery)  I was dialed 12.83 and he was dialed 9.03.  After going .011 to my .023, he came charging after me with over 43 MPH difference.  I could see that he wasn’t quite going to beat me to the stripe and I pounded the brakes, taking a .003 stripe for the win, running 12.832.   I raced the J/SA Camaro of Chuck Porter in the final and the difference was all at the tree for my win. 

  Unfortunately, that was the big story for the weekend.  Saturday, I went -.003 red in the first rounds of both Sportsman and Gamblers, and lost Sunday first round of Sportsman from being late at the tree and missing the dial by a tenth.  Yes, another 1 tenth mistake.  I’m going to make some changes to how I run the car for Sportsman as I think that when it gets hot, it is shifting itself a bit earlier, killing the ET. 

  Chloe went 2 rounds Saturday and 1 round Sunday.   Turns out that the car was not as consistant as I had dreamed it was going to be.  It’s too bad, as she really is doing her job at the tree, but the car isn’t repeating.   The good news was that the new Shockwave clutch arrived Sunday morning.  I will be thrashing to make sure it is installed for the next race, which will be on June 20/21.