Tuesday and Wednesday pre race

The last two days have been such a blur of activity.

Darrin had to fix the bearings and seals on the trailer.  Before leaving on the trip to California Darrin replaced the axles on the trailer, but his supervisor Mark would not let him replace the seals.  Didn't take long for them to start leaking.

So many of the teams are arriving.  We met Toshi from the Japan Team.  Scott made fun of Toshi's Mohawk.  Toshi is in his 70s and he told Scott that when Toshi gets excited his hair stand on end.  We would come to know Toshi well.

As vehicles were unloaded from the Reliable trucks it would be the first time to get to see the Leslie Special and the Hanibal 8 for me.  It was cool to get that close to them and to get to know the owners of them as well

The host hotel had a reception and that was fun. We hung out with several of the drivers at the hotel.  Joe the Plummer and Corky Coker were at the reception.  Joe is part of the Wondering Troubadours of Finland.  The WTF guys.

Tuesday evening Mallory and I went to get Ashley at the airport.  When we got to the airport I tried to park in the parking garage but the excursion was to tall.  I had to drive over the sidewalk to get out of the garage and drive completely out of the airport and back in to where the departing parking was in order to park.  When I got to where I needed to be i ask the Valet guy for help and he asked me if I was driving the titanic.


On the way back we saw someone run a red light and the camera flash went off.

Mallory said you know you ran a red light.  Yep I sure did.

Wednesday we met Jeff Mahl and took some photos.  Jeff was excited about all the X-Cup teams.  He invited us to the x-cup rookie meeting and said we didn't need to stay but wanted us to meet the other teams.

Wednesday we went to Muir Woods National Monument. The drive up to the top of the mountains was amazing.  Darrin and I rode in the 64 and half and Mallory and Ashley drove in the Excursion.  The roads were very winding and a lot of switch backs.  I thought to myself, These roads have to be freaking Mallory out in that great big truck.

 We walked up the trail about a mile.  We had a limited amount of time to tour today.  The redwoods were amazing and very tall.  The quietness of the forest in the middle of noisy California was striking to me.

After seeing the redwoods we headed back to the hotel and to get something quick to eat.

We all got ready to go and waited in the hotel lobby for the bus to come to take us downtown for the movie.

Tonight we had the special treat of watching the movie "The Great Race" starring Toni Curtis, Jack Lemon and Natalie Wood.  The move had be filmed in 1965 and this was the 50th Anniversary.  It was awesome to get to watch the movie in the historic San Rafael Theater.

Before the show the Leslie Special and the Hanibal 8 were parked out front.  There were costumed characters playing the parts of Leslie and the professor..

The movie was so funny but I was so tired that I could not keep my eyes open.  So when intermission came we never went back into the theater.