part 18 lost in space
i had to get permission from T.J. to share this one with you. we've laughed about it many times thru the years. thought some of you might enjoy it. lets go back now to 1976. we had just had an incompetent machine shop put a roller motor together for us(what a nitemare!) we took it to greenville miss for its first race. it was a 68 ragtop bird. it wasn't very quick but sounded awesome. when we fired it up in the shop it would rattle the walls, shake the ground & our little trailer house beside the shop. so we made it to the track & she headed to the staging lanes for a time trial. a couple of the boys with us held it straight as she did the most awesome burnout of her entire racing career. seconds too long. but it produced a beautiful white mushroom cloud maybe 30' in the air. then she pulled to the line & blasted off-- sounded good, looked good, but not very quick. i just stood there & watched the next pair run. it was now passed the time she should be back & headed to the pits. " she must be broke" i sent 1 of the boys for the truck to pull her back. i asked 1 of the boys if he could see where she was -- he couldn't. we both began to look harder & finaly spotted her. she was still moving but was about a hundred yards from the track & headed the wrong way. " what is she doing?" it was our 1st time there & she wasn't familar with their return road. the track was built on the site of an old military base of some sort, probably closed after ww2. all the buildings were gone but the airstrip made a good dragstrip. there were lots of concrete slabs where buildings had been & a network of concrete roads in every direction. the race cars were supposed to come back down the left side of the strip but T.J. didn't know that. she drove down a concrete road she thought was the return road but it just led to another road going in a different direction. it was like a corn maze & she was lost in space! i told 1 of the boys to drive on down & show her the way back, but about that time we noticed she had figured things out & was headed back. anything like this ever happen to you?
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