[ponyakr]

I put a spare tire in the trunk and and made sure the tank was a least half full so if they weighed us it woulnd't be lite. And just as I thought, it didn't slow down a bit. At the 6th race she was well on her way to another win. She was running a Mopar - a Demon or Duster, I think. She had run him several times that year, he wasn't even close. I watched her leave the line, looked good, and no red, so I started back to the trailer. Then I heard somebody say she lost. I was thinking "Something must have broke." But she made it back to the trailer and when she got out of the car she had a sad look on her face and holding her head down she said, "I'm sorry! I forgot to release the parking brake." To keep it from rolling backwards at the end of the staging lanes she would mash the parking brake then release it when it was her turn to race. But this time she forgot. She said "It was close though, I almost won anyway." We've had many a good laff about that thru the years. Sometimes after that I would think to ask her if she had released it, but she never did that again. Pontiac finally got another batch of pistons in so I took everything to the machine shop and soon had the old Goat back on the track. It was doing ok, but then the napa pistons gave up in the Bird.