OLOA10 – Day 8 – The road to Nelson’s Ledges
It’s never over until its over. Cliché, perhaps. But it’s true. Entering the last day of time trials, we sit a solid 1st in class and 10th overall. If something as simple as a spin happens, we can catch 9th, maybe 8th. But 11th, 12th and 13th can easily catch us too. Anything can happen. All we need to do is keep up with our consistent finishes and we will stay in the top 10. Assuming all goes well for our competitors, 10th is where we will stay at the end of today. Oh, and of course, we need to get to the track….
The end of yesterday was an interesting and unexpectedly eventful one. I took over after filling up with gas and headed back down the road. 30 minutes or so later, the low tire pressure light suddenly turns on… uh oh. We’ve driven through a lot of construction, the tread on the tires are getting low…. Luckily we have a spare if needed, but its one of last years tires and won’t have the grip. So I pull over and we check the tire for damage. Not able to find any clear signs, we pump the tire back up with air, waiting and watching to see if the light comes back on. 2 miles down to road it does. We just lost 10 psi in 2 miles… Something is wrong, as we are losing pressure FAST!
Luckily we were coming up to an exit, so I slowed the car and pulled off the highway so we could safely unload the trunk and change the tire. I get out of the car and I look at the tire – and see what looks like the end of the tire pumps chock…. Lucky for my co-drivers, it wasn’t – instead it was the valve stem itself. Somewhere along the last 3300 miles or so, the outer portion of the valve stem, which screws onto the part inside the wheel, had worked loose. And with that tight, the rubber seal was not compressed and doing its job.
As a precaution (as a racer, you get in the habit of checking all similar parts when something goes wrong), I check the others. All are loose; the left front was just the first to start leaking! Yikes! With the valves tightened back up and pressure regained, we once again hit the road. Disaster is adverted and we can continue on for our quest for a top 10 finish.
It’s still light out, and we are only 110 miles from out hotel. For the 3rd time this One Lap, we are on schedule (even with our little extra stop) to get in before the sun sets. We do some searches and opt to stop a bit early for a nice sit-down meal. Youngstown Crab Co. Man was it good! I’m going to call it the 2nd best meal of the week! This place even had a couple of giant parrots AND a lobster claw game! It is one of those “skill” (er, blind luck?) games where you position the claw above a stuffed animal and drop the claw – only for live lobsters! For $2 you could get a fresh cooked lobster!
It was a good thing the food was so good, since the hotel ranked far down with the low of the low…. I’m rating this one just slightly above New Jersey. But with the worst breakfast…. Oh well, its all part of the One Lap….
