This little hike punches above its weight. The first part of the trail is alongside I-70. Wheeler Lakes are small forest lakes nowhere near any dramatic peaks. But once you get away from the road noise, it’s a pleasant little hike.
Coming from Denver, I parked at the “Scenic Area” just short of the junction with CO 91. It’s more like a chain station for the big rigs that has parking for a trail. If you’re coming from the west or south, you can park at Copper Mountain and walk over the overpass.
The traffic noise is somewhere between tolerable and annoying. It doesn’t let up, but it varies. It’s engine noise and tire noise and wind noise. When it’s just cars, you can hear the tires slapping rhythmically on the expansion strips. Motorcycles add a bit of trombone. Every now and then you hear the belch of a Jake brake. The trail here is flat and nearly level, so you can set a quick pace.
As you gain elevation, the highway noise starts to soften. When the trail crosses a little stream, the road noise is finally covered by the babbling brook. The trail moves primarily through thin forest and passes by several grassy marshes and grassy hillsides, granting more open views. The trail climbs incessantly, but never steeply. There’s a large aspen grove that would be quite nice in the fall.
Upper Wheeler Lake
Lower Wheeler Lake
Today’s beer
Lower Wheeler Lake
Clouds of tree pollen
I hiked at a leisurely pace and took a short break for a protein bar and still made it to the farthest lake in two hours.
Counterintuitively, the first lake you reach is the upper lake. The trail crosses a broad saddle and descends a few feet before reaching the upper lake. Continuing on another couple of hundred yards and dropping a few feet you reach the lower lake.
The lakes are quite pleasant. They’re quite open; not entirely surrounded by forest. This is very much in line with the character of the hike. The trail passed across or along several grassy slopes and marshy meadows, giving numerous open views.
I’m always going on about how much better food tastes when I hike to an alpine lake. Today’s beer was a strawberry-rhubarb sour ale. This is the fourth one I’ve had. Drinking the first three, I never really tasted the rhubarb. As a kid, I didn’t like strawberry rhubarb pie, even though I loved strawberries. I haven’t tried it since I was about 10. My palate has changed considerably since then, thankfully. Anyway, today I could taste the rhubarb in the beer. It’s from the same six-pack, so it’s not like it’s a different batch. But I drank this one at an alpine lake, where my sense of taste seems so much enhanced.
The Drive
I’m in the habit of getting to the trailhead perhaps a bit earlier than I would like to. I’m always worried about getting a parking spot. On this hike, though, I figured parking wouldn’t be a problem. I woke up early nonetheless. Why not drive over Loveland Pass instead of going through the Eisenhower Tunnel? It doesn’t add much time, and it’s much more scenic. So I did.
I mounted two cameras, one on the nose and one on the tail. I very nearly got a clean run, encountering only two cars going in my direction. I caught the second one and was looking for a place to pass when I saw a pretty big rock in the middle of our lane. I moved way to the left, but the Charger ran right over it. Shards from the rock showered my car. He didn’t appear to be leaking any oil or coolant, but he pulled over not long after.
Just after I passed him, I rounded a hairpin and came face to face with a herd of bighorn sheep. On the trail, carrying my DSLR, I’m constantly getting asked if I’ve seen any wildlife. Here on the road is the only wildlife I saw for the day.
It is time for the 24 Hours of Lemons race at HPR. Lemons is an endurance car racing series on dedicated road courses for $500 cars. There are two Lemons races at HPR this year, this one is an actual 24-hour race (as opposed to, say, racing 8 hours on Saturday and 8 more on Sunday).
We did this last year but had problems with the car and I never got to drive. Driving in the dark will be a new challenge for me
The team was out at the track on Friday working on the car. I figured the best way to help would be to stay well out of their way, so I didn’t show up at the track until early Saturday. Gates opened at 7:30 and I arrived not long after.
They had some excitement yesterday, losing a wheel on the track. The brake disc kept that corner of the car off the ground, sort of. The disk wasn’t terribly damaged, but the oil pan may have been in worse shape. I’m told they put part of a battery bracket on the oil pan, along with a bunch of JB Weld.
After a few minutes, Mike came out of his motor home and suggested we take the car for a spin. He hopped into the passenger seat and I got behind the wheel. “Are we buckling up for a trip around the paddock?” “No, we’re going to take it out on the highway.”
So we did. Keep in mind that we’re in a car that’s not quite street-legal, and isn’t registered, licensed, or insured. It has a roll cage and we’re not wearing helmets, which means, if we do get into an accident, our heads are likely to impact the only slightly padded steel tubes of the roll cage. But we’ll only go a couple of miles to test our repairs, so I figured there’s such a small risk of getting arrested or killed that I’m willing to proceed.
The car ran, drove straight, and braked in a straight line, unless you went really hard on the brakes, in which case the tail got a bit happy and wanted to swing around to the front. I don’t expect our cheap race car to handle like the Lotus. I reckoned I’d be okay in the car, so I gave it a clean bill of health.
When we got back to the entry gate at the track, Glen, the track manager was waiting for us. “I need to see your license, registration, and proof of insurance!” He was pretty pissed. I said, “I’ll have to go fetch them,” knowing full well that there was nothing to fetch. Glen said, “Okay, I need to see them in thirty minutes. If you don’t have them, you’re going home.” That’s a great way to start the day!
After a few minutes of wild speculation (someone suggested, “We could photoshop the documents!” Really?) we tracked Glen down, ready to take our medicine. Glen sat us down and lectured us. “There’s a big yellow sign on the gate that says race cars aren’t to go out on US 36. A while back, some SCCA tube frame car got on the highway and was stopped right outside the track. The county commissioners came out to talk to us and said if race cars keep going on the highway, they’ll close the track down.” We told him we understood and we’d start packing up our stuff and leave. Then he said, “Why don’t you wait a while. I hate to kick somebody else’s customer out. Let me talk to the Lemons people and see what they say.”
A bit later we met Glen again. He gave us the choice of packing up and leaving or making a $250 donation to Lemons of Love, a charity supporting cancer sufferers. “I think I already know the answer.” We said we’d make the donation. Glen had us hold out our hands, whereupon he slapped our wrists. To be precise, he slapped the back of our hands, but it’s close enough to a literal slap on the wrist.
I think we got off very lightly. This is one of those cases where our actions could have impacts greater than are obvious. I’m perfectly willing to take the (very small) risk of getting a ticket, but I hadn’t considered the possible result of my actions had we been stopped by the police. I’d hate to be responsible for the track getting closed down.
Oh, and the “big yellow sign”? It exists, and it’s yellow. But I wouldn’t call it big. I’ve been through that gate dozens of times and couldn’t tell you how long the sign has been there. It’s not much bigger than a sheet of notebook paper.
Anyway, we dodged the bullet and were going racing.
The object of the race is to run more laps in 24 hours than anybody else. That means you have to keep the car running laps for as many of those 24 hours as possible. It is not the object to go as fast as you can. Just drive the car around, stay out of trouble, and don’t get black-flagged.
Each black flag you get has a bigger penalty than the one before it. If you get 5 black flags, you’re disqualified. But they reset the counter every eight hours, so it’s pretty lenient. I’ve been black-flagged twice in three races, and I think I had the most black flags. I wasn’t too worried about getting disqualified.
I was scheduled to drive from 4 pm to 6 pm, then again for two hours starting at 2 am.
But we had problems with the car. The brake situation must have been worse than I thought. The other drivers kept spinning under heavy braking. We quickly got two penalties. For our third penalty, the judges showed us pictures of the Warner duck and the Disney duck and had us pick one. We had to replicate the picture on the side of the car using duct tape. The “Don’t Be a Duck” penalty. Mike knocked this out of the park, but it did keep us parked for quite a while.
After the penalty, we switched drivers and rejoined the race. I was not even back to the motor homes when I saw the car heading to the judge’s stand. We couldn’t even make it a lap without getting penalty number four. They parked us for an hour.
Facing the real threat of disqualification, we put our least experienced driver in the car. He ran an error-free stint to get us to the reset at 8 hours. He wasn’t trying to set any records and he didn’t spin the car. Kudos to Dan.
Mike’s duct tape duck
Yours truly behind the wheel
Yeah, that hole doesn’t belong there
I finally got into the car at about 10 pm. I ran my out lap and was on my first running lap when the car started having trouble. I radioed that I was losing power. I had had no high cam, but I didn’t have any revs, either. I didn’t make it back to the pits and had to be towed in.
The alternator had died. One of the guys thought the warning light on the dash was on when I left the pits but wasn’t sure. Mike had to go home to get a spare, so we were out of action for about three hours. I rested for about an hour, but only slept for about ten minutes.
There was some spitballing on what to do about the brakes. Three or four possible remedies were discussed. I told them not to do anything, I’d just drive it.
It took me a few laps to adjust to running in the dark, but once I got used to it, I thought it was fun. I couldn’t resist trying to go fast, but I wasn’t trying to break any lap records, so I didn’t feel the need to do any heavy braking, and if I did, to be sure to do it in a straight line. But, really, I didn’t have any difficulties keeping the car under control. My only wobble was under acceleration – torque steer – while I was making a pass. We weren’t the fastest car on the track, but I had no trouble consistently turning 2:20s and 2:21s. For an hour and twenty minutes.
I’m not really sure I have the sequence correct. This is for sure: I went four off exiting turn 2, and the car started acting like it did when the alternator was bad. I can’t say for sure whether the engine was failing before I went off, but I think it was. I don’t think it contributed to the off, but I don’t know why I went off. I radioed in, “I have no power again,” I tried to get it back to the pits but in turn 11 it grenaded.
Here’s where my lack of preparation nearly causes problems. I’m that guy that just wants to drive the car. I love driving a car fast. I’m fully engaged, very much in the here and now. My heart races. Put me in the car and I’ll go, go, go!
Had this happened in the daylight, I’d have had no problem. But it’s dark in the car. And I don’t know where the fire extinguisher pull was.
The car wasn’t on fire. That is to say, I saw a lot of smoke but no flames, so I remained harnessed in the car. The smoke cleared and after a while, the tow truck showed up.
Game over.
I don’t think we know yet what the cause was. Catastrophic oil loss, but why? The way the oil was sprayed in the engine compartment didn’t fit with an oil pan failure, so we don’t think losing a wheel had anything to do with it. It may have been something to do with a bargain sandwich plate we were using. That’s racing.
We had an oil temperature gauge, but it failed in the early hours. Something to do with a plastic part. In any event, without an oil pressure gauge, I have no way of knowing when it failed. I wonder if I’d have seen smoke if it had happened in daylight. Did I spread oil over half the track?
I’ve ticked a lot of boxes on my racing resume. I’ve raced in the rain and the dark. I drove on a team that won one of the biggest prizes. I raced at an historic race track. I’ve done autocross in a parking lot, on an airfield, and on a frozen lake. And now I’ve blown an engine.
I’ve hiked to Forest Lakes this time of year a couple of times before. I always have the ambition to make it to the upper lake, but there’s a lot of snow and I call it quits at the lower lake. This time, I told myself, I’d make it to the upper lake.
I got to the parking lot at 8:10. Less than a dozen cars were there, and one of them was headed out, his morning run done. I chatted briefly with a couple of backpackers that I passed just before we got to the Wilderness boundary. They were headed to Rogers Pass Lake and Hart Lake. “Maybe even the Divide” he said. I didn’t tell them they’d be unlikely to find anywhere without snow within a mile of any lake. I didn’t want to spoil their adventure.
The first challenge of the day was the bridge over Arapaho Creek. I’ve only been here a handful of times, but the water was much higher than I’d ever seen it. Water was flowing over six or eight feet of trail on each side of the bridge. It’s not quite ankle-deep, but the rocks are slippery and maybe not securely placed. The middle of the bridge is drenched, so you know you’ll get a quick, cold shower. I started to wonder how much higher the water might be after five hours of warm sunshine.
Not long after crossing the bridge, we get to the snow. It’s piled up in widely spaced drifts. Soon the drifts aren’t widely spaced and there is much less bare ground. The drifts are mushy around the edges but firm on top and I don’t need to use the microspikes.
I lost the trail pretty quickly, more or less as I expected. I saw an occasional old bootprint but nothing like any sign of foot traffic. I’m left to my own devices.
I eventually came to a half-broken bridge over a stream. I crossed it but immediately had second thoughts. I thought that by crossing the stream, I’d be heading to Arapaho Lakes, and I didn’t want to go that way. So after a short while, I recrossed the stream and climbed alongside it, expecting it to take me to the lower lake.
I made it to a lake, alright, but it wasn’t the lower lake. The lower lake has a mountain view and some large sun-lit rocks that make a nice place to picnic. This lake has no view to speak of and no picnic rocks. I was at the larger of the two unnamed ponds a quarter mile or so east of lower Forest Lake.
I can see why it’s unnamed. It is an unremarkable snow-fed forest lake. I stayed for about an hour. I did manage to find a picnic spot. It was quite pleasant. The weather was fine, sunny, calm. I enjoyed the route-finding, even with the navigational error. I was able to walk mostly on firm snow. I had my micro-spikes with me but didn’t use them. Traction wasn’t a problem, and I did a pretty good job of avoiding post-holing.
Snow drifts on the marsh
Little Serendipity Pond
Picnic (not much of a) view
Today’s beer
I was operating under the assumption that I’d get to the lower lake. Once there, I was sure I could find the tracks of all the folks who come up here. Being in the wrong place, I turn to Plan B: retrace my footsteps. Above the Arapaho Creek bridge, I hiked mostly on snow. Mostly. So it should be pretty easy, right?
Around the pond, I crossed a couple of wide marshes. Both times, scanning the far side of the marsh, I couldn’t see any of my tracks. I took what looked to be the most obvious route and got it right both times.
The sun was doing a job on my footprints, and in the shade, it wasn’t much easier. But I was able to follow my tracks for a good while. It was a more challenging task than I thought it would be. Coming across the occasional deer and elk tracks added some misdirection. Aside from crossing the stream on a different snow bridge, I was able to retrace my route with very little variation. It was a fun exercise. (It did not matter whether I could retrace my steps or not. All I needed to do to get back to the bridge was to follow the water.)
Since the couple I met just outside the boundary, I didn’t see another hiker all day until I made it back to the Arapaho Creek bridge where I passed a guy who was on his way up. Usually, I have to hike a lot farther to get that much solitude.
The pond has no name, but that won’t stop me from calling it Little Serendipity Pond. Not that the pond is little, because it’s not. It’s the level of serendipity that is little. I was happy to visit a lake I hadn’t been to before. I don’t know that I’ll ever go back, but it was an easy hike, it provides solitude, and there are far worse places to spend a pleasant day.
I have a brick walkway from the front door to the sidewalk on the street. For the last few years, ants have been undermining the bricks. It has gotten too bad even for me to put up with. Yesterday I finally got off my ass and started working on it.
I know my technique is all wrong, and that I’m not doing a great job, but it’s much better today than it has been in quite a while, so I’m happy.
To do it properly, I’d pull all the brick up at once, grade the whole thing, compact it nicely, and then lay all the brick back down, using a string to keep properly aligned. Instead, I did it a few courses at a time, compacting only with footprints. At the top, where the ants were, I did the last dozen courses together, spraying for ants before I laid the brick. I took out two containers of roots and put in 100 of the 150 pounds of sand I bought. It’s a little uneven and because it’s not properly compacted, I expect it to settle randomly. I think I improved the grade at the bottom, where a puddle always formed. We’ll soon see.
To say I cleaned the bricks would be an overstatement. I knocked off anything caked onto them, and the gaps between the bricks are as small as I could make them. And it sure looks like they’re closer together. But when I got to the steps onto the deck, a few of the bricks were an eighth of an inch too close to the step to get the brick into. I put a couple of them on their sides, thinking perhaps it wouldn’t be that noticeable. Michael spotted it the first time he walked up the walk.
One thing about this little job surprised me.
I like to tell myself that, since I started writing this blog, I’ve been paying more attention to what I do and what I see. That I’m not running on autopilot. That I take notice of my surroundings.
I figure I’ve walked up and down this walkway on the order of three thousand times. And it wasn’t until I took it apart that I saw there was an error in the pattern. I considered putting it back in or inserting some other minor error, but I chickened out and went conformist.
It took me about seven hours over two days. I’m pretty sore right now. Working on your knees, getting up and down a lot, exercises some muscles that don’t normally get much exercise.
Last weekend was Lotus Colorado’s spring drive. Genae hasn’t been a fan of riding in the Elise since I “upgraded” to solid motor mounts a few years ago. Even though I downgraded half the mounts to stock, she hasn’t been in the car yet, so we drove the land barge Lexus. This allowed us to carry whatever creature comforts we desired, and the Lexus has A/C while the Lotus doesn’t, so there are some advantages. But it’s give-and-take. Having excess cargo and passenger capacity, we were told we’d be the “sweep” car. A few of the cars are quite old; one is older than I am. So if somebody has mechanical issues, we can make sure they’re not abandoned by the side of the road, left to their own devices.
I’m not likely to do this again. The entry list for the weekend had 17 cars on it. I didn’t bother to count how many actually appeared, but 17 was about right. Every time we hit the road, I’d wait until everybody else got going and join the end of the line. As it’s almost impossible to get 17 cars through the same green light, or get on a highway with all 17 cars together, it typically meant that the head of the line was a mile or two down the road before we even got rolling.
On most of our other club drives, whoever was leading the pack would pull over for the occasional scenic spot for a group photo, or even just pull over to get the group back together. That wasn’t how it went on this drive. The leading cars were all in a race to the destination. Even with us exceeding the speed limit by 20 or 25 mph we still lost ground. The worst case was the last day of the drive when we arrived at the restaurant for lunch about 20 minutes after everybody else. We very much felt like we weren’t part of the group. So it goes.
Another difference between this trip and most of the others is that this one was pretty much just driving and eating at restaurants. In the past, we’d stop at various points of interest. We’ve been to the Sand Dunes, the Black Canyon, the Colorado Monument, the Royal Gorge Bridge, and so on. There may have been other trips where we didn’t visit any attractions, but none come immediately to mind.
I’ve never put together one of these drives. I know that it’s not easy, and the organizers put quite a bit of effort into it. I appreciate it. I really do. But I will always retain the right to go our own way for a meal. Apparently, we gave great offense to some when we let them know we’d be skipping the second BBQ meal of the day for an alternative. I like BBQ, but having had it for lunch, I didn’t really want it for dinner, too. We were told that the restaurant had non-BBQ options, but we didn’t really want $40 steaks. Being tail-end Charlie all weekend, then getting grief over not wanting BBQ twice a day detracted a bit from our joy.
It was a beautiful drive. We went over a long list of mountain passes: Cottonwood, Slumgullion, Wolf Creek, Coal Bank/Molas/Red Mountain, McClure, and Independence with the group and Fremont Pass after we peeled off and headed home. The snow on Cottonwood and Independence (which just opened the day before) was eight or ten feet deep.
Sorry I don’t have many photos to include, but these things happen when you can’t stop and smell the roses. (We would have stopped at the top of Independence Pass, but what little of the parking lot got plowed was jam-packed when we got there and there was nowhere to park.)
I won’t bore anybody with the details of the insurance claim for the damage incurred when my car got backed into in the motel parking lot in March. In summary, they said they’d pay for me to have the front clam replaced, then they sent me a check for less than they said and it took some back-and-forth to get that explained. I’m still waiting for them to deal with the other party’s insurance, so I should be getting another $600 from them to cover my deductible.
Of course, that money started burning a hole in my pocket right away. Before I even had the check, I was exploring the possibilities.
A new clam would use up all the money, plus some (which, theoretically I’d get reimbursed). But I’d have a nice, shiny clam installed and painted by a professional. I might be without the car for six or eight weeks (or more?) while the work was done.
But I have a list of other work I’d like to do to the car. I replaced the transmission not long ago. The third gear synchro was going out and it was cheaper to replace than to have repaired. Supposedly. I don’t know if the transmission I bought (online, from an individual rather than a company) was bad when I bought it or went bad very quickly. Same issue: third-gear synchro. For a while, it was okay when everything was warmed up, but when still cold, third would grind. So for the last year or more, I often skipped third gear and went straight from second to fourth.
On the second day at Barber, though, third gear was crunchy all day, even when well warmed up. I need to either repair or replace the transmission. Again. Sigh.
If I’m going to go to the trouble to replace the transmission, I should also replace the clutch. We replaced the clutch when we did the last transmission, so it only has about 25,000 miles on it.
When we installed the previous transmission, we had to make some adjustments to the shifter cables. It seemed to me that we had reached the limit of the adjustments we could make, but I could be in error. I found there are cables I can get that are upgrades – they have heim joints on each end. While we’re in there doing the transmission and clutch, we may as well replace the cables, too.
Finally, I’ve decided that my solid motor mounts are the cause of my electrical issues on last spring’s trip to Atlanta. With the solid mounts, the entire car vibrates and buzzes and I’m blaming this vibration for the electrical short.
I decided to return to stock motor mounts for the left and right sides and leave the solid mounts in for the front and rear.
I discussed all this with Mike and the guys on my LeMons racing team. Mike seems to get his jollies by working on cars with Toyota engines and transmissions. It turns out that he also has some experience with fiberglass repairs.
Not long ago, Mike bought himself an Elise. It needs some work on the front clam. So Mike and I came to an agreement: If I bought a replacement transmission, clutch, cables, and motor mounts, he’d do the work in exchange for keeping my old, bad transmission. Also, if I buy all the materials and supplies needed to repair both clams, he would do the bodywork. He would also show me how to do fiberglass repairs if I wanted to learn. When it was all said and done, I should have a few dollars left over from the insurance settlement. What’s not to like?
Two weeks ago, I took the car over to Mike’s place. We He worked on it all day Saturday (from about 10am to after midnight) and for a few hours on Sunday. Driving it home, I noticed two problems. First, I had to use the reverse lockout to get the car into first or second gears and second, the parking brake indicator light is always on now.
The first problem was relatively easy to fix. This involves adjusting the cables. I started in the back, on the transmission, but that wasn’t working. Adjustments can also be made to the shifter mechanism. This was the solution.
Kevin’s Elise, my Elise, the Lemons car, Mike’s Elise
Mike, slaving away
The missing piece
The brake light is another story. Somewhere along the line, we lost a part. When you release the parking brake, the handle comes down on a little part that is then pushed forward to press a button. We’ve looked everywhere, but can’t find it. If the part was a little bigger, I’d suggest I’ll find it as soon as I buy a replacement.
It’s been two weeks since the repairs were complete, but today was the first time I’ve had the car on the highway. The transmission is a straight swap for the original equipment: Toyota C64 transmission with LSD. Except that this one has the Toyota Celica sixth gear, which is a little taller. In sixth gear, the engine is revving 11% less. It will have no effect on the track, as I’ve never used sixth on track. Heck, some tracks I don’t even get into fifth. I’m expecting that on my next road trip, I may be able to top 40 miles to the gallon of gas.
The motor mounts also make a big difference. I still have the stiffness I want under acceleration, but the car is a lot more civilized. You can hold a conversation without yelling and your fillings don’t want to vibrate right out of your teeth. I’m pretty happy about that.
We don’t have a definite schedule for the bodywork yet. My only request is that we get it completed before LOG, which is late September. Mike’s car currently has an orange front clam on it. That’s not the bad one. When we do the bodywork, we’ll put his orange clam on my car so I can still drive it while. I’m sure it’ll look fairly hideous, but all-in-all, I’m happier driving a hideous-looking Elise than not driving an Elise at all.
I took advantage of Jayne and Dan’s gracious hospitality and spent three nights in Atlanta. I enjoyed a couple of nice dinners in the company of charming people, had a couple of much-needed long walks, and enjoyed not driving. I did laundry.
Over five days, I spent 28 hours driving on the highways and another four on the track. And the trip home will be another 27 hours. That’s a stupid amount of seat time.
Although I had no concrete plans for diversions on the trip home, I did have a couple of ideas. On last year’s abortive trip, a trip to Shiloh got scrubbed. But not being able to lock the car makes planning easier. I can’t count on finding another friendly groundskeeper, so diversions were off the menu.
I’m okay with that. My route would avoid interstates until I was a hundred miles from home, split nicely into three nine-hour days, and on two of the three days I gain an hour.
Thursday
I went from Georgia to Alabama, then Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and, finally, Missouri. Outside of the towns, I could drive at a pace of my choosing, needing to pass only a handful of cars.
The rural South, by which I mean the backroads of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee, is pretty dense with Confederate flags and Trump flags. Today I drove through a lot of country that has been celebrating insurrectionists for generations and is supporting an insurrectionist today.
At the hotel, I thought I was able to lock the car. I had it in a well-lighted spot in the front, but since it locked, I’d rather park in the back, where I could see it from my room. There’s a nice spot, right next to the light pole, in a single spot (as opposed to a duplex spot). An hour after parking it, I drove to get dinner. When I unlocked the car, it started beeping and it beeped until I hit the button again. At the restaurant, I tried to lock it, but it failed again. Okay, it’s fickle.
After dinner, I noticed that I had left my glasses case in the car. So when I stepped outside for a deep breath of relaxation, I grabbed the case and it locked again. Two out of three now!
My room is on the fourth floor. I’m parked in my single spot and there’s a big pickup that’s in the hotel side of his duplex spot, taking both sides. Another pickup pulls into the spot next to the other light pole, but his tailgate is way over the line of his other spot.
About thirty seconds after the couple in the recently arrived truck enter the building, my alarm goes off. Nobody was anywhere near the car. I was just looking at it. I didn’t know how long the alarm would sound, but I hustled out to the parking lot. When I unlocked it, it beeped until I hit the button again. So I’m back to Plan A, leaving it unlocked.
I’m in a La Quinta this time, instead of the usual dives. But even here I can’t win: the light over the sink flashes about once a second. And it flashes once more after you turn it off. Very annoying. The ice machine works.
Today, about the last thirty miles of road were part of my route on the way to Atlanta last year, but in the other direction. This is the short stretch through Illinois between bridges across the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Cool bridges.
Friday
The most enjoyable part of the drive was the first few hours, highlighted by my miles on MO 34. It’s a very nice Lotus Road. Twisty, up and down, left and right, mile after mile. If you’re passing through southeast Missouri, it’s worth considering. I enjoyed a different part of southern Missouri last trip. Looks like Lotus Roads are in abundance here.
I don’t recall seeing either a Confederate flag or a Trump flag today. Lots of signs for lots of gun stores, and nearly as many gun stores as churches.
I’m averaging over 35 mpg.
I was expecting southern Kansas to be much like northern Kansas. Not true. I prefer northern Kansas to southern Kansas. There is more traffic down here. Not so much traffic I couldn’t pick my pace, but I had to make quite a few passes.
In the parking lot at tonight’s motel, I met a bunch of college kids who were on their way to a rocket competition. Their rocket is about seven feet tall. They ran a separation test in the field next to the motel parking lot. It was successful. They didn’t launch it, just tested that the stages separated properly. I asked them if it was their moonshot. They laughed. One guy said it would reach about 15,000 feet. Another corrected him: it’ll go 5,000.
Dinner at Luigi’s. I had the cheese ravioli, a Peroni, and a chocolate cheesecake. It’s downtown. I was going to park in the adjacent lot, but it was metered. It helpfully told me I only needed to pay during the hours listed, but no hours were listed. It’s across the street from the police station, and there are police vehicles parked here. Not having any coins, and noticing that the spot right in front of the restaurant entrance was empty, I parked there. I got to watch people look at the car. I’m sad that people see her damaged like this.
Saturday
I picked up a biscuit sandwich at the fast food joint next to the gas station. In the parking lot was a black pickup truck with a tinted back window. Written on the window in pink and pale blue in a woman’s handwriting, “Why do you support the rapist fraudster insurrectionist?” It might have been “we” instead of “you”. I was surprised to see it. On this trip, I’ve seen a lot of pro-Trump sentiment, nothing pro-Biden, and only this anti-Trump.
Kansas Route 96 isn’t quite arrow-straight and not quite billiard-table flat, but it’s not far off. It’s the antithesis of a Lotus Road. Kansas 96 turns into Colorado 96 at the border, then I pick up US 287 at Eads. 287 has a lot of truck traffic. Thankfully, there are a few passing lanes. I did pass a string of 4 rigs without a passing lane, but they were nose-to-tail.
Summary
I drove in eight states, covering 3,201 highway miles and 293 miles on track for a total of 3,494 miles. I now have 105,848 miles on the car. It had less than 17,000 when I bought it, so I’ve put about 89,000 miles on it. Roughly 20,000 of those miles are on these track-day road trips.
I enjoyed the trip despite the car getting backed into. I keep telling myself it could have happened at Safeway, but it didn’t.
Barber is a wonderful track on fantastic grounds with an impressive museum. I thoroughly enjoyed driving the back roads of America.
Two days of hanging around the race track wasn’t enough for me. The Chin event was over, but I still needed to go to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum.
The museum is best known for its motorcycles. They have over 1600 bikes in their collection, with over 900 on display. But that’s not why I wanted to wander through the place. You see, it also happens to have the world’s largest collection of Lotus race cars. Throw in die-cast cars, wooden toy cars and trucks, outboard boat motors, and a lawn mower and you have a pretty interesting way to spend a few hours.
Whereas the Presidential museums I visited on this trip both opened at 9:00 am, Barber doesn’t let you in until 10. Or so says the sign on the door and their website. I didn’t have anything better to do, so I got there a little early. I was hoping they’d let me drive around part of the perimeter road so I could look for more treasures. There wasn’t anybody at the gate to ask, and they had the road coned off. So I parked at the museum.
To the right of the main entrance, they have a very striking trio of sculptures that make up one piece. Is there a sculpture-oriented word equivalent to triptych? It’s called “The Chase”, and the plaque says it indicates “the super-human power and sense of achievement that one experiences on the track.” They have a smaller version of at least one of the figures on display inside.
After taking a few photos, I started walking back to my car. A guy came out the museum doors and called to me, “Come on in! We’re open!” It was 9:38. This was good news. After the museum, I’m driving to Atlanta. I had been going back and forth about whether I’d have enough time to take the back roads or I’d have to violate Rule #1. Extra time in hand is good.
When I paid for admission, the cashier told me that I was in luck – Indycar was here at the track doing some testing.
They tell everybody to start touring the museum from the top down. Take the elevator up to the fifth floor, then walk down the spiral ramp to each lower floor.
The number of motorcycles there is ridiculous. I’m not particularly interested in motorcycles, so I was a bit overwhelmed. Bikes from World War II, Italian Vespas, a bike with a wooden sidecar. I wandered randomly, perhaps working down to the cars a bit quicker than I should have.
The Chase
Lotsa Lotus
Model Lotus
Vincent Lawnmower. “Vincent” as in “Vincent Black Lightning”
Hanging Lady
Graham Rahal
Marcus Armstrong
Dragonflies
Fittipaldi fire
I’ve seen large numbers of Lotus before. At the two LOGs I attended, we had more than a hundred, almost all of them road cars. At the F1 race I attended, they had a bunch of classic Lotus F1 cars that ran in a vintage race. But the collection at Barber is impressive for its breadth. I don’t think any of it was post-Chapman, and a few of the very earliest models were reproductions, but they damn near had one of everything that raced. They even had the bicycle.
After checking out the Lotus collection, I wandered out toward the track. From the museum, you can go across the first bridge (the second when you’re on the track), down to a path through the woods in the infield, and then up to the second bridge (the bridge with the hanging lady). The bridges have clear sections in the walkway – you can look straight down onto the track.
Indycars do a lap here as fast as 1:06. That means, if I were to be on the track for a half-hour session with an Indycar, he’d pass me nine or ten times.
I chatted with a couple of guys who come to the Indycar race every year. They said, “You can’t see it from here, but over there,” they pointed vaguely to the woods, “some big ants are carrying off a motorcycle.” Then we got to see Pietro Fittipaldi’s car catch on fire. He was frantically waving his arms for somebody to come to extinguish the fire, but it took a couple of minutes for the trucks to start rolling. He’s the grandson of Lotus F1 champ Emerson Fittipaldi.
After stopping by the gift shop to buy the obligatory t-shirt, I hit the road. I had plenty of time to take the back roads for a pleasant drive through the Alabama and Georgia countryside. I didn’t have much traffic until the last forty minutes or so, as I got near Atlanta.
If you’re a motorcycle lover or a fan of Lotus, the museum is worth the visit.
I figured that it would be my luck that it would rain the entire weekend. After all, the track day gods have been, for more than a year, testing my resolve to run laps at Barber. Last year’s broken windshield and electrical problems and this year’s trailer hitch into my front clam and now my inability to lock the car. It would be trivial for the track day gods to park a rain cloud over the track.
Saturday was overcast most of the day. I saw my shadow for about 15 minutes. Overcast, but not threatening rain. There was much discussion in the paddock about the forecast for Sunday. I’d rather it not rain, but I won’t have any say in the matter so I don’t obsess about it. I had two people show me Sunday forecasts that were quite different. Some said rain at 3:00 pm, others said rain at 7:00 am. It did rain on Sunday, but it was over before 6:00 am.
Driving on the wet pre-dawn roads to the track, I couldn’t know that the weather would be good. I had been joking about the track day gods testing my resolve, exacting a heavy toll. The gods didn’t bring another deluge down upon my head, but they weren’t done with me yet. A quarter of a mile from the entrance to the facility, my check engine light came on.
I texted a screenshot of the code to my trusted advisors, cleared the code, and went on with my business. It’s an O2 sensor. The code hasn’t come back.
This is my third event with Chin Track Days, with a two-day event at Mid-Ohio and last year’s aborted run at Road Atlanta being the others. This experience taught me a few things. First is that Chin Events are more expensive than most. On a per-day basis, including this trip, my five Chin days are five of the six most expensive events. Only a day at Circuit of the Americas was more.
The second nugget of information, related to the first no doubt, is that the vast majority of cars entered are fast and expensive. I neglected to save a copy of the roster before the event (and Chin won’t share that info with me after the event), but the number of Porsche 911 GT3s and GT4s is off the chart. Average cost per car is higher than any other event I’ve been to, except the Ferrari customer appreciation days.
They put me in the Yellow group. This group includes all the novices and the solo intermediate drivers who haven’t been to this track before. I think It’s the best group for me. Passing is by point-by only, and only on the straights. Other groups are point-by, but passes can be done anywhere. Another advantage to this group is that it could get smaller. After Saturday, some yellow group drivers may graduate to a higher group leaving less traffic for me.
And, theoretically, running with the novices might mean that some of these fast cars won’t be going so fast because the drivers haven’t figured things out yet. A downside might be that novice drivers are struggling to cope with information overload and may not be as attentive as they should be to their rear-view mirrors.
Okay, enough prelude. On to the track.
What a track it is. The first thing I noticed, even in the pre-dawn dark, was that there is art all over the grounds. It’s mostly sculptures, from a giant woman soaking in a pond, to a bear in the woods, to trolls peeking out from under drain covers. There are impressions of leaves in the concrete like fossils, there’s a skunk on the stairs, there are giant dragonflies and metal insects. There’s a small herd of bison in the infield being hunted by some big cats. And a giant spider. Three different people told me “Barber is the Augusta of race tracks!” I’m not a golf fan, so the allusion is lost on me, but if everybody says it, it must be true!
Hunting party
Lounging in the pond
Look under the stairs!
Sleepy cat
Sasquatch
Testing my resolve
Optimal
Each day at a Chin event, the first session is open to drivers from all run groups. It’s a yellow-flag session, no passing allowed, to allow folks, especially those of us new to the track, to familiarize ourselves with the track and locate all the corner workers.
Two pedestrian bridges cross the track. I later walked across these bridges when I visited the museum. On my first lap of the yellow-flag session, I spotted the hanging lady under the first bridge. It’s a mannequin, and she’s hanging by her arms underneath the bridge. It was a little jarring, given the lynched doll I spotted hanging over the road yesterday in Mississippi. For just an instant, it freaked me out.
After that session, one of the other drivers asked me if I’d seen her. Of course I did! He told me that he ran an entire day without spotting her. He didn’t know about her until one of his friends asked him at the end of the day if he’d seen her. How can you go under that bridge 40 or 50 times in a day without noticing? Is it an unintentional test of a driver’s observational skills?
There are a couple of other notable mannequins on the track. There are two of them sitting on the wall where the cars enter the pits. I’m not sure if one of the mannequins is pushing the other off the wall or not. I’ll admit to another quick feeling of shock when I first saw them.
I have a practice of walking through the paddock looking for other Lotus drivers. For a short while, four of us were registered but two canceled. The only other Lotus was a blue 2005 Elise. I chatted briefly with the owner. He’s an instructor, his car is supercharged (265hp, he tells me), and he’s running on slicks. I tried to track him down a couple of times on Sunday, but we never reconnected. I was going to jokingly ask him if I could run a few laps on his slicks.
As usual, I’m running on my hard street tires. I get a lot of grief about it. Not so much grief on these road trips, but most track rats make it sound like they run on slicks or not at all. I’m not racing, so I don’t really care how my lap times compare to others. I’m competing with myself. How close to “maximum performance” can I get? For me, the skill is getting as close to the edge of performance as I possibly can. With hard tires, you get to the edge at a slower speed.
This weekend, though, I think I’d have been happier on stickier tires. There were only two cars in my group that were slower than I was. I looked at all the videos to count how often I was passed, but I did count passes in one session: I got passed 13 times and made 3 passes. If that was a typical number of passes in a session, and it was, over the course of 8 sessions I was passed well over 100 times.
Every time I pointed somebody by, it cost me about a second. Getting passed on the front straight compromises two laps. To get a decent time, I needed a “clean” lap – neither passing nor being passed. Because I was so slow, I got passed nearly every lap. Some of the Porsches were fast enough that I didn’t need to get off the throttle to let them by, but there were so many of them, I couldn’t always tell before the pass if I had to lift.
Had I been on my track wheels/tires, I reckon I’d have been 6 or 8 seconds a lap faster. That would have been fast enough to get me quite a few more clean laps. Cars that passed me twice would have only caught me once. And I’d have sometimes gotten an extra lap.
I didn’t have a target lap time in mind. My goal is constant improvement: to be faster in my last session than in my first. This I achieved: my fastest lap of the weekend was my very last lap. And that lap was compromised by letting a Porsche pass me on the front straight. Even with these tires, given a few extra clean laps, I might have reached a 1:50 lap time. Tall order, yes, as my best was a 1:53. But in one session, my timer said my optimal time was 1:49.
In addition to my eight sessions as a member of the Yellow group, each day ended with “happy hour” where people from any session could run. I joined in near the end of the session, thinking there’d be fewer cars. I lasted only 2 or 3 laps each day. On Saturday, I was getting passed left and right without giving point-bys. That didn’t happen on Sunday, so I’m guessing somebody mentioned it. In any event, the other cars were just too fast for me to enjoy myself and it was clear I stood no chance of getting a clean lap. So it goes.
Here are some more photos, including the giant spider.
Charlotte
The Exxon Valdez
I had a great time. I spent two days hanging out with people who share a common passion. Everybody played nice on the track. Nobody bumped into anything, but there was one red flag. A brand new Toyota Corolla GR lost its oil drain plug in turn 15 and spilled oil all the way down the main straight and into turn 1, where he spun out on his own oil. I’m guessing the track charged him four figures for the oil-dry they had to deploy.
Today’s diversion is a visit to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. It doesn’t open until 9:00, so I could sleep in a little.
The free breakfast cost too much. Yesterday, at the bad motel, at least I got a bagel with cream cheese. This morning, no such luck. My choices were cold cereal or yogurt with lots of sugar. I tried the biscuits and sausage gravy. The biscuits were hard. The sausage gravy may have been vegan. After two bites, I tossed it. The woman at the next table made eye contact with me, chuckled, and nodded.
After the non-breakfast I headed out, stopping to fill the tank on my way to the museum. I got there just as the doors opened. There was just one problem, though: I couldn’t lock the car. It acted like it locked, it made the right noises in the right sequence, but after a few seconds, the alarm gave a steady beep. I’m pretty sure that’s what it does if I try to lock it with the boot open, or a door. I opened and closed the doors and boot lid and tried again with the same result.
That’s just great. I have the passenger seat and footwell filled with stuff including a laptop, some tools, and all the cameras. In theory, I could repack the car to have the valuables in the boot, but something will still be in the unlocked cabin. When I’m just driving around town, I almost never lock it, as I often have the top off, and I seldom carry anything. But road trips are a different kettle of fish.
After my third unsuccessful round of opening and closing the doors and boot lid, one of the groundskeepers rolled up in his cart. He asked the usual questions about the car, including “What kind of car is it?”. He was not the first I’ve talked to on this trip who’d never heard of Lotus and would not be the last. I answered all his questions, then told him that I was having trouble locking it.
He said, “Go visit the museum. I’m going to be working right over here all morning cleaning up from the storm. I’ll keep an eye on it.” That was very kind of him. I have a blue tarp that I use to keep everything on the passenger side covered up.
I have no idea why it’s failing. One possibility is damage from the collision. I don’t think that’s the case, but it’s possible. Another is something’s wet. I drove through 3 hours of rain, and it rained most of the night, so who knows? My tape job is holding up to the weather, still looking good. I think I have enough tape left to redo it if I have to.
The Clinton Presidential Park bridge crosses the Arkansas River
Bill’s ride
Bill’s WFH office
What Bill did on my 34th b-day
Each globe has a theme
The Clinton Museum is the largest of the National Archives Presidential Museums. At least, according to the Clinton Museum folks. They admit that Reagan’s is bigger if you include the hanger that holds Air Force One and Marine 1. Not that it matters who’s is bigger.
The grounds here are pretty nice, but the rain had started up again so I didn’t wander around. One of the things a President has to do these days when he gets the job is to decide where he’s going to be buried. While I was looking out an upper-story window at the grounds, a worker pointed out where Bill and Hillary will reside after shuffling off this mortal coil.
When I visit these Presidential museums, I always look for a life-sized statue so I can get a selfie. Ike was on a pedestal, and I figured it would be poor form to climb it for a photo. There is no statue of Clinton here.
The price I paid for going to the museum was having to trade some back roads for interstate. My route started with sixty miles of interstate and ended with another hundred and fifty, making it just a tad over half the total mileage. Had I taken interstates the whole way, I’d have saved a few minutes but gone farther, going through Memphis. The middle section took me through the backwoods of Mississippi.
It was still raining when I got off the superslab. The first thing I noticed was that there wasn’t nearly as much standing water as on the interstate. The two-lane roads are crowned much better, with water flowing from the middle out. Much better drainage than the interstate. And with so much less traffic, I wasn’t constantly driving through somebody else’s spray.
I crossed the Mississippi River on US 49, over an impressive old girder bridge. I’d have loved to have stuck the 360 camera out the window, but it was raining. Too, the road on the bridge is in rough shape. It was definitely two-hands-on-the-wheel rough.
Just as on many of my other trips, I saw quite a few flooded fields. Is it always flooding somewhere in the Midwest when I’m driving through, or is it just where I go?
I was on a mix of roads, from four-lane divided highway down to a stretch of state highway with neither speed limit signs nor a centerline. Once the rain stopped, it was a pleasant drive.
This narrowest, least-traveled road alternated between small cultivated fields and stands of trees. There were quite a few run-down, abandoned-looking shacks along the road. Where the road went through the woods, the trees made an archway over the road. In one place where trees arched the road, I spotted a doll hanging in a tree, lynched. Right above my head. Maybe two feet tall. I couldn’t tell if the doll was black. I have a guess based on nothing more than stereotypes.
I was surprised at the lack of restaurants on my backroads drive. I had the same thing last year in Missouri, but I was on a number of county roads. Today, I was on state routes and US highways – no county roads. I was in this foodless zone from about eleven to after two. Maybe I was still feeling good from last night’s steak, but I wasn’t particularly hungry for any interstate fast food. I powered on to the motel.
The last two hours of the drive were dry. I basically ran a 75-mile-an-hour blow-dryer on the car for two hours. I still can’t lock the car. This does not bother me at all until my return trip. But I don’t think I’m comfortable leaving everything in an unlocked car while I wander around the Shiloh battlefield and Indian mounds. I doubt I’ll be able to count on the kindness of groundskeepers to keep an eye on my car. Driving back with no diversions means I’d be able to trade more interstate for back roads.
Dinner was at a little Mexican place next to the motel. It’s in a former fast-food building. There’s parallel parking where the drive-thru was. The place was busy, and it seemed like everybody knew each other. I had a chimichanga and a beer.
