Arrant Nonsense

I do believe that was the most disastrous Halloween Classic we've ever had, up to and including the first one we attended where we slept in the back of the Willys in below-freezing weather and my fingers got slammed in the back window.

First of all, the weather was singularly uncooperative. Rain, rain, and more rain. And, as you may or may not know, drag racing in the rain is...problematic. We don't do it. Slick track + high speeds = unmixy. So, Thursday, they didn't get any time trials and instead went right into racing. Which meant that the Hubby had no idea how fast his car would go and had to essentially guess on his dial-in. (If you don't know what this means, don't worry about it. Suffice to say that it's a BAD thing.) However, in the end it didn't matter anyway, because he red-lit by .007 seconds, and was out after one run. The good part was that the car went quicker than it ever had before, and he laid down the quarter in 10.03 seconds...and that was after slamming on the brakes so he didn't go under 10, which would have smashed a few rules because he doesn't have the proper safety equipment for going that fast. However, he ran the numbers, and it turned out that he probably would have been safe and run a 10.013 or something like that. So, that was one bright spot in a fairly horrid weekend.

Oh, and the nice high-tech weather thingy he bought for better data? Yeah, apparently it doesn't work at low temps. It was dead as a doornail, even with fresh batteries. Not only that, but he was sick the entire time. Remember the cold that Da Boy brought home and passed to me? Yeah, it chose THIS WEEKEND (of course!) to hit the Hubby in all its misery. So he was up during all the nights coughing, poor guy.

And then it rained. And rained, and rained.

Friday, they didn't get any racing in at all--because it kept raining. To figure out the winner of that bonus race, they drew race cards. We didn't win anything by that method either.

Saturday, the weather finally shined upon us. They let them have a time trial, yay for that. Of course, since they were trying to get people through as quickly as possible, they ran an eighth mile rather than the quarter (to save on track prep and time in case anyone broke and oiled the track down, I think). And then the Hubby's hand slipped off his gear shift and his run was spoiled, giving him no data.

So, when it was his turn to actually run, he had no idea what the car would do, his run fell apart, and he was out in the first round. *sigh*

But then we had the party. Da Boy had fun trick-or-treating. My costume garnered stares, giggles, and a couple of screams. It nearly gave one poor old lady a heart attack; she was looking at the snake, and then it moved. *snerk* We were standing at the bonfire and saw a driver lose it into the wall; fortunately it wasn't a very bad wreck and he walked away from it, although the dragster was pretty much shredded. But he didn't roll or anything, which leaves him one up on the guy from the last time we went, who apparently had a really spectacular crash (which we didn't actually see). There's one every year, I think.

After the trick-or-treating, I was a frozen snake charmer, so I repaired to the motor home with Da Boy to try to un-numb my fingers and toes, while the Hubby went to see the wheel-standing contest. He said it was really cool and they had way more entries this year than they have in the past. I thought about going to the adult costume party, but I was still damb cold, so I bagged it.

And then today we came home.

In writing news, I did get to stick an END at the bottom of the BearFic while we were there, so I at least got that much done--and I'm not sure I would have been able to do that had we stayed at home. So...yay for that?

I have no idea if I'm going to be able to catch up with my flist. I haven't even looked at it yet...ETA: Skip=540, y'all. But I did it, with no filters. Of course, a lot of it was skimming, too. *shamefaced*

ETA: And to top off the weekend, I attempted to tape Pushing Daisies, CSI:NY, and Numb3rs while we were gone. You know, it really helps if you actually put the tape in the player when you're trying to tape something. AUGH.

Son of ETA: This should in no way be taken as a slam on the fine folks at Firebird Raceway. They did the best they could under very difficult circumstances and tried to make it fun for us all. The weather just chose this weekend to suck like a Hoover.

Or as packed as I'm going to get, anyway. I'm only bringing three books to read (A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold, Path of Fate by difrancis, and Empire of Ivory by naominovik), so maybe if I run out of reading material it'll push me to write?

That's my theory, and I'm sticking with it.

The weather looks horrendous, but hopefully we'll get to race in between rain showers. I just hope it'll be nice for trick or treating Saturday night, because this will be Da Boy's first ever trick or treat...thing. Yes, we've deprived him all his life.

I shipped off two stories today. Wish me luck.

And we won't have internet access (I don't think) at the track, so I'll be offline until Sunday night or Monday.

I've gone from "I'm not sure I can even salvage this story anymore, dammit" to "I think I can make it work if I swap it all back to third person limited." I was able to go through it several times in between races last night (Hubby came in third! Yay!) and make editing passes. Using third person throughout seems to be my best bet.

Of course, that doesn't change the fact that it's still an incredibly short story that swaps back and forth between the viewpoints of the werewolf and the alien--and goes out to omniscient for one sentence. And this might break some sort of rule or other about keeping it all in one POV. However, rules were made to be broken, and the story calls for it, so there. I mean, hey, bending genres anyway. Rules? Frell the rules. As long as the readers aren't confuzzled, who cares? Well, editors might. *chants to self: serve the story, not the market; serve the story, not the market*

What I really need to do is start reading short stories and watching for things like VP switches. The problem is that I start reading for pleasure, and then I forget to try to pick up on stuff like that. I really need to work on the whole "reading for more than the story" thing.

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In drag racing, you guys know about the light tree that counts down from yellow to green, right? And if you go before it goes green, you "red-light" and that's an automatic loss. A "perfect light" is .000, which means the driver leaves the line just at the moment it goes green. Last night, the Hubby lost his last race by going -.001 at the light. That's right, folks. He red-lit by one one-thousandths of a second.

And then his car ran too quick too, but that's neither here nor there; if he hadn't red-lit, he probably would have hit the brakes at the end and avoided that. The weather was so squirrelly last night that lots of drivers were having problems at both ends of the track.

In other news, OJ Simpson continues to be made of LOSE and FAIL. Good lord.

So, Rocky Mountain Raceways had their fifth race of the second round of the season tonight. The Hubby vacillated back and forth as to whether he actually wanted to go tonight, and finally decided at nearly the last minute that he did.

Good thing.

He won!

*happyflails*

It was a really odd night, because he had very few "conventional wins," but a lot of it is the luck of the draw and what your opponent does...and tonight it worked in his favor, for once.

That's two wins and two seconds this season. He's under the impression that he sort of sucks, but it's no wonder people don't want to run against him. *snerk*

Really, it was! *dances*

The drag race season has begun anew at Rocky Mountain Raceway, and thus we hied our way to the track yesterday around three-ish. Other than the Detroit locker in the Willys trying to throw us off the on-ramp a couple of times, the drive was without incident.

Now, as folks may or may not know, the Hubby had a slight meltdown last year. He went middle-age crazy, as it were. No drag racing, no jeeping, no working on the Mustang, no indulgence in any of the hobbies he's cultivated over the years. We bought an airplane instead. Yeah.

Therefore, he hasn't raced since the Halloween Classic at Boise since 2005. Which he kicked ASS at, BTW.

They had a test and tune a few weeks ago. His first run, the rear axle housing got separated from the frame. Made a god-awful noise. Remember when he set his pants on fire a little bit ago? That was him, repairing that.

So, what with the new repairs, and the fact that he hadn't raced in a LONG while, we didn't really expect a whole lot. Maybe he might win a few rounds, but usually, when I go... he gets knocked out in the first round. Because that's my life.

But last night...

LAST NIGHT.

Not only did he WIN every round, including the final one...

But he also cut a perfect .000 light.

I realize most of you have no idea what that means. Suffice to say that most racers go a lifetime without doing that.

So.

YAAAAAYYYY!!! Go, Hubby!

This video is a stunning testament to the safety equipment in NHRA drag cars. Holy cow!

( Read this AFTER you watch the video to see what happened to the drivers )

Whoa, dude, what a weekend. *flails*

Long story short? The Hubby won the Bonus Race on Thursday, and the Bonus Race on Friday, and we came home with over $2500 in prize money. Which we're splitting after expenses and taxes (@#$%& IRS). He also went a couple of rounds in the Classic itself and got back some round money from that.

We've NEVER had a weekend that good. Ever. He's been fighting the car all season, and I guess it finally decided to come together for him for the Halloween Classic. He knocked out people who were regional champions...and he beat one guy TWICE who's been featured in National Dragster.

What's really fun is that he's got a kind of ugly car. It's a 1979 Ford Fairmont Futura (you can see a pic of one here)--and it doesn't look like anything at all. He's got a $60 Krylon paint job on it, and people giggle at it...until it does the quarter-mile in less than ten and a half seconds. Then, suddenly, Grandma's grocery-getter doesn't seem so lame anymore. The Ford people LOVE the thing, and believe me, there weren't any "Found On Road Dead" jokes this weekend.

And now...I shop. I've got my eye on a couple of Oaxacan carvings, and a bunch of books. Possibly S1 of Angel. Also? This is a paid-off laptop for me.

Also? I wrote three fics, which I'll be spamming you with as the day goes on. I started and finished a Lindsey fic for moviequoteminis (it's posted there if anyone just can't wait), and finished the Wash/Zoe fic I started awhile back. And I wrote the Beagle-smuggling fic. It's amazing what you can accomplish with no distractions or internet access. LOL

Anything interesting happen while we were out? I got to skip=260 on my flist before giving up. You all are fascinating, but holy crap.

( The Hubby Car )
( What is bracket racing? )

So far, we've seen folks from: Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Montana, and Texas (!), as well as Canada. This is a truly huge event for drag racers in the region. One of the classes had 128 cars in it, and we probably have upwards of 700 cars altogether here.
( Thursday )
( Friday )
( Saturday )