Yesterday was some work and some play. We went out to the salt flats early. We were to have a drivers’ meeting at 9:30am. We got the call from Louis that he had arrived at the convenience store at the Bonneville exit so Marshall and I went to get him and stopped back by the fuel trailer to get methanol for the car. Marshall dropped us back off by the credentials trailer to get Louis’ pit crew arm band. When we got there it was 8:53am. We heard the workers say to the person behind Louis in line that they would have to come back after the drivers’ meeting which was to start at 9am. We were about to miss the whole purpose for the day! I tried Mike’s and Shannon’s cell phones to no avail so we hurriedly walked back to the pits.

We got to the meeting just in time. There is a lot of introduction kind of stuff but what we really wanted to know was the state of the salt for making runs. It turns out that they do not plan to allow runs until Monday but there will be three courses instead of the two they had announced earlier. However, the third course will be by invitation only. Since the car is new we will have to start at lower speeds than it is capable of running so we will be on one of the short courses. We will give it our best shot on Monday and Tuesday. Here is a photo of the drivers’ meeting.

Mike and the guys went back to the pits to crank the car. You can really draw a crowd when you start an engine. This was no exception. While going through this exercise a couple of our group noticed a vapor of methanol coming out when the engine was gunned. As a result the guys spent the next few hours chasing that problem and got it corrected.

The kids rode bikes and then Hudson and I took off on an adventure. He wanted to ride to the mountains. It seems really close by and we took off in that direction. We got pretty close before I convinced Hudson we had better head back. The salt was sticking to the tires and it was getting increasingly hard to ride. I did not have my cell phone with me and nobody knew where we were so I didn’t want them to panic. You can’t really see it well in the photo below but he and the bike were caked with salt when we got back.

I am being told by Mike and Marshall that the wind howled all night last night. Wind and sun are what we need to dry the salt. You never know. Perhaps the officials will have changed the schedule to allow runs today. That would be wonderful.

I’ll keep you posted.