Ah, Saturday – the start of the race! Well, ok, not for us, we’re only doing the six-hour race, and it starts 18 hours after the 24-hour, so we’re golden until 6:00 tomorrow (that’s 6:00 AM for you non-24-hour-ers), and we spend the day going to the racer’s meeting, then watching the start, then helping out in the pit area with some of the DORBA folks. Fun stuff! We’re camped a couple of miles from this area, so we head back well before dark. Yes, BOOM! again tonight.

Race Day! Well, ok, officially that was yesterday, but not for us – for us that’s today. Get up at 4:00 (you do the math this time!), to have plenty of time to get breakfast and then head for the start. We’re out of the trailer a bit after 5:00, but I forget my helmet, so The Bear takes off without me – she has to ride an extra 3.5 miles to the start, beyond the pit area – lucky Bear! I take off, never see her, but I DO see some MASSIVE animal cross the road, almost beyond headlight range (remember, it’s still dark for another hour!). Actually, I think it’s a deer, so it probably wasn’t THAT massive (Texas deer are actually kind of small for deer), but it still makes me uncomfortable. I’ll meet his brother later …

I never catch even a view of The Bear’s rear blink light, so she’s way off to the start. I stop in at the pit area to wait for her to show up, and see what I can do to help out. Not much going on, a lot of racers are asleep, though some are still out. I feel for the 24-hour folks, especially the solo riders. You gotta be nuts to do this!

Most of the DORBA guys seem to be doing 40 to 50 minute laps, and most of the gals seem to be doing 50-65 minute laps. About 6:40, I go to the finish line to see The Bear come through, just any minute now … at 6:50, should be real soon … at 7:00, just any second now … ok – long story short, she shows up at around 6:45. Wow. Long time. She hurts from her injuries, and, since that wasn’t bad enough, she takes a fall and bruises herself in a couple more places. You gotta love the determination, if not the execution! I get the timing chip from her, and head for the head, just no no urges arise in me, other than the urge to get my laps done. The Bear? She was going to do three laps, but she’s done. It’s all up to me!

Here’s The Bear finishing:

Not a half mile from my start, a deer damned near jumps out in front of me! Is he related to the previous Kamikaze deer? I’ll never know, and thankfully he leaps away from me. Later on, there was a dead rat on the trail, then a dead snake … racing is dangerous, and not just for the riders! The course is kind of fun, and I actually enjoy the ride. My first lap, about 65 minutes. Hey, I’m old, so I’m slow. Ok, not a good excuse, since there’s another guy here who’s only a year younger than me, and he kicked some butt (came in first in his class!), but he IS younger than me. That must be it! But hey, long story short, I manage to cinch second place for us in our category. Well, actually The Bear did that for us when she finished her lap, since there were only two teams in our class. I think it sounds better the way I said it before – oh, well! My first lap was my last – we weren’t REALLY racing, and I didn’t think it was fair to the real racers for me to be out there taking space on the track, slowing down folks for whom this thing really meant something. I had fun, I did race, life is good!

It was almost three hours to the finish, and almost four to the awards ceremony, so we decided to bail. We borrowed a car (thank you very much, Kathleen Flannigan!) so we could go to the headquarters building to get our spot for the next few days while we try to get the truck sorted out, then off to the trailer for lunch. We were done! And yes, BOOM! again tonight.

And … one more shot of the canyon:

Truck repair day. Not looking forward to it. First, we pack up the trailer, because we need to dump the tanks. Go do that, and re-park it. Doesn’t take too long, so that’s good. Now to look for repair shops. We’ve been given the names of four. Check on Google, and S&S has the most reviews, 24, and all positive. Hmmm. That always makes me wonder. Precision has some bad comments, so I cut that off the list immediately, and Turbo something doesn’t give me a good feeling. Only other one is Scottie’s, with two five star and one 1-star. The one-star basically says “Hey, my previous one-star was deleted” – not very helpful. I decide on S&S. At first, I feel pretty good about this place, but soon I start to feel like I’m being scammed. I do, however, learn quite a bit about available replacement and upgrade parts for my transmission, so that’s a good thing. I also find out (after a LOT of phone tag) that my warranty is only good at the original shop, not nationwide. That is strictly the fault of Mastertech, the folks in Plano that had the transmission rebuilt. I say “had it rebuilt” for a reason. I took it to them, and asked if they could fix my transmission – they answered “sure”. I thought that meant they would do the work. Nope, and we’ll come back to why that’s a problem. The other thing that bothers me is that when I got the truck back from them, I specifically asked if I needed to bring it back for a check-up or anything, and was told “no, you’re good to go”. Well, it turns out that for the warranty to be valid, the truck needed an inspection two weeks after the rebuild. I’m not happy. BUT, even if I HAD had that done, because it was a wholesale job (done for Mastertech, not for me), the warranty is only valid at the shop that originally did the work! I’m REALLY not happy, because I specifically asked about a nationwide warranty, and was told “yes”. We’ll deal with that later.

Anyway. S&S finds the band for second gear out of adjustment (hmmm … maybe that two-week check-up would have avoided this?), and adjusts it. Doesn’t fix the problem. And I have no warranty. I’d been talking to the guy who rebuilt it originally (Jeff, at Plano Automatic Transmission), and he arranges for Scottie’s to honor the warranty, so we take the truck there. On the way, we stop to get a rental car. I always had good luck with Enterprise, so we stop there. Ah, yes, and how will you pay? Why, debit card, of course! Nope, sorry, we can only accept a debit card if it’s on a local address. REALLY? Cash? Nope, cash is no good – sorry! Off to Hertz, and there the debit card is no problem. But they have no available cars. ARGH!!!

Off to Scottie’s we go, have him take a look. I wish we had come here first. VERY professional, and he pulls up the codes on it – I see the code for my engine issue, a P0148. I also see a transmission code. Hmmm … the last guy (at S&S) said there were no codes for the transmission. Hmmm … now I REALLY feel like he had been trying to scam me!

Ok, long story short, we have to come back tomorrow to get a part replaced. The warranty? He’ll be happy to honor it! Unfortunately, this part was not in the original rebuild, so … not covered by the warranty. I get that. At least we’ll be fixed up and good to go!

We head for Walmart to get a few things, then go back to the canyon. Thankfully, no BOOM! tonight. No more until Friday, if we’re still here, but we probably won’t be. Next in line, Albuquerque, NM!

Slept in some, because we’re in no hurry today. Need to make sure the part has arrived at Scottie’s. He said they’d get it late yesterday or early today, so show up mid-morning, and we do. We’re there at 10:00, and he has the part. So, I sit and catch up on DAYS of blogging, since I can FINALLY connect to the web. Life is good!

Ok, truck got fixed and it only (ONLY!) cost about five bills.  Here’s the lucky part:

Just hung out, hoping The Bear heals.

it is HOT here. At least 102. Ugh.

Late start to the day, into town for supplies. Waiting sucks.

Been reading my Lightroom book at least, so there is that!

Another day of trying to get The Bear healed up. No better than before. Starting to get worried about it.

Did I forget to mention that it rained yesterday? Yup, the curse is at it again!

So what’s up today? We’ll, in the morning, the park host stops by to tell us that there’s a 50% chance of thunderstorms and tornadoes. Great.

We walk around, talk to some folks, see the park host again. Chances are now 65%. Double great. Oh, yeah, and hail. Triple great.

It rains, and the wind is pretty stout, but we see no hail, and no signs of tornadoes. Yay!
In the evening, I want to catch a video of the play from where we are. Well, not the actual play itself, but the light show on the canyon rim, especially the big “lightning bolt” explosion. Well, it starts to rain, and the light is too low for my Nikon to shoot video, so I use my Garmin. Do I get the shot? Not exactly … See the attached video when I get it uploaded. Pretty impressive!

And here it is:

That was it! Everything before and after was pitch black. Notice how bright it was at the end – brighter than at noon on a clear day! And no, I did not get zapped, it was just the camera freaking out at how bright the light was on that last strike. Cool stuff!

Well, today we take The Bear to the doctor, to try and figure out what’s wrong. I’m waiting to hear as I type this. Hopefully they can get her fixed up.

Still threatening to rain, and it’s also gonna be raining in Albuquerque when we get there, but it should clear up in a couple of days or so. Anyway, tonight while it’s dry we’ll get hitched up and ready to go so in the morning we can just start up and head out. Looking forward to WiFi!

Ok, The Bear is going to live – yay! (I think!). Nothing broken, just a lot of bruises and bumps, and they’ll eventually heal. Good!

Do some laundry and back to camp, to get packed up for the trip out. But first, lunch at Feldman’s Wrong Way Cafe. Not bad. It’s a chain, but they make a pretty good Chicken Fried Steak. They set it on two slices of toast – nice touch! Here it is, after I started on it:

Also, when we returned to camp, I decided to get a couple of shots of the campsite, first without:

And then with the truck:

This evening, I got a video of the big bang! Pretty grainy (not much light!), but the reply cool part of ti is that you see the PrimaCord being set off, and then when you finally hear the bang, they light up the mountain with red lights, so that it really works. It’s pretty cool! Here it is: