The Long and Winding Road II

The Long and Winding Road II

It started with a hailstorm, though over 1000 miles away. It was in the Spring of 2004 and I had just seen a piece in the evening news about baseball-sized ice falling from the sky someplace in Texas.

“Holy Crap!” I had an instant nightmare about what that would do to my hand built aluminum car body on the open trailer I used. I jumped on the phone to Don to tell him we needed to buy closed trailers.

“But Marty,” he said, “the hail will beat up the closed trailer as much as the open one.”

“Don, I don't give a damn about the $4000 trailer, but I do care about the all aluminum car inside it!”

So...about $5000 later....

There went the entire budget for the trip.

In February of 2000 we had bought a fairly large Lance camper for the truck. The truck itself was purchased two years before, but I had opted for the long bed, high capacity variant...laughingly called a “3/4 ton” though its actual load rating was more like a ton and three quarters. The camper had a bed area which sat up over the cab of the truck and living space which extended two feet beyond the rear bumper of the truck, with loads of storage space, a full bathroom, furnace, air conditioner, and a more than adequate refrigerator and freezer. We had purchased it after tiring of the outrageous motel rate increases during the Monterey Historic races and car week at Laguna Seca. When a motel asking $45 a night for the Wednesday before the rent went to $150 a night with a three night minimum for the weekend we'd had enough.

So with the new trailer as the final addition I was “good to go.” I had managed to find three races on or near the Eastern seaboard on consecutive weekends in early September. The weather would be ideal...not yet the cold and forbidding snowbound winter and yet past the sticky humidity of Estern summers. Perfect. And if we left early enough we could even take in Speed Week at Bonnevile, something Don wanted to do as he was the engine builder for a land speed record car.

Wait...a Crosely powered record car? It is to laugh, no?

No. Gerald Davenport was, of course, wacko....but the car and attempt was quite real. It came about this way:

I first met Gerald through the West Coast Crosley Club chapter started by Dave Brodsky. Gerald was from Kentucky, and had tragically lost his son some time before. The young man apparently really loved Crosleys, so in tribute to him Gerald built up what he claimed was the largest Crosley dealership in the world...which might not have been that much as a stretch cause I think it is also the only Crosley dealership in the world.

Step right up, folks
Truly one of a kind
Paducah, KY

Gerald was at this particular meet to pick up a car he had bought, a pretty little thing called the “Tholens Special,” built by Dale Tholens in the 1950s and quite well known among “small car afficianados.”

 The car had been owned and raced by another friend of mine, Terry Matheny, though I don't remember whether Gerald got it from Terry or it has passed to someone else by this point.

Beautiful workmanship
A tiny jewel I lusted after

Anyway...Gerald's route back home, on I80, took him past Bonneville during Speed Week, run by the Southern California Timing Association...and one of the world's truly best car events. Like Monterey the pits are open to wander around and talk with owners and, despite the usual race event tensions, everyone is open and easy to talk with. The participants range from scruffy Home-builders to full pro teams from the likes of Honda and Nissan.

Great People
Spooky Place
Great Event

The “short course” is three miles marked by a black line on the salt...one mile to get up to speed, one for timing, and one to slow down. Gerald decided to stop and watch, and the SCTA guys good naturally enticed him to unload the car and run the course...whereupon he turned 86mph with no prep work at all.

Ah...another fish on the hook. Gerald returned home and promptly built up a real racer to go after the 750J/Pro class...which he won in 2002 at just under 100mph with this pretty beast (the 1010 number refers to some biblical phrase or another, with which I am totally out of my depth about).

It started as a stock 47 sedan
On the salt at Bonneville

In 2003 some smart asses with what started life as a Honda 600 took the trophy from Gerald. The rules are such that this bomb ran in the same class even though it had a totally flat bottom and fuel injection. The former results in less undercarriage turbulence while FI automatically, unlike carbs, adjusts for changes in altitude and air density. Hmm...unfair advantage.

I should note, at this point, that I had decided to keep a journal of the trip, so I have very detailed documented memories...and this part of the trip was, even absent the migraines, frustrating. Gerald refused to take advice from Don and had his own “expert” with him...who I think was way out of his pay grade. Between the use of the original intake manifold of the Tholens...pretty but too restrictive of airflow, and advice from the expert to continue to richen a motor which was already hoking on fuel as the “density altitude” readings the Honda guys readily shared with us went from 4800 to over 8000 feet almost instantly...things were going brown and ugly.

And of course Don had forgotten to bring jets for the Weber carbs. Fortunately Speed Week guys are real princes, and a group running an Alfa roadster in two different classes, one with carbs and one with FI, willingly shared their stash with us. But we never did manage to get the car above 86.

Still, it was a fun event and I would urge any car buff to put it in their “bucket list.” But..gotta fly. We had a schedule to make and a race to do in Connecticut. The main problem was going to be how to keep from going nuts, alone all that time with no one to talk to but the stupid little voice inside my head.