"Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

We are on our way! We should be there late this afternoon! We are driving thru the remnants of Irma! At least it is washing off some of the Earlville dust! Feel free to post on here and let us know what is happening there! Stacking was supposed to start this morning with parking tomorrow morning!!

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Larry
They started stacking first thing this morning.
Rich the plug guy.

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Well its about that time! Last week at this time we were keeping a close eye on Irma as it looked like it may come up the east coast. Fortunately for us it did not but let us remember all our friends down in Florida that were affected by this storm. A lot of Division 2 racers are from the areas affected most by the storm including alot of Division staff members as well. We will continue to keep those folks in our thoughts this weekend.
Now for some racing, I hope everyone has had time to get over their Indy hangovers so we can have some great action this weekend! Looks to be a beautiful late summer weekend with low 80's for highs but a bit humid. Temps should be in the mid 60's in the mornings to make for some quick times during the qualifying runs, hope everyone remembers to take it off kill if you were at Indy.
In true fashion I will not be there till late tomorrow since I'm going to wait for my little girl to get out of school before I leave. I feel guilty for letting her skip a whole day for racing so its best to not make it 2. Ok my wife said she could only miss 1 day!!!
Should be a great weekend and looking forward to seeing some great racing. If you're in my neighborhood stop by and say hi, I'm normally parked in the low rent district on the opposite side of the Pros.

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Well after about a 5 hour delay, we are back on the road again! A little problem with the trailer, but hopefully we are good now! I hate driving in the mountains in the rain and dark, but maybe all those creatures of the night will stay out of our way! Thanks, Gary Jennings for your help today! And Joe Tysinger and Michael Volkman for your info!

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Thanks James. I am one of the fla people waiting for power to be restored. We appreciate the thoughts. It's healthy for your kids to do exciting things with their parents A couple days off school is not a bad thing when they are with their family. The kids here in Fla missed an entire week from the storm. Kick some butt this weekend.

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Well we still are not to the racetrack. Got as far as Asheville and had a blowout on the trailer. Then discovered that the leaf spring is broken. So now trying to get that fixed. This has turned into the trip from hell!

More later!

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Welcome to North Carolina! Hopefully this gets fixed quickly and on your way.

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Larry you have a pm

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Well we finally arrived at the track about 1:00 this afternoon safe and sound!
We got parked, got our credentials and then took a nap because we had big plans for this evening. Alice and Joe Tysinger's daughter Wendy and her husband Buddy threw a surprise 50th Anniversary party for them tonight!! Their actual anniversary is not until December so it was a real surprise! Dinner and dancing at the Speedway Club here at the track. I think there was about 130 people in attendance from racing friends, hometown of Thomasville, Wilmington and other various places. I was crying along with them as they realized how many people love them and wanted to celebrate that marvelous milestone! Here are a few pictures from the festivities. As you can see, this group cleans up pretty well!!

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Alan Rhinehart with the honorees and Wendy

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The Band Oz provided the music for the evening and they were really great playing all the music from our youth!

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So who knew that Joe was a drummer from way back??
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Joel and Karen Warren

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Larry, Joe, Wendy and Dede Layer
It was so good to see Dede!!

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

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Here is Alice with them, too!

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Emily, Michael, and Knox Volkman. That Knox is really a partier!!

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Emily just danced right out of her shoes after it broke!

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Michael Volkman, Rusty and Theresa Cook, and Gene Jordan

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Mr. and Mrs. Larry Stott

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Rich Schaefer, Dave Ley, and Ron

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

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Mrs. Gloria Ley, Michelle Adcock, Wendy getting down to the music!!

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It is hard to tell from the back, but Willie was looking good dancing with Mrs. Alice!!

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Rusty and Theresa Cook

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Pam and Jim Marshall

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Dave and Gloria Ley with Rich and Roy Hill and Jim and Pam whispering in the background!!

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Alice in the midst of her friends!

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

I wonder what NHRA does not understand about value for dollar spent??
Every morning at National events, Stock eliminator is first out and nobody wants to be the first car down the track. This morning, I was one of the first 3 sets of cars out, and for my early arrival, I got a nothing run! By a nothing run I mean I was off .09 in 60' compared to the Division 5 Earlville race a week ago. Today there was more barometer here in Charlotte and the performance should have been better not worse! Wayne Totaro was in front of me in the right lane, and he spun so bad, they gave him 2 attempts to get down the track and neither was successful! Unless NHRA wants everyone to do a Dan Fletcher imitation and be one of the last 6 pairs down, they need to improve the starting line to where people have confidence that they will get some numbers to race off of and not just wet your finger and hold it up and guess how much your car is going to spin! NHRA, it is an easy fix: Just have the starting line ready for the first pair!

Larry

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

They should go back to the first 10 cars down the track get a freebie.

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

It is a beautiful day for racing here in Charlotte. DA is 1248' 67 degrees.

49 stockers made the first run. 6 or so went quicker than a second under . DRC should have times up shortly . They had Jim Marshall in V/SA this morning running 4 seconds under!

We are stopped now for clean up. Chuck Gallagher's back window blew out of his super stocker so they are cleaning up little shards of glass.

Patsy

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Well in true fashion I parked this morning at about 7:40am dumped the car out the back, drove to the registration trailer and got registered. I decided since I was on that side just to just drive to the front and wouldn't you know I was the first freaking car there. Luckily I have a low hp car, I didn't spin but had a hard time doing a burn out being there was about 10 ounces of water down.

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Back in the 90's they would gave the first 10 pair of stocker a free run and that 10 would be at the back of the line for the 2nd run down the track.

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Yes that's how it was done and there was a race to see who could get those free passes

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Is this part of the consequence of this track not getting any weekly or more frequent usage?

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Round 2 went better. 50 cars went down that time. We are done for the day and with qualifying for round 1 in the morning ! The schedule has been revised and they have moved first round of class for super stock til somewhere around 7 this evening!

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

It has been a beautiful day all day, but yet super stock did not get to run for class today .NHRA put them the very last thing on the schedule today for 1 run only so the fastest guy in the class wins the trophy. They had their 1 run this morning and just finished up their 2nd run. If they had gone ahead and run them in sequence earlier, I am sure there would have been time for class run offs.

Patsy

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Since the Country Dog and Cajun Cooter are not here to feed us this weekend, East Coast Cooter filled in nicely tonight with a Low Country Boil!

And it was great!

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Here are Jim Marshall and Cooter

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Good stuff!!

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Cooter's little girl Piper with Jim and Pam Marshall and Cooter's FIL

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again

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Carol and Jack Zimmerman

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Aaron Allison and Larry

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Stock round 1 is finally in the books after a lengthy delay when Bill Howell broke an axle. I won but afraid I don't have much more information than that.

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Cooter, would have been an interesting race if I hadn't gone red. Good luck rest of the weekend.

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

I forgot to thank Cooter, Christal, Bentley, and Piper for their hospitality last night. The food and company were great!

2 rounds of stock are now done! Larry red lighter 1st round along with 7 others! We aren't leaving until tomorrow so I will post more later!

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Ms Patsy we were so glad to have all of you over last night we had a great time. Unfortunately with the schedule changes alot of our SS friends weren't able to join us but we'll do it again soon.
I'm sorry I haven't posted much this weekend but with the family here its been very busy. One thing I would recommend everyone doing while here is to go by the Dodge dealers exhibit, they have 2 Hellcats set up that you can race simulator style. Its pretty cool, you get 3 passes and you shift and steer the car. I might add that Piper and myself beat Crystal and Bentley all 3 times but on the last pass Crystal had a .024 to my .031 light. Hmmmm I might keep her away from that thing!
As you probably know if you checked out DRC I was a second round runner-up to Karl Martel. I really need to work on my finish line driving that's 2 races in a row I've looked like a donkey on the top end but he had a very nice run so good luck to him and all those left.
We are staying to tomorrow also so I will try to get some pictures of the evening action.

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Larry and Patsy, congrats on receiving The Edelbrock Performance Never Rest Performer of the Race award.

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Thanks Brent! The trophy is really cool! I didn't get pictures at the time, but I will make one and post it later!! They taped it to be on the tv show at some later time. I didn't take pictures today. It was hot and I stayed in the shade a lot!! I will try to do better at St. Louis in a couple of weeks!!

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Ms Patsy we must do better next time or Ken is sure to fire us both! I didn't get any pictures this evening either but I did enjoy some great racing, congrats to all the Sunday racers and good luck. Me and my circus are pulling out in the morning, next race will be Silver Dollar unless 5 people want to drop from Maple Grove and let me in!

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

Y'all are having too much fun! God bless.

Re: "Live" from Charlotte fall 2017
 

One last side note from the weekend, Pete Oakes was selected for a photo session with his gorgeous J/SA 1966 Malibu Wagon for National Dragster. So look for it in a upcoming issue as the "Featured Flyer", a well deserved honor in my opinion its a very nicely done ride!