For want of a nail

The race ended badly, the weekend ended well.

The girls helped prep the car. I showed Sabrina how to torque wheels, K.C. how to take tire pressures. I then went back over both before the race, explaining to them that I was not doing so because I did not trust their work, but because it was my job to double check, to make sure everything was just right.

Including the nut holding the accelerator pedal, I told them after the race. Not anybody’s fault but mine. That’s racing. They were disappointed but tried not to show it, except for K.C. saying “you were in first” when it happened.

The accelerator pedal broke. The nut holding the bolt holding the pedal to the rod connected to the carburetor came off. It was a stupid, preventable, hidden, subtle, ordinary thing. For want of a nail. For want of a nut, the race was over early.

I was leading, but only because MacDonald was making it interesting for the field, for the crowd. He dominated all weekend, two seconds faster than me, I was a second faster than Jim Click in his Cobra out of Arizona, who was third. I belonged on the front row and was looking for a good race with Click, plus I thought I had found a second in practice that might have let me stay closer to MacDonald, but the pedal broke and I was out early.

On the way home we stopped once in Portland after about two and a half hours, for coffee, tea and cocoa, and a bathroom. We listened to their music and laughed. We rode with the windows down and the wind howling through the Excursion, Sabrina in the front, K.C. in the small seat behind Sabrina next to our boxes of food.

Sabrina asked if tea had caffeine, I said yes and she said that was probably why she was acting so crazy. I told her she was crazy most of the time and she liked that. K.C. handed us Triscuits and cheese and small sliced sandwiches from Albertsons from our dry goods box and the ice box. They knew the words and sang to songs so silly I had to laugh out loud.

They put on their gloves and helped disconnect the trailer. It went faster because of their help, we were home by 9:30, six hours from when we left Pacific Raceways. It was a nice drive home. It was a wonderful weekend.