Saturday

I give up on the Aerobed. Really, I do. I’m almost at the point where I’m just going to give it away. It’s pretty much worthless for guests, so I built a murphy bed in our downstairs room, and for myself last night proved either that I’m too old and feeble or that the technology is just lame. So began my LeMons Saturday.

After a fine meal at Applebee’s last night, Mason, Thomas, and I were eager to go to sleep. Thomas might have wanted to stick his finger down his throat first, but he elected to heed the stronger call of the Beautyrest. Between my snoring, the floodlight aimed into our window at the La Quinta and the, uh, humid air in our room, no one really got a great night’s sleep.

I awoke before M and T and saw that Robert had sent a message at seven letting us know that he and Fiid were leaving home and on their way to Altamont. By the time I responded, they had gotten nearly to Livermore and encountered a wreck that had early Saturday morning traffic stopped on 580. When I spoke to Robert, he let me know that Stephan was also caught up in the same mess. We on the advance team got our gear together, made some waffles in the La Quinta’s breakfast bar, and headed out for the track. Despite the variety of departure times and distances from the track, we all ended up there at about the same time.

That time was unfortunately a bit late. Our car, which had posed no problems, would not start. We had power to all of the interior accessories, but didn’t even get a click from the starter. We tried jumping it, but got nothing. Thomas, who had gone to get checked in got back just about then and dove in. He discovered that he’d accidentally disconnected the interlock bypass wire, and we were back in business. Sort of. We then found that the car wasn’t charging. This turned out to be a fried field wire to the alternator. T fixed that. Yay! But then Stephan went to start the car and the starter got stuck in the engaged position. Boo. Turned out that our wiring harness is a bit fragile and didn’t like being disturbed when T was fixing the field wire. But, he sorted that, and we were golden.

In the middle of all this was the driver’s meeting, which everyone was required to attend.

With the car back up and running, we had a quick caucus to decide the running order. I put it out there that I wanted to be first, no one else did, and so I started putting on my gear. Did I mention that cars were lining up to get on track as I was getting dressed?

This was the another indication that Altamont would be a different beast than Thunderhill. Unlike T’hill, Altamont is within easy driving distance of San Francisco, and they also kick everyone out at night, so we didn’t have an RV to act as our hotel and HQ. We didn’t realize how much of a difference that would make. Whereas at T’hill we had a leisurely morning and eased into our prep for the race, Altamont was a scramble.

In any case, I got out in time to do the transponder check, then pull back into our pit. Where I found not a single team member as I arrived. When I did find them, there were as unsure as I was about what to do next. We eventually concluded that I should get in line at the track entrance, so off I went.

They let us out onto the track after a few minutes, and I felt my heart rate beginning to rise a bit. While I felt confident that I was as safe a pair of hands to kick this off as any on our team, it did occur to me that this was only my second wheel-to-wheel race in a car. My tension certainly didn’t abate as more and more cars kept coming on track as we lapped under the yellow flags. By the time that everyone was out there, it might as well have been 880 at five o’clock on a Friday afternoon. We actually came to a complete stop several times. In the midst of this, I saw my wife and son coming down the stairs of the grandstand to the fence as I drove by. I gave them a wave and returned my concentration to the task at hand.

After a few laps of this, I concluded that the green flag had finally dropped. I concluded this based on the fact that the Volvo wagon tooling around behind me suddenly flew past me on the left and the volume of all the engines around me got much louder.

When in Rome... I floored it, and we were off. Amazingly, racing under green actually cured the traffic problem. Sure, I couldn’t go as quickly as I wanted wherever I wanted or take the line of my choosing, but there was no more traffic jam. After a bit I realized that I’d forgotten to start the timer that would tell me when it was time to come in. I rectified that oversight, and after what felt like about the same amount time that I’d been running without the timer (I estimated about fifteen minutes), I looked at the timer to find that only about six minutes had elapsed. That was surprising.

Given the number of cars out there, and the disparity in speeds, one might have expected a lot of carnage, but the racing was by and large very clean. In my hour on the track, I had a couple of cars hit me, but none of it was from overly aggressive driving, just the traffic. I was having a good time, but qualitatively, it was very different than Thunderhill. Knowing the history of wrecks at Altamont, we’d all pledged to be very conservative on the track. So, if I saw that a car behind me was clearly faster, I gave them plenty of room to pass, and I even pointed them by to make sure they knew I was letting them have the corner. Of course, if someone in front of me was about as fast as me or slower, I gave it the full beans. Ultimately, I think I passed more than I got passed. Given that the organizers pick a random car to be the leader at the start of the race, I have no idea what position I started in, but I know that I was higher up the board at the end of my stint than at the beginning.  As my time came to a close, I turned on the pit light (installed courtesy of Mr. Overzet—thanks!) to let the guys know I’d be in a couple of laps.

I pulled off the track and made for our pit where I found Stephan ready to get in the car. I quickly debriefed him on what it was like out there, and he was off. I got Mason to give me a lift over to the grandstand so I could see my family, including my mom who was visiting from Houston. While I was up in the grandstands, I noticed that Stephan had turned on the pit light about twenty minutes before he supposed to stop. I bid my farewells, and went back to the other side of the track.

Stephan had basically had enough. I think he put it something like this: I was tired of being so slow. He’d decided that it was time to come in and figure out how he could be faster and let someone else have a go.

That someone was Captain Slow, and I think he has decided that he no longer wants that title. Mason did a good job out there, although he did manage to let someone bang into our right front quarter panel, pull our front bumper out, and also somehow lost most of our exhaust system somewhere on the track. I’m pretty confident, though, that none of these things was his fault.

When Mason went out, Stephan and I went to get some food and find out where we were in the standings. At about 1:30, were 27th of about 90 cars, and we’d managed to raise about $500 for the library, having done 78 laps.

After Mason, came Robert, another newbie. We got him out on the track with a fairly expeditious pit stop, and managed to get the in-car camera back in the car for his stint. Somewhere during Mason or Robert’s stint someone brought back word that we’d fallen to 31st by about 2:30. I think that drop reflected Stephan’s time in the car, but I suspect he thought he’d done much worse than that. I hope he’s a bit more confident tomorrow.

Robert really kept his nose clean, but you could see that he was definitely not lollygagging. He was pushing hard enough to have the back end step out a few times. Shortly before his time was up, we realized that no one had told him about the pit light, so Mason ran down to the end of the paddock to show him the pit-in sign. We let Thomas know that he was up next and that he should get dressed.

As we were waiting for Robert to come in, his wife and daughter showed up at our pit, so they got to see us refuel the car and get Thomas ready to go out.

Just as we were about to have him back out of the pits, we got the word that the race had been red-flagged because Team Cant Am’s #39 had hit the wall. By the time we got over to the track, we saw the track ambulance and other vehicles with the car. We weren’t sure what was going on, so we sent Thomas to line up to get back on track. When he got down to the entrance, however, the track officials told him he might as well go back to our pit because the race wasn’t likely to restart soon.

A guy sitting next to our spectating position told me he’d seen the wreck and that it was a solo incident. Worryingly, the driver did not get out of the car, and the safety team looked very intent. Another ambulance showed up, and word went through the crowd that a helicopter was on it’s way to the track. Not good. After quite a while, there was still no indication of the driver’s condition, and we saw that they’d cut the roof off of the car. Around the same time, the helicopter arrived. We were all a bit dismayed to watch it circle the track and then depart.

I think we all knew then, but still held out hope. Three fire trucks and a third ambulance were now on the scene as well. It had been about an hour. Jay, the LeMons honcho, came on the PA and announced that racing was finished for the day and encourage everyone to pack up. We’d regroup in the morning. I don’t think anyone left, though.

We stayed and eventually saw all three ambulances leave, lights on, sirens off, and in no particular hurry.

Officially, there’s been no word, but everyone we’ve talked to has accepted that one of our competitors died on the track. We’re not even sure who was in the car. I think this is even more stunning for us because #39 is the Gulf-liveried Volvo 242 Turbo that was next to us in the paddock at Thunderhill. We aren’t friends with them, but we know who they are. In fact, Mason and I passed them on 580 on the way out to Altamont on Friday, and we were really jazzed that they would be racing with us again.

When they got to the track, we found out that they’d inadvertently been left off the acceptance list, but had taken the place of a team that had dropped out just this week.

At this point, if in fact the race goes on tomorrow, we’ll all need to decide whether it’s worth it to continue. As information trickles in from people who were in the stands and on the track at the time, it appears that there’s a possibility that the driver passed out or something as he was entering the turn. These reports suggest that he went straight on with no lift off the throttle or any indication that he tried to steer away from the impact. If true, the situation is no less awful, but we can rationalize away a fair amount of our concern for our own safety. I’m pretty sure that’s what most of the racers are doing tonight. For what it’s worth, I intend to get back in the car tomorrow if the race continues. I don’t think that’s a brave decision in any way, but I do hope that it doesn’t prove to be a reckless one.

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