This year’s route on the trunk of the Camaro

2023 Great Race

July 6, 2023

The 2023 Great Race is in the books. This year’s race went from St. Augustine, FL to Colorado Springs, CO over the course of 9 days. This year, the Kieley / Roberts team fielded two first generation Chevrolet Camaros. This would be the third race for Ken and me in the Butternut Yellow 1968 Camaro. It would be the first for Erin and her brother, Tom, in the Blue 1969 Camaro. My mother-in-law, Chris and my daughter, Hannah would be the support crew traveling from city to city in the truck with luggage, spare parts, and tools.

As is often the case in the Great Race and life in general, our carefully laid out plans were thrown out the window by an early plot twist. Tom had his appendix removed the day he was supposed to fly to Florida. We debated whether to find another driver for Erin or ship the car home and defer until 2024. We talked it over and decided to ask our friend, Gerno, if he could fill in. I sent him a text on Wednesday night asking, “Want to drive a 69 Camaro across the country next week?”. 24 hours later, he was on a plane to join the team.

Friday morning was a practice rally around St. Augustine, FL called the Trophy Run. It’s an opportunity to practice, shake down the cars, and get in the swing of things before the week of racing really gets underway. My daughter, Hannah, rode with Ken and me in the car for the Trophy Run. We had a ball introducing Hannah to the Great Race. This was her first year to come along as part of the support crew. We had an 11 second day in the car and were 20th overall on the Trophy Run. We had three legs with only one second of deviation from perfect. We were optimistic about the week.

Saturday’s route took us from Francis Field in St. Augustine to Tifton, Georgia. The day got off to a rocky start right from the beginning. Traffic ruined the beginning of the run that we use to calibrate our speedometer. Once we cleared the St. Augustine traffic, we resumed the calibration run only to be nearly run off the road by another competitor whose situational awareness left a lot to be desired. We were a bit rattled going into the first timed section after lunch. We had our first mechanical hiccup in the afternoon at a restart where the car was vapor locking. I had my head down computing the loss from the start and missed a corner. We realized within a minute or two that we had missed a right turn when we saw another lone competitor coming back toward us. We turned around and passed five cars to get back in our position. We encountered a checkpoint before our “hack” was complete, resulting in a 1 minute 3 second leg. Not to worry, we would be able to drop our five worst legs from the first seven days. The other legs totaled 13 seconds which was a decent start to the event. The cumulative results from day one doesn’t show the dropped leg, so we were in a disappointing 100th position with nowhere to go but up.

Lots of spectators braved the heat to see the cars this week.

Sunday’s route took us from Tifton, Georgia to Birmingham, Alabama. I had a couple stopwatch blunders which cost us a few seconds. Otherwise, it was an uneventful day of driving. Scores for the day were 3, 7, 3, 1, 6.

Stage 3 on Monday took us from Birmingham to Graceland. We had our first delay on this day for a flagger at a construction crew. We also had another missed corner brought on by an instruction I did not understand. Thankfully, Ken saw another racer leave the intersection (of three roads) the correct direction and was able to hack off them to get us back on track. We earned a 1 second time on that leg, our best time of the day. Another missed turn in the afternoon while I had my head down resulted in another dropped leg. Our scores for the day 6, 1, 3, 11, 2m – not a red-letter day!

Stage 4 on Tuesday took us from Memphis to Russellville, Arkansas. A bumpy road beat us half to death and the center cap on the right rear wheel flew off. Ken heard the part go flying. We managed a 1, 2, 4, 10, 4, 2. At this point – or perhaps earlier – we realized that our chances of winning our class had slipped away. The top couple teams in our sportsman division were running away with the lead while we struggled. We had run out of drops for our double-digit legs. Our attitudes changed for the better. I had been taking it way too seriously and not having fun.

On Stage 5’s run from Russellville, Arkansas to Joplin, Missouri, we took on a passenger. Tom and his daughter, Kendall, flew into Memphis the previous day to join the race. Tom rode with us on the day to get acquainted with the race and the car. Kendall joined Chris and Hannah in the support truck. The cousins had a grand time with their grandma, Gigi. With Tom in the car, Ken and I picked up our first ace as well as a 4,1,10,1. With our five second penalty for taking Tom along, we scored 21 seconds on the day. We were slowly climbing up the leader board.

#11 rolling through the finish gate in Joplin.

Stage 6 was from Joplin, Missouri, to Wichita, Kansas. Tom took over the driving duties on #11 from Ken who had gotten overheated the day before. Ken joined the girls in the support truck to recover. Tom and I sweltered in the car on a 105-degree day. We earned an ace, 2, 5, 8, 4, 14. The 14 second leg involved a delay for a train and two tractors. Tom was a trooper driving a long, hot stage a week after his surgery.

Stage 7 took us from Wichita to Garden City, Kansas. More heat, more cows, more Kansas. Tom drove again on this stage and would end up finishing the entire race for #11. We managed a 4,3,2,1,3,6 on the day. We were climbing the leader board with single digit scores.

Stage 8 took us from Garden City, Kansas to Pueblo, Colorado. We earned another Ace, 1, 5, 13, 4. We had an epic maze after our lunch at the Lamar Depot. There were cars going every which way. We missed a turn but quickly realized it. Tom turned the car around and it promptly died in the middle of the street. We were perpendicular to the road, blocking both directions. We had competitors coming at us from both directions. He got the car started in the nick of time and I was able to measure the loss. We made up the 49 seconds lost by going 20% over the prescribed speed for 4 minutes and five seconds. Thankfully, we didn’t encounter a checkpoint until after the makeup was done. We had a couple well-earned beverages in Pueblo.

Stage 9 of the event took us around Colorado Springs before finishing downtown. The car overheated after our speedometer run. We had 12 minutes to diagnose and repair the problem before our timed run began. There could be no drops on this day because it was the final two days of the event. One of our competitors ran into a gas station and bought us coolant. I hosed down the radiator with a squirt bottle while Tom filled the car with gas. Once the radiator was cool enough, we refilled it. We decided the electric fan wasn’t working because of a relay or fuse. We quickly rewired it using a piece of extension cord found in the trunk. We cut the fan wires and hardwired it to the battery. It wasn’t pretty, but it would get us to our start in time. Finally, all those episodes of MacGyver as a kid were paying off. We had a great day on the road with the “repaired” car earning a 1, 1, 3, ace, 1. Our climb up the leader board continued – unfortunately, aided by some other teams backing up due to mechanical failures. One such team was our friends, Dan and Pat from New Braunfels. I was gutted to see them broken down on the side of the road on the final day.

Ken, Tom, and I finished fourth in the Sportsman class. We bettered our fifth in class finish from last year. We were 20th overall out of 123 cars. 101 cars finished the race.

Everywhere we go all week long. Small town America is AMAZING.

Erin and Gerno positively dominated the rookie division. They finished the event in 13th place overall. They won their class on five individual days. They won the rookie division by a whopping 49 seconds. Their time would have won them 2nd place in the Sportsman class. Their raw time for the week was only 20 seconds higher than the overall winners! I am so proud of them. Teaching them and my other rookie team and seeing them both do well has been the highlight of this experience.

Gerno and Erin are a force to be reckoned with!

Black Hills of South Dakota

August 28, 2021

Erin, Hannah, and I flew to Rapid City, South Dakota to join my parents on a week long vacation before the start of the school year. We made Keystone our home base for the week and hit many of the highlights of the Black Hills. My parents are South Dakota natives and graciously served as our tour guides.

On Monday, August 16, we arrived in Rapid City and went downtown for lunch at the Firehouse Brewery. The mural outside impressed me more than the lunch. We wandered around downtown a little bit and shopped next door at the amazing Prairie Edge. We also visited the stunning Chapel in the Hills and the somewhat hokey Cosmos before checking into the AirBnB in Keystone. After waking up at four o’clock in the morning for an early flight, Hannah and her parents were pumpkins by dinner time.

On Tuesday, we visited Crazy Horse, had lunch in Custer, and visited Sylvan Lake. We spent a long afternoon in the car driving the Needles Highway, the Custer State Park Wildlife Loop, and a portion of the Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway. The sights and roads were stunning, even with a smoke-filled sky.

Wednesday, we visited Mount Rushmore, the Art Alley in Rapid City, and the South Dakota Air and Space Museum before panning for gold in Keystone

My one request on this trip was that we take time to go visit Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. We spent a couple hours driving to NW Wyoming and arrived at the park a few minutes after the thunderstorm did. I managed one decent picture before we bugged out and headed back to South Dakota. Our route back home took us through the beautiful Spearfish Canyon.

We spent the day Friday visiting the Badlands and Wall Drug. Thankfully, the sky cooperated for some panoramic photography.

We had an amazing trip with my parents. I hope you enjoy the photos!

Ken and me at the start of the 2021 Great Race in his 1968 Camaro SS

2021 Great Race (An ambitious first blog post.)

August 7, 2021

The story of our 2021 Great Race experience begins two years prior. An email appears in my inbox forwarded by my father-in-law, Ken. The subject line reads “2020 Great Race Entry.” Ken has applied and been accepted into the Great Race with his 1968 Chevrolet Camaro SS. I’ve heard Ken mention the Great Race a few times over the years – it turns out that the event has been on his radar for over twenty years.

At the time, I knew next to nothing about the Great Race. Over the next few weeks and months, I would learn more about it including that I was to be the navigator. The Great Race is a competitive controlled speed endurance road rally on public roads. It is a rally for antique and collector cars. The 2021 route went from San Antonio to Greenville, South Carolina via Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina over nine days. Each day, we were given a set of course instructions that detail every turn, speed change, stop, start that we would have to make that day. Our job was to execute those instructions as precisely as possible to create the smallest deviation from the ideal time. The overall winner would receive $50,000.

Ken putting decals on the car before tech inspection.

In the lead up to the event, we attended virtual rookie training sessions, spoke to our assigned mentors Erin and Brad, tested the car, and built some performance data that we would use during the race to determine time lost during each maneuver. Our testing revealed some glaring reliability problems with the car. The week before the race, the car was in the shop having fuel injection removed and a carburetor installed. The fuel tank and fuel pump were changed. Ken got the car back from the shop on Wednesday and we were due downtown for technical inspection the following day. We had no idea if the car would finish the race.

Thursday, June 17 Ken and I drove the Camaro downtown in rush hour traffic. We attended another rookie seminar with Bill Croker and got a few of our last-minute questions answered. We ran a speedometer calibration run to check and see how dialed in our Timewise speedometer was. There was a measured section of I-37 South of downtown that we could run at 50mph to test our speedometer. The first of two runs revealed a 4 second error before the initial calibration. After making the necessary adjustment, the Northbound run was better, but we still had .9 seconds of error. We returned to the La Mansion hotel and checked in in advance of registration and tech inspection.

Friday, June 18th was the Trophy Run which was a practice rally from San Antonio to Boerne and back. Tom joined us for the run today. The run started out with a speedometer calibration run on I-10 West toward Boerne. Traffic was terrible, so we only got a couple small snippets of data. We spent far too long crunching numbers and decided that the speedometer factor was fine where it was. We had a quick lunch at Whataburger in Boerne before we headed off into the backroads for our timed sections. Five legs on this short day resulted in 2 seconds early, 1 second early, 2 seconds late, 8 seconds early, and 8 seconds early. We felt like these were really good results for having exactly zero rally experience.

Saturday June 19th was the first official stage of the competition. The route took us from San Antonio to San Marcos and then onto Temple. Ken and I had a reasonably good stage one. The speedo run up I-35 was full of traffic and no meaningful data could be collected. We received a warm welcome in San Marcos and enjoyed a hosted lunch of Burgers at a brewery just off the town square. The square was blocked off for the cars in park ferme. The start outside the Alamo was great. I am so glad the family and friends could be there. Ken and I had a pretty good day during the timed runs and finished the day with 21 seconds of error.

The second stage on Sunday, June 20th took us from Temple to Ardmore, Oklahoma via Granbury and Nocona. We received our course instructions 30 minutes before our start time today. The previous days had us receiving them the night before. I worked on them frantically for 20 minutes before we took off on our speedometer calibration run. Ken and I missed the 35N turn on the loop and continued unit the loop hit I-35 again and went the wrong direction. Instead of going North, we were going South. It took us nearly 10 minutes to notice the error and turn around. Ken drove us North very fast to get us into position for our timed start at the correct time. We had a good first leg with only 2 seconds of error. Leg 2 was mistake free and resulted in 5 seconds early. Leg 3 saw us get rookied by a another set of rookies. Another competitor took a wrong turn in front of us. We turned back to see if we had missed a turn. We had not. We ended up hacking off the car in front to get back on our minute. Miraculously, we were only off 9 seconds from perfect on the leg. We got a 9 on the next leg as well thanks to an error by me. I got confused by my notes about a speed change. The last two legs were uneventful 3s and 7s. The lunch reception in Granbury and dinner reception in Nocona were amazing. BBQ lunch on the square in Granbury and Pasta dinner on the main street in Nocona. We had private access to Horton’s Classic Car Museum in Nocona before heading to the hotel in Ardmore OK for the night.

Stage 3 on Monday, Jun 21 took us from Ardmore to Sapulpa Oklahoma and then on to Joplin Missouri. Stage 3 will forever be remembered as a pivotal moment in our Great Race experience. We were on in the morning. We felt like we had cracked the code. We achieved our first perfect leg and followed it up with two more really good legs. Then, the car started missing and backfiring. We limped into the lunch stop in Sapulpa and Ken timed the car with the help of a few spectators in the historic museum parking lot where lunch was hosted. I described it to a local reporter as our “God Bless America moment”. We quickly grabbed lunch and headed out for the afternoon stint. The car was still sick. We stopped twice along the interstate to try and get it timed. We retired it and awaited the sweep truck that follows the route each day. Jack rescued us and took us to the hotel in Joplin where our wives Chris and Erin were waiting. Ken and I were convinced our race was done. He had already begun making alternate plans for the remainder of the week. He texted our mentor to let him know of our plight. Our mentor immediately fired back the name of a talented mechanic traveling with the race. Hal of Quick Everett’s garage from Chattanooga quickly diagnosed the car. The girls made parts runs. Patrick, Jack, Hal and another volunteer from North Carolina. helped us diagnose the car and get it ready for the next day. Ken and I had been certain that our race was done. These folks weren’t about to let that happen. Patrick and Jack - two total strangers hours before - worked feverishly into the night to ready the car. That is the spirit of the Great Race! Our results for the day were our first Ace, 5s, 1s, miss, dnf. Thankfully, we could drop the last two legs along with three others from the first five days.

The ‘68 awaiting the sweep truck. We thought our race was done.

The spirit of the Great Race summed up in one photograph.

Stage 4 on June 22 took us from Joplin to Cape Girardeau via Rolla. There was a tasty Italian lunch in Rolla hosted by the Chamber Chicks. Stage 4 was where we became well versed with time delays. We had a total of 3:20 seconds of time delays from slow traffic. The dinner and reception in Cape Girardeau were incredible. Our stage four results were 6E, 21E, 6E, Ace, and 10E.

Stage 5 on June 24 took us from Cape Girardeau to Paducah and on to Owensboro. There was a great hosted lunch outside in Paducah. Dinner was outside the Bluegrass Hall of Fame in Owensboro. The hospitality of our hosts and the spectators impressed me daily. On the road, we were early at check point 1 from front loading a cornering loss. That leg was a 6s early that could have been an ace. On Leg 2, we missed a sign while discussing makeup from a previous maneuver. We began a hack as soon as we realized we were off course. We were near the back of the field when we got lost, we got back on course, passed the timing van and the Fredettes in their yellow truck. We had nearly caught the car ahead when we passed check point 2. We would be 40s early on the leg necessitating the use of another drop. On leg 3, things settled down somewhat. We took three ten second delays for spacing and netted a 7s early. At check point 4 we arrive 12s early after having a ten second time delay for spacing. At check point 5 we were 2 seconds early and recorded a 30 second time delay. We briefly crossed over into Illinois and paused in Metropolis for a picture with a Superman statue. We crossed the Ohio river before lunch. At CP6 we recorded an ACE! At CP7, we were 7E and had a 40s TD.

Stage 6 on Thursday, June 24 took us from Owensboro Kentucky to Lexington via Elizabethtown. We had tons of tractor time delays. I made a mistake recording a 3-minute time delay on the first leg and turned what should have been a 2 second leg into a 2:58 second leg. We had a quick lunch at Elizabethtown Park because of 18 minutes of time delays in the morning. There was a very unsafe restart on a highway off ramp that had us waiting on the side of the highway. We did our first rolling start at the suggestion of Ron in the ’32 blue Speedster. Unfortunately, The leg was discarded for construction. We missed the My Old KY Home State Park break completely. Another navigation error – thankfully, on an untimed section. More farm equipment in the afternoon and a 11s leg, 5s leg, and a 9s final leg.

Stage 7 on Friday took us from Lexington into West Virginia. Lunch was in Huntington and Dinner was in Beckley. Things really came together for us on Stage 7 and we had a 7s day adjusted to 6.93. We won rookie that day and were 5th on the day overall. There were lots of transitions on leg 1. I wrote the word “unsafe” 4x in notes on the first leg referring to some speeds that we felt were too fast even though they were within the posted speed limit. We got a 1 second late at check point 1. Leg 2 saw us get an ace on a leg with some makeups that carried over into timed maneuvers requiring some fast math. We also had a mistake by Ken that required a seat of the pants correction by him. Leg 3 had a lengthy 15mph section around a traffic circle. We were 2s early on that leg. Leg 4 we executed 1 second early. At lunch in Huntington, we met a man whose wife had been corresponding with Erin about stitch shops. Small world. We had lunch in the historic train station. After lunch Hal again diagnosed some vapor locking issues we were having with the car. On the last leg, the car malfunctioned a bit and we over corrected resulting in a 3E.

Me holding our plaque for being Rookie Class Winner on Stage 7.

Stage 8 on June 26 started the championship run. There would be no dropped legs for the final two days. The route took us from Beckley to Galax, Virginia for lunch and on to Mooresville, NC for dinner. We did a 6L, 1L, 8E, 5E, 33E, 45E, 8E on the day. The 33E and 45E had lots of time delays and vapor locking on the car. Ken having to pop clutch to keep it going. Great day strategically and tactically. We would have had a great result if the car had been behaving. Stage 8 had a huge maze toward the end through a neighborhood that drove us nuts. We managed not to miss any instructions despite being task saturated wrestling with the sick car.

Four of six eventual ace stickers for perfect scores on a leg. Proof that strategy, execution, and luck sometimes line up.

Stage 9 on Sunday June 27th was day two of the championship run and marked the finish of the 2021 Great Race. We started the day 20th on the road. Our scores for the day were 2L, 2E, 7E, 6E, Ace. The short day began with a 2L on leg 1. We thought the first three legs might have been aces. We were firing on all cylinders. On the last leg, we thought we might have missed a sign. Thankfully, we did not. We finished strong, 33rd on the last day.

Crossing the finish line in Greenville, SC.

Overall, we were 42nd of 87 finishers. We had 4 minutes and 41 seconds of deviation. With our .990 car age handicap, our final score was 4m 38.19. The event winners were 51s with a .810 handicap for 41.31s of error. The rookie winners had a score of 2m01s. The sportsman class winners had a total error of 1m11s. We placed 4th in the rookie class out of 38 rookie teams.

When we started, we wondered if we would do it again. Would we be one and done? Would we finish? Would we have fun? The car was the biggest question mark. Would it run to the end? In the end, we did finish. We did have fun. We are going to do it again.

I am very grateful to Ken for the opportunity. I am thankful to Chris and Erin for being our support crew. I am thankful to my parents for watching Hannah and the dog while we were off racing. I am thankful to our mentors Brad and Erin who provided excellent support along the way. I am especially thankful to Patrick, Jack, Hal, and the others who fixed the car in Missouri enabling and encouraging us to continue. It is that spirit that has us coming back for ’22.

My view for 10 days. I can’t wait to do it again!

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Jul 6, 2023