Revenge of Return of the Son of Surfing the Asphalt Playground

CHAPTER TWO: BONNEVILLE

If you missed the last post, back up and check it out. Otherwise, this one won’t make even less sense than usual. Uh, you know what I mean, right?

From Arnold, Nebraska, we headed west to Bonneville, for what was left of Speed Week. Our job was to cover the event for HRD and cop more pix for the CarTech book, but we’d missed a lot of it. And I was committed to crew for one team and drive for another. It turned out that neither team produced a car on the salt, so we were free to sniff out stories. It worked out pretty well. We connected with a lot of old friends and made some new ones – a total success. Apply your heavy duty sunblock and wander with us...

         We drove west through the Sandhills. Coyote spotting indicated we were approaching Wyoming.

We pulled into Kimball, Nebraska for gas and breakfast (in that order!), and found some items of interest on a smalltown Sunday morning.

As per GBR tradition, we spent the night at a rundown motel in Rock Springs, Wyoming. (Model: Rocky Gosson)

             Approaching Utah on Monday morning. This is where things started to go severely weird.

We entered this tunnel feeling fine. That’s the last normal thing we remember. Next thing we knew, it was over twelve hours later and we were waking up from an apparent nap at a rest area somewhere. I won’t lie – we were rattled. When we finally thought to look for clues on the camera, these are the images we found. We have no memory of any of this:

                           Kinda strange, huh? Oh well, what are ya gonna do? Shut up and drive...

                                                         Snapshots of Speed Week 2012:

  

As always, it was great to connect with old pals House (SCTA Tech Inspector) and P-Dub (Tireless Worker Bee), who were both thrashing while we jangled. These guys are genuine hot rod angels. They've saved my ass so many times...

Night life in Wendover...

                                      

Speaking of night life, on the way up to our room, we came across yet another Wee Eel (I think they built seven of these), parked on a stairway landing. Closer inspection revealed evidence of casino workers using the empty engine compartment for other purposes. Eeew!

And before we ever saw it coming, Speed Week was all used up. Again. We had these kids blow the salt off of the HHR (as demonstrated on this Model A pickup) and made tracks for the Concours de Elegance at Pebble Beach. Stand by for that fish-out-of-water story...