Not home yet. Stopped in Tennessee to see family and fix cars.
Highlight? Scaring the neighbors with Accordianfolder's Exocet. That thing is a hoot!
Three trips to the auto parts store. Lots of people ask "where you race that?"
Made an IV bag for mom's Equinox.
Fastest I have ever bled one of these. Now she has heat.
Heading back to Missouri tomorrow.
Edit -- Back home, made it through a little sleet just 10 miles from home so no biggie. Hope everybody else is home safe too!
In reply to white_fly :
Jordan Rimpela said:I attracted a friend:
Hey, I know that license plate!!
alfadriver said:SVreX said:sleepyhead the buffalo said:In reply to Pete Gossett :
is the 57 cars with scores a record for challenge?
I don’t think so.
IIRC, there were 72 in 2004.
Considering the last week posts of people not going, 57 is really strong! Great job, ALL!
Actually only 54 once you remove the exhibition cars. Only 50 managed to participate in all three diciplines.
In reply to hobiercr :
Your friend is one of the coolest people ive met in a while.
I'm seeing a couple of Spec V's, one of which looks exactly like my black '03 that I sold in 2011.
i'm pulling my photos off the sd card and, damn, I wish I had the proper lenses and photographic skills. I catch some awesome shots, but they're never quite right...
I'm going to separate all my photos (like 900+ photos!) into Google Drive folders for each car, and then post the links to the folders here. Stay tuned....
What an amazing event! Since I subscribed as a kid, I have wanted to compete in this. I'm over the moon that our team of students represented Purdue University Northwest and brought home some hardware! Because of our success of this event, the college of technology here is gearing up to make this a recurring event for the university! A big thanks from the MET Club for the compliments, pointers, and friendliness, this was a great experience! We found a lot of areas to improve and we get to over-engineer the CRAP out of this chassis for our senior design project. Let's see if we can bring home that 200tw plaque one more time..
P.S. If anyone can get me in contact with our hero the professional driver (far right) who got us 8th in autocross, that would be great! He deserves a care package from the club
Here's some real blurry phone pics.
Some drag racing matchups:
Hellcat burnout:
Most importantly though, this old Funny Car body by the paddock. (Can we find a way to buy this and make it into a challenge entry? Please?)
So our story.
leave home(just SW of Cleveland) Tuesday at 11am. I wanted to leave at 8 but didn't feel well and decided we would get there when we get there. Around 8pm after an uneventful ride we got to dusterbd13 house in albemarle NC. Successfully unloaded Darth Nader between the two of us and our exceptional wives. Unloaded any parts staying there. Loaded the E55 AMG and strapped it in.
Once the benz was tied we put back any ancillaries and left to get dinner at Cook Out. Damn that was cheap. All 4 of us ate for $14 and there was food left over. By the time we rolled out of their lot it was 10pm and I wanted to get a couple hours and stop. Well, on 52 towards 95 there is nothing. We hit 95 somewhere north of Florence SC after a diesel stop. At that stop I got the monster sized fountain coke at speedway to sip until we got to a hotel that was in a good stopping point AND could take a trailer like mine.
Turns out, that hotel never came. By 2am we were in Savanna, and I decided I was not paying for a hotel room for 5 hours nor was I wasting the fact that I was almost all alone on I-95. Made a 5ish am diesel stop at I-10 and 301 and pointed SSW. Rolled into Gainesville as the sun and city were waking up, and hit the hotel parking lot at 6:50am.
At that point I had planned to sleep in the truck so I went to the front desk to inform them we were early and to please don't tow us, and ask if we could check in a couple hours early around 2. Jasmine flat hooked us up, nobody had stayed in our room that night so she checked me in at 7am and we slept till around 10. We took advantage of the opportunity and did lots of pool time, relaxed in the hot tub, unloaded the Benz, and went to Publix before anyone else even showed up.
Wednesday night was dinner with Jeremy, Andy, Chris, and Stampie and his mom. Then we unloaded the PLB golf cart and the ungodly heavy trophies and loaded the entirety of the stuff I had dragged down for Stampie.
thursday morning we commenced the PLBs. Richard took charge on the camaro suspension, awsxnumbers Andrew and myself along with Andy Neuman jumped on the benz, and Chris(awsx little brother) jumped on the golf cart with jeremy. Documentation pics of this are in Andy's PLB thread, as i was too busy working. In all we did hoosiers, nitrous, vinyl, oil cooler leak, and full tuneup. Nonack kicked ass and did all the crappy crawling around under the car work and mounted the bottle. Mrs surfshibby helped run nitrous wires. Andy did some wheel stud stuff and Andrew did the whole tuneup. Tim helped snake wires, and Gumby helped snake wires and apply vinyl. I'm sure there was more help but it's hard to remember. I took a ride out the hotel driveway and back and deemed it good
Golf cart came out awesome too
about the time we loaded up and were strapping the car into the trailer, a smiling man was standing on the trailer ramp. "Is it a real AMG? I've always wanted one." He was extremely excited, borderline giddy. He was also Alan McCrispin. I asked if he wanted to take the pro runs, and he said yes and run it early because the cool would benefit the big power n/a v8 and the car would make its own heat in the tires.
Alan piloted the big Benz to a 46.55 which ended up 12th fastest autocross car of the day. I don't think he could wipe the smile off his face afterward. At that point our cylinder 8 misfire had returned so we shut it down and let it cool enough to change out number 8 coil without getting burned.
(to be continued)
At that point we decided a Hogan's run was in full effect. We needed to keep ourselves and families from getting hangry. So Jonah, myself, Mrs Bobzilla, colin, and Gumby took the SHO on a sandwich run
After some cool down time and borrowing a T30 from the Westside guys, Gumby and I changed out the number 8 coil and I swapped over to the drag radials. After autocross we convoyed the pit setup to the pavilion area. After a series of unfortunate events including misplacing the nitrous fuse(huge thanks to GT for trying to help and Bob for finding a fuse) I was able to make a pass. The car hooked and went straight. The misfire came back around 800' but I stayed in it to a 13.002@104.
At that point I shut it down and soon afterwards Jonah called his wife and convinced her she needed an E55 AMG. Also, after shaking hands on the deal, Carli took it out and did her first pass on sticky tires.
we packed it in for the night.
(to be continued)
In reply to AAZCD :
Thanks for sharing some really great shots! (and a special thanks for capturing a shot of me and the boys in the car 
)
Saturday- concours day! We moseyed in the morning, assuming that no judging would happen until Jonny got there. Well, we were wrong, Jonny got booted from judging duties for being late. Great, we had given him golf cart rides and helped him remember that I hooked him up on some wheels and even sold them on credit to him. So we had a judge in our pocket that was no longer judging.
At some point I found Stampie to deliver a hug from Seth, who in turn told me to send a kiss to Seth. Luckily it was the chocolate kind, I don't do beard kisses
no matter. We were there to make tacos. Lots of tacos, for a good cause. Between john hoopes, myself, and keith we had 3 grills. Mndsm tom and his GF along with my wife Carli killed it with prep work while I sliced 40 pounds of chicken. I'm sure there are plenty of pictures of this, but I don't have any. somewhere around 200 tacos were consumed and all said and done after the buffalo and GRM stepped up we raised $800 for the Random Acts of Kindness Everywhere Socktober drive, which provides clean warm socks to the homeless in greater Cleveland. Ricky who started RAKE informed me that we have given approximately 2,000 pairs of socks to the cause which is very important to me, I believe in taking care of those in my community who don't have the means to help themselves. I know lots of people helped pull that together, and I wish I could remember everyone, but I was running on a few hours of sleep in 4 days at that point.
We had a blast, and the kids brought home some hardware
Prior to the banquet, I felt it necessary to leave my mark on the HongNorr tow rig, in comic sans for full effect
also something very special happened. As you guys know we lost Mark (Spin Out) this year to cancer. Mark was a very important part of our challenge journey, and I'm getting teary thinking about it. But Colin and I went over to talk to Tod for a few, and while doing that Tod gave Colin one of Mark's valve cover racers and he gave me Mark's favorite paint gun. I'll treasure that forever and remember what a great guy Mark was every time I use it.
Thus concludes our 2019 challenge journey, the stuff that I can remember or is not confidential anyways. What happens at the challenge stays at the challenge unless we choose to share it
While I was bummed at not having a car in the competition this year, it was great to come down and see everyone! Still need to download pics to the computer and post the decent ones.
OK, some photos from the phone:
A huge thanks to everyone for the effort put in and a bigger thanks to Patrick for letting me hang out with the cool kids and taking a small part of the Tibby for a 13 second pass (one 30A fuse).
Patrick said:
At some point I found Stampie to deliver a hug from Seth, who in turn told me to send a kiss to Seth. Luckily it was the chocolate kind, I don't do beard kisses
When a sexy bearded man offers you a kiss you should take one.
In reply to Stampie :
I know I did.
I'm very sad I wasn't in the middle of that interaction. 
In reply to problemaddict :
I believe that was the fastest run, too.
Project P71 entry from Team - Roll As You Are Inc and Paradox Skatepark Youth Center ! We have some photos on our Facebook page here:https://www.facebook.com/rollasyouareinc/photos/pcb.1711906535607106/1711898498941243/?type=3&av=932096310254803&eav=AfYxXvOwQbHDc7-WWx3XGyP-GNMQ9Na6Ycd1OGuoDoS38fkefahENSYOt0EA-5_93WU&theater
About a dozen students ages 8 to 16 worked on this one!
In reply to TIGMOTORSPORTS :
I was really hoping the kids were going to skate on the P71 at some point.
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