Thursday, July 24, 2008

Vintage Races at Elkhart Lake

Once again it is that time, time for the Brian Redman Challenge, the vintage auto races at Road America, Elkhart Lake, WI. Ross and I left the cities very early Friday morning, dropping Toad off at Luka's house. Our goal was to get to Madison by 11:30ish in order to have lunch with Moria and Edward. We actually stayed on schedule and made great time. We walked to a Turkish restaurant just down the street from their house (ah, Monroe Street, ah, Madison!) and had a wonderful meal with wonderful conversation. Nice to see them both looking well.

Then it was a very easy drive from Madison to Elkhart Lake, so easy that we decided to go that way in the future. Got to the track in time to set up our tent, get informed about Scott's secret plan to propose to Jen, and drive into Elkhart Lake with Clancy. Friday evening is the race car concours, when selected race cars drive from the track into town and get admired and judged. Scott's plan was to stop at this specific corner, jump out and propose to Jen (who would be riding with him in the Sprite). Photos of this event are on my flickr page.

The concours was great. Saturday was great; the usual combination of racing, relaxing, walking around a lot, putting earplugs in and out of ears, looking at stuff for sale, etc. Scott had some good qualifying sessions - he and Clancy run their Austin Healey Sprite race car. The street car concours on Saturday night was nice, too.

Saturday night we got rained on from about 1 a.m. until about 6 a.m., but my tent kept us dry. The rest of the day was just right; Scott's race was at 9:30? and went beautifully until an incident with an early-braking Austin healey 3000 put Scott in the difficult position of deciding between hitting the Healey or going off into the gravel. So he spent half of the race in the gravel... frankly, the better choice. The Can-Am race was exciting, with the L&M Lola in second place and never quite able to fight for first.

Then Ross and I got packed up, said our goodbyes and hit the road, heading north through Green Bay, then Wausau, on our way to St. Germain where Ross' mom's side of the family was having a week at a cabin. There we joined Ross' mom Sara, her sisters Abby and Sue, Sue's husband Fred, Abby's daughter Melynn, her husband Jeff and their daughter Lexi. Nice quiet cabin on Found Lake. Fun time spotting eagles, frogs, turtles, loons. Played Wii games - fun.

And despite all the relaxing we had over the course of the five days, we came home exhausted and in need of sleeping in!

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