Day five proved to be the worst yet. A big storm hit the salt. Lots of rain and winds of 70 mph were going on while the crew slept. We arrived as usual at 0600. No one was allowed on the salt except the SCTA work force. The c.b. was being monitored to see how bad things were. The course was reported very wet and a lot of damage in the pits. Tents blown away and so on. We had not taken down our tents as usual, as we were just too darn tired to do so the night before, so we expected the worst. After a two hour biting our nails wait, they opened the gates. Lots of water to the left of the road going to the pit area. The impound area was under water. We all thought that this wasn't good for the EZ Hook machine, who was scheduled to back up his 334 record speed.

We got to our pit and started to inspect the damage. Both tent awnings were gone; the salt trailer awning was gone; the tents frame work was twisted, bent and broken and lying on the ground; one of the tent pipes had hit the nose of the liner, putting a big gouge in the paint work, and the big shocker was that the fiberglass tail of the streamliner was gone. "Woe is me," I thought. "We have a major problem here in river city." I sent a couple of scouts out to look for the tail section in the direction of the big wind, and started getting the tent poles sorted out.

John, looking at the situation, figured that there was going to be a run on anything that resembled an awning or tarp, and figured he better get into Wendover as soon as he could to get tarps or whatever. So off John went to Wendover.

No sooner had John left than one of the pit crew found our main tent awning stuffed under the highway trailer. The wind didn't do that. Someone had to have put it there. Kinda like Goldilocks and the three bears, "Someone has been eating my porridge". Someone had been in our pit during the storm and tried to help. Another crew member that was straightening up the tools and wiping things down found a note in the tool box. It was from the night security force that is tasked with keeping looters off the salt. The note told us where everything was. They had put the liner's tail section in one of those high rollers 18 wheelers. You'll never hear me bitch about those guys again. So for those of you who think there are no good people left in the world, think again. There are still a few.

Terry Prince was straightening some of the bent poles and sorting that mess out. Five of the poles were beyond repair. When John got back with the tarps, John and I made a bee line back into town to get some more electrical conduit pipe at the only hardware store in Wendover. Got five sticks of conduit. Back to the pits. We had the pit up and running in about four hours. It was now noon.

So it was back to fixing the blower drive. The job was finished about 3 p.m. I fired it up a couple of times, dialing in the fuel curve. Now she was responding like a good girl. I decided not to take the liner to the line. After the no fire the first time we took it to the line; and the second time was the aborted run. Both taking 7 and 1/2 hours of waiting in line, I wanted to at least make a full pass before the meet was over.

We loaded everything up and headed for the tow up area. It was luckily pretty dry salt. This time we would fire up the liner and Don was told to give it a couple of throttle ups. He did and each time he hit the throttle it left a black mark on the salt for about 100 feet. He hit the throttle twice and managed to get the liner stopped by using the brake. Again on the second throttle up, the transmission popped out of gear. We could live with this as it wasn't coming out of gear under power. Not perfect, but livable. Back to the pits. By this time it was too late to get back in line. It was over for the day. so back to Wendover for the night life of the big city. For me that meant food, shower and bed. One thing I forgot. The EZ Hook made the back up run to make her the fastest in the world. We gave Sam a bottle of bubbly and our congratulations.