Downtown Boston, start of Great Race 2000.
Great Race is all about the people you meet and the stories you bring home, and we certainly do have memories that are funny now, but at the time, not so much.
In 2000, from Boston to Sacramento, it rained for the first 4 days. We were running our little 1957 Triumph TR3, easily the smallest car in the event and the first to take advantage of Tom McRae’s expansion of eligibility to ’50s sports cars.
The TR used separate side curtains for door windows. Ours were being rebuilt in Pennsylvania but were not ready in time for the start. We had a top, but we still got wet. The little car was close to the ground, and the doors were short: every truck or car passing us sprayed water in our faces from its tires.
Traveling through rural Pennsylvania meant Amish country. The roads were rough, and potholes filled with water, so they were impossible to see and avoid. Add to the mix the Amish cart “exhaust,” and every pothole resulted in a spray of brown water on us, into the car, and even into the engine compartment. Janet had to improvise protection for the route instructions. At the end of the day, our arms were brown, the car was brown, the engine was brown, the inside of the windshield was brown…
The shop that rebuilt the side curtains got them to us by day 3, and that helped a lot. But there were more challenges to come, and that’s another story.