The Mazda Miata is a small, sporty car that seats two people and is really fun to drive. It's known for being light and easy to handle, making it a favorite for people who love driving fast and enjoying the open road.
The Honda Civic is a small car that many people use for daily driving. It's known for being dependable and economical, and some versions are used in racing.
The Big Bend Open Road Race is a race that takes place on regular roads in Texas. Drivers compete to see who can complete the course the fastest, and it's set in a beautiful area.
A road rally is a type of driving event where participants follow a set route and try to finish as close to a target time as possible. It's about timing and navigation, not just speed.
A bracket race is a racing format where drivers are grouped based on how fast their cars are. They try to run their best time without going too fast, which helps make the race fairer.
In the unlimited class of racing, there are no speed limits for the cars. This means drivers can go as fast as they want, which makes it very exciting but also very dangerous.
Cruise control is a feature in cars that lets you set a speed so you don't have to keep pressing the gas pedal. The car will maintain that speed for you.
The C5 Corvette is a sports car made by Chevrolet that was produced between 1997 and 2004. Some versions of this car had a feature that allowed the cruise control to be set to very high speeds.
Horsepower is a way to measure how powerful an engine is. The higher the horsepower, the more work the engine can do, which usually means it can go faster.
Premium fuel is a special kind of gasoline that is better for high-performance cars. It helps the engine run smoothly and prevents problems like knocking.
A fire suppression system is a safety tool in cars that helps put out fires quickly if they start. It's important for keeping drivers safe during races.
Open road races are competitions where drivers can race their cars on regular roads that are closed off to other traffic. This lets them drive fast without worrying about other cars.
Final drive is a part of the car's drivetrain that affects how fast the car can go and how quickly it can accelerate. A lower number means better acceleration but might limit top speed.
Driving at 100 miles an hour means going really fast—about as fast as many cars can go on highways. It's important to be careful and skilled at that speed.
Land speed racing is a type of racing where cars try to go as fast as possible over a straight distance. This usually happens on flat roads or special areas, and the cars can be very unique and modified for speed.
The Silver State Classic is a racing event that happens every year in Nevada where cars race on closed roads. It allows different types of cars to compete, making it exciting for both drivers and spectators.
Car
Superlite SLC
The Superlite SLC is a fast and lightweight sports car made for racing. It's built to be very quick and handle well on tracks.
The Porsche Cayman GT4 RS Club Sport is a special version of the Cayman sports car made for racing. It's built to be fast and light, making it great for the track.
The Honda Odyssey is a big family car that can fit a lot of people and their stuff. It's designed to be comfortable and safe for families, making it a popular choice for parents who need space for kids and gear.
Arm restraints are straps that keep a driver's arms inside the car during a crash. They help keep the driver safe by preventing their arms from getting hurt if the car flips or crashes.
The Porsche 911 is a famous sports car that many people love for its speed and unique shape. It's been around for a long time and is very popular among car fans.
LIVE
Hi, I'm Scott, and I'm Seth, and we are Track Walking.
Today, Seth probably isn't going to be able to hear me because he can't hear, and, yeah,
he can't hear great. It turns out riding around in a race car for a week is not great for a lot of
parts of your health, ears primarily. So this is what I was going to ask you before we recorded,
and then I didn't, and then we started recording. Did you not wear hearing protection?
I wore hearing protection every day, but today, because we were in and out of the car a lot. We
were doing touristy things today. And also it was too hot because if I put your plugs in,
my ears would have been hotter than they were, and everything was hot because some dickhead encouraged
Brian to pull the air conditioning out of his race car. He wanted to go faster, you know?
So hot today. Are his windows tinted? Yes, and that's, I had, at one point, I had to roll up
the passenger side window because the sun is just trying to cook me alive. And so we have the
other three windows of the car down. And I'm just like, I just, I just want to not be dead because
we're, we're, so I'm in, I'm in Tirlingua, Texas, which is very Mexico-y, very, very far south,
west of Big Bend National Park. Okay. And we're up at like 3800 feet or something.
So we're up quite a bit. I don't think clouds exist here. We haven't seen any yet.
It's a dry heat, is what I've heard. It is dry. Like, it's very dry. I don't, things aren't really
alive here. But today we had a, we had a temperature spike. Temperatures actually,
we've been, have been really good on this whole trip until today. And it was 98 degrees
today. And so driving back from our, from our exploration-y things that we were doing,
we were just sort of baking alive in the car because it was 98 outside. And when you stepped
out of the car, you're like, oh, that feels better. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I remember in old days
in the Miata, I would easily get to 120 in there, just rough. I don't, I don't think it was
that hot, but like my, the bottoms of my feet were hot because the bottom of the car is hot.
I mean, you might be surprised 120 may not be as hot as you think it is.
I don't know. It was, it was hot. We had fun though. We have been having fun.
Yeah. Well, you, so when you and I recorded last, you were leaving the next morning
to go on this big kind of adventure that you invited yourself on that Brian was going to go do
in his, I'll call it his old GLTC Civic, but his current race car. Right. And what were those things?
So the, the thing that the trip was built around was the Big Bend open road race,
which goes between Fort Stockton, Texas and Sanderson, Texas. Anyone who feels like
Googling those on the map, they're tiny towns. I was about to say for those of us who are not
familiar with the continent of Texas, give us ballpark. Go west until you run out of people.
Okay. El Paso? No. Okay. No. It's middle west. Okay. So like, like once you get west of
San Antonio and stuff, you're like, well, there's a whole lot of fuck all until you get to the other
side of the state. That's where we've been for the last week. Gotcha. In, in that general area.
I am, I am familiar with the sand and occasional hill and mountain.
Yeah. And so, so south of iten from iten down to the Mexico border in that area of Texas
that doesn't have anything. That's where we've been hanging out. And it kind of makes sense
if you want to close 60 miles of road and have everybody be okay with it,
you need to not have that much going on. Yeah. And so, and so people actually like,
go and do this on a regular basis, like drive in. They do it, they do it twice a year now.
They did it once a year for, it's been going on for like 27 years, really long time. And
so I can't, if I had to learn what an open road race was, I thought I knew what it was.
Well, I hear that and I hear road rally. Okay. And I, I think it's similar in that it's like
average speed timed on a set course. Yeah. So, so what it is, it's a, it's a 59 mile course
that you run north to south and then south to north. Both legs count. It's a cumulative thing. So
what you're trying to do is achieve the perfect time for your speed class. So it's like a really,
really, really long bracket race. Yes. Okay. So it's kind of the halfway between a bracket
race and a road rally, if that makes sense. And so since the roads shut down, are there any
like stop signs and stuff that you just get to ignore? You get to ignore everything. Yeah, that's
amazing. Yeah, like there's no, there's, there aren't the, the only speed limits I'll get into
this, the speed limits are associated with your class. And that's a safety thing until you get
to the high classes, the unlimited class, which doesn't have a speed limit. So the only
people are doing what you would think of as like an open road race, how fast can I get from
point A to point B is the unlimited class. And of the 130 entries, there was only
five of them, I think, and maybe only three of them actually started the race because those
cars are trying to kill themselves all the time. And so the unlimited class is like,
that's not bracket, that's just raw, who can get there the quickest? They're judged on raw
average speed, whoever achieves the highest speed with, you know, done with both runs, 118 miles
wins. And they did reset the record this year, the record was 13 years old.
The, the, the new thing was 173 point something, miles per hour, average. And the,
there's a place, there's a straight stretch of road where they measure trap speed. And their
trap speed was 211 miles an hour in, in there. So.
And I assume this is a fair bit of highway?
It's two lane road.
Two lane roads.
Two lane road. It's some parts are wider because they have passing lanes in them,
but it's, it's Texas two lane road. Normally it would be a 70 mile an hour road,
which in Texas doesn't mean much, like any two lane road can be a 70, 70 mile an hour road
in Texas. But there's, there's turns in them. There's definitely turns. There's two spots,
three spots where the sign indicates that if you're a reasonable human, you should slow
it down to 60 miles an hour for those corners. Challenge accepted.
Yeah. And the, the general thought is the, for what they call the slow classes, there's,
there's three classes which are the lower prep classes you can either do.
Try to get a hundred mile an hour average, 105 or 110. The idea is that those cars, if you,
if you're kind of not bad at what you're doing, you shouldn't have to go
slower than your average speed through those corners. And, and when we get Brian on the
show, I want Brian to talk about what the event was like for him. Like I'm coming at it from
my standpoint. I did not drive the event. I did not navigate the event. I was just there
looking at the idiocy that was this event. Okay. But the guys who are trying to win are,
have their cruise control on the fastest I talked to somebody, they have had their
cruise control set at 130 and they went through. I'm shocked that OEMs would let their cruise
control be set that high. Fun story. You have to buy a certain year of C5 Corvette
to have that happen. There's like two or three years you can do it. Not the very early years.
You don't want those, but like the last three years of C5 had unlimited cruise control on them.
And then they took that away. And like the, especially the C8 Corvette owners are just
pissed. They're like, what do you mean cruise control stops at 100? This is bullshit. So it's
hilarious. Yeah. Okay. Crimey River. What, the, so the unlimited cars, what,
what kind of cars are we talking about? One GTR and I think all the rest of them
are Corvettes. Okay. C6, C7. What reset the record?
What's that? The one that reset the record was a C6. No, C7. Sorry. I apologize. Was a C7
thousand-ish horsepower. As he said, he was like, I can make more, but I don't know if I
can make more reliably for, for 118 miles. That's fair. And so nice guy, super nice guy.
His navigator, the woman who's his navigator, super, super nice lady. We talked to them
randomly in the registration line. We stood next to them in the registration line. So we
talked to them for about 20 minutes and they were the nicest people about the fact that
Brian was his first event and he had no idea what was going on. And then they asked this
question like, what fuel are you using? And we're like, we're, no, no, no, we're not playing
that game. That's totally a different game. I don't know. Pump? Yeah. Premium if we can get it.
But yeah. So the idea is that you're, you're driving down there. The classes go in five
mile an hour increments from 100 to 160 and then unlimited. That seems like a lot of classes
basically, right? Yeah. But they, you're, you're required to start in one of the three lowest
classes and then you have to, you actually have to work your way up. You can't just sign up for
unlimited. You have to do some of the lower speed classes first. There's significant differences
in safety. Like the, the unlimited cars are, are full, like full very serious cage,
fire suppression, you know, all the good, all the bits and pieces up to 110 mile an hour
class. You need to have, you know, like a car with a fire extinguisher mounted and like cotton
pants in a helmet, like, but as one does. Yeah. So like autocross levels of prep basically.
Yeah. That's like HPD. Yeah. HPD basically, except I want a fire extinguisher in the car
in case, I guess. Yeah. And so yeah, what you're trying to do is the, the official race
distance is 59.0 miles down, 59.0 miles back. And you need to calculate what the perfect time for
that is and meet to that time. You can't exceed, you have a maximum speed that you can't exceed
through speed traps. And they've got five or six guys out there with radar guns
at places they don't tell you where they are, but they're out there. And for Brian's
class, he can't exceed 124 miles an hour. Okay. And you can't go below 30 miles an hour
below your target speed. Okay. Because like you, you can't just like get 10, right? You can't get
10 feet from the finish line and just wait. So that's basically the rules. Like, and there's,
there's other than safety, there's no rules for car prep. There's none of that stuff. It's
just, you know, show up past tech, try to hit your target time and do that. And people get
real serious about it. Like it's racing, of course. Yeah, there's rumors of a guy who has
his cruise control slaved to a computer. Oh, it has won his class multiple times.
So GPS just kind of takes care of what speed it needs to be.
Takes care of your speed and you just do steering.
That seems creepy to me. It seems weird to me too. Just the, the level of, of precision that,
that they're doing it. And I don't know, it's, I don't want to say it doesn't seem fun because
everyone there was having fun. It seems interesting. It doesn't necessarily seem
like something I'm interested in doing myself. We'll get Brian on the show because Brian needs
to talk about his experience as a driver and that sort of thing. But I was basically just
along because it's, it's one of those events that I had heard about and I knew about,
but it's so far away and you know, it takes up a whole long weekend that there was no way
I was just going to go do it. And like, it's not a spectator event, right? Like you don't,
you can't even really go out and watch the start.
Right. You certainly can't watch the course unless you're a volunteer
because the road's closed. And so basically you hang out with people and then you hang out
with people some more and you talk to people and then they go away and do the event and then
they come back. Is there any sort of like live timing? No. No. As a matter of fact, nobody
knows the results until the awards banquet. Okay. So it is a very unique automotive event.
Sounds like it. For the people who want to go fast, there is nothing like this as far as the
open road races go. Like you, you know, you're talking about being able to drive a Corvette
at 160 miles an hour on a public road with the police clapping for you.
Yeah. Was that you posted a picture with the cops behind the Civic?
So the other aspect of this is these two, these are these two small towns, especially
Sanderson on the south side has like a population of 600 and so. And these events are a big deal
for these towns. They get people into the hotels, they get people into the restaurants
and one of the things they do in Fort Stockton the night before the race is they do a parade
through town. Nice. And Brian and we're like, God, we want to do the parade and they throw candy to
the kids and we like didn't have candy and we're like, do you want to do it? And sort of everybody
lined up and Brian's like, ah, we'll go do it. So we got in the last car in the line.
And as the parade goes through town, the police that are blocking roads just sort of
tag on to the end of it and tag on to the end of it. And so we got to the point where we had like
nine cop cars with their lights flashing, driving behind us on a road and it was amazing.
It was very blues brother ask. It was it was so good.
So the, how many people, how many other people were in Brian's class?
I think there's 28 holy crap in his one class in the 110 mile an hour class.
And there's a couple of reasons for that. One, it's the, you have to be in 100, 105 or 110 if
you're a rookie. You can't like no matter there's some exceptions if you have experience with
other road races, blah, blah, blah. But if you're a rookie to what's going on, you have to be
in one of the slow classes. You have to prove that you are safe and you know what
you're doing. So there were 30 rookies. So all of those had to be in one of those three
slow classes anyway. The other thing is because basically any car with reasonable tires can
do everything on the course at 110. There's people who are trying like just trying to win,
like they want to win. And 110 is much less stressful on the driver on the car trying to
achieve that perfect time. The faster you're going, the more difficult that is. Not that
the error, I mean, I'll tell you about the errors, like the total time errors on the course in a second.
But, um, yeah, like theoretically, if you have to slow it down for the corners, you have to do a
little bit more calculations, like a little bit more speeding up on the, the fast parts to
hit your average and those sorts of things. So, um, but yeah, a lot of people, um,
how many, how many total entrance if 130? Yeah, I was about to say if you had almost 30 in
brain's class, I had to be a pretty big deal. They cap the spring. The spring event is the
traditional event. That's how the, whether they've held it. The reason they have a fall event now
is they during COVID, the spring event got canceled. And so they held the fall event
and then they went back to holding the spring event and somebody went, wait,
can we do a fall event again too? And they went, yeah, they're like, we can, like, we can
go do the legwork and open entry, but we have to have 100 cars to make it work.
And everybody went awesome and they had like 106. And then they did the spring event and
they were like, are we doing another fall event? And they're like, I guess. And so now they
do spring events and fall events. And the town loves it because now they're not just there
one week a year, they're there two weeks a year in each of those towns. So it's a pretty cool thing.
Nice. And you guys kind of made a big trip out of this too, because the event itself was only
two days? The event itself is one day. Okay. The event itself just happens on a Saturday. Now
there is, if you're a rookie, there is what they call qualifying day. So you have to, they
have a different section of road they shut down, eight miles of road they shut down, and you have
to go out and drive and prove that you, you can, you know, drive a car at 120 miles an hour and
not hyperventilate and, you know, just sort of all that stuff. You can speed the car up,
you can slow the car down. They put in it and put a, not an instructor in your car, but somebody
to give you, it's basically a check ride. And they do those on Wednesday and Thursday.
And then Friday is stuff, driver's meeting. Like, literally, it's, it's like a one hour driver's
meeting is what's on the schedule on Friday. And then the event is on, on Saturday. So Brian
signed up for all the practice, which is the check rides in the practice go on on Wednesday
and Thursday, went through tech on Wednesday, went through the rookie drivers meeting
Wednesday, went through his check rides on Wednesday, did the check ride, did another
pass just for himself to go fast and see how it felt. And then we did, we went out on the
course on Thursday, drove it back and forth a couple times. Then on Friday, we hung out.
I wondered if they'd let you do that. Yeah, it's just, it's just an open road at that
point. Like they can't stop you from doing it. It's a public road.
Sure. So we did that. And then I don't know what we did on Friday. It's been a long week.
And then Saturday, yeah, Friday, we did the drivers meeting and the parade and Friday,
we did the drivers meeting parade, that stuff. Saturday was the event Brian took off in the
morning, got back before dinner time, we did the awards banquet. And then we left to go to
West Texas on Sunday morning. And we did Brian and to talk about what it's like to
actually drive the event and what he thinks about it as a driver and would he recommend it to people
because I just have, I have my opinion as a spectator. I'm not sure that means a whole lot,
but how do you do? How do you do? He did, he would have been about 24, thought of 26,
24th out of 27 on the down leg. And then on the back leg, he got real serious.
Somebody gave him a stopwatch. And unfortunately, he forgot that he couldn't slow down below 80.
And they pinged him for going too slow on his open road race. And he's going to be pissed at me
for saying this, but whatever, it's what happened. And so he got dequeued on the back leg, on the
leg back. And he can look at the times and stuff and go like, was it worth putting the effort
into trying to do better on the back leg? Not really. He should have just driven fast and
had fun, which is what he did anyway. Yeah. And in because he has the lower final drive in the Civic
and everything else, he did find out in the test run that his his car arrows out with a slight
tailwind at about 140 GPS, GPS of 140. Yeah. And so he was pretty comfortable driving the car
at 115, 117 on the course the whole time. So sure.
It's a weird event. Like it's, it's a gen, I say weird, it is a genuinely unique event. If you,
if you want to go fast, and people are like, Oh, I've gone fast on the freeway. A bunch of
people have been like, I got my car up to 140. Okay, cool. Get your car up to 140 and hold
it there. Hold it there for Brian's target time was 32 minutes, 10.9 seconds. Yeah,
I was about to say somewhere in there. So hold your car above 100 miles an hour for half an hour.
That's a lot. I feel like, and this is, I don't know why this popped into my weird little
brain. But like, when you jump off a high dive, and there's that time when you're like holding
your breath and just falling, right? But like, you just keep falling for half an hour. Right.
Right. Yeah, it's, it's basically a straightaway on a track or a track that's got, you know,
like, like a one big, like a bend in it, straight in then as a bend, but it never stops.
It just keeps going. And then you have to like think of a target speed and do stuff like that.
So it's, it's genuinely unique. And for those people that like, like full on Ricky Bobby just
want to go fast, like, I don't think there's anything else that compares to it. Certainly not.
You know, even the, if you're going land speed racing, that's the big course for the cars
that go, you know, 200 and some 300 and some miles an hour is only seven miles long. Yeah.
And at the Silver State Classic, they do that twice a year. They have a shorter course and a
longer course. And I think the long course, there's 90 miles long. Geez. Okay. So
like, if you want to go fast on a public road, like properly go fast on a public road,
go to go to nowhere, Texas, go to nowhere, Texas or nowhere, Nebraska or nowhere, Nevada.
Those are your three options in the country. Yeah. Nebraska does have some incredibly straight roads.
Yeah. And oddly, of the three locations they hold these in the country, that is the slowest,
most technical course. So we have someone that friends that have done that course before.
Some of the corn fed boys from out there did that back in the day. So yeah, it's,
it's a genuinely unique event. If anybody has any other questions, like ping me about questions,
I have some strong opinions and thoughts on it. What was the most interesting car to you
at the event? There's a guy who was running a super light SLC,
which is just an interesting car no matter what. Yeah.
But for this event in particular. For this event in particular.
That's wild. Yeah, because it's, I mean, there were not streetcars. Like there was a Porsche
Kyman GT4 RS club sport. So the factory GT4 car that you can just buy and go FIA GT4 racing with
that was there. That was wild. There was a RX8 with a V6 swap, Camaro V6 swap. There was,
it was probably 70% Camaros, or not Camaros Corvettes, 70% Corvettes. Because they just work,
like go buy a Corvette, drive 130 miles an hour and it'll work fine.
Interate, like there wasn't that much that was genuinely, a guy drove a Ferrari 308,
that was pretty interesting. Okay. So that was neat that somebody took out their
vintage Ferrari and wailed on it. So good for, good on them. I feel like if you could like
Honda, Honda's race press Odyssey, like something like genuinely weird would be
kind of good fun. Yeah. And we were talking to some people actually just talking to some
locals where we were walking around on Friday. And they said, yeah, man, people used to run some
weird shit. Like, like some really cool cars, a lot of hot rods would come out and different
cars would come out. And it's just done what motorsports has done and trended towards a
common solution. And the common solution really is Corvette. It's just, it just works. So
yeah, reliable speed, buy it on the showroom and
because people are trying, like if you're trying to actually win something,
it's not really about the car. The car just has to be capable of doing what you're doing.
Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, it's a little about the car, but yeah.
So the, the, the closest class I saw on the podium,
third place was 0.6 seconds off. Wow.
Wow. Okay. So that means, that means all of the podium people
were like in order to get first or second place, you had to be with, within,
within half a second in 118 miles of driving.
There were many cars that were in the tenths of a second
on the podium. The fastest we, the closest we saw, I think, was 0.003 seconds to win their class.
That sounds like a club tier podium.
Yeah. That's the kind of thing that's happening, but it's not just over a lap.
It's over a two way 118 mile course, which is wild. Oh, kitty cat. I love this.
It's Terry.
I love that Terry joined us. That makes me so happy.
Yeah. He got into that. Hey, you little shit.
He's gonna scratch you, show you.
No, he's trying to chew on the mic cord.
Oh, okay.
Yeah. He's not supposed to be in this bedroom, but here he is.
He's a bad cat. Oh, look at him. He's so bad.
He's also huge. He's a big boy.
Hi, Terry. I know I'm not in the screen very much because I'm sitting.
Oh, he is looking at it.
How are you, Terry?
He is a TV. He's watched races with us before, like actually watched.
You should put wildlife shows on for him.
Maybe.
He's probably like that.
It's an interesting event.
It is interesting. It's genuinely interesting in a way that not a lot
of other events are to me. I'm intrigued by it, which doesn't mean I want to go do it,
but it is interesting.
Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the one lap and all that stuff was, you know,
let's go do a strange thing with race cars and motorsports.
Yeah. And there's definitely people that we know in our sphere where you would be
like, hey, you should do this. You would have fun with this.
Sure.
Because you like to go really fast. You like to go really fast on the freeway.
You should go really fast for realties because it's fun.
Yeah.
If it weren't so far away, I'd probably think about it.
It is so far away.
Okay. But speaking of competition, you had a weekend this weekend.
I did have a weekend this weekend.
Yeah. Probably have to, I think, devote a show to-
A whole show to it?
Well, not just the weekend, but-
Shit.
Stop.
Scatscat is just beating the shit out of his microphone cable and it's the best.
But yeah, like the entire season really like just start to back and all that stuff.
But yeah, club tier, championship, three people could have won it.
One of them did.
That's how numbers work, eh?
Yeah, it is. And yeah, it was cool.
Several of my drivers, actually all of my drivers did very well.
I say my drivers, the clients that I was working with.
They're yours.
Yeah, everybody did well.
We had a mechanical kind of in the weekend a little early for one of actually a couple of them, I guess.
But yeah, had the first, and of course just like kids, you know, what's the worst thing that happened
to the weekend?
It's the thing you're going to remember.
Rush car flipped.
Oh, no.
Driver's okay, but it's one of the drivers I was coaching in Rush
had that car kind of flip towards him as he like drove kind of next to kind of under the car
and got a great slow mo video of the importance of arm restraints.
So did he try to put his arms up or did the other guy have his arms not flipping out of the car?
The other guy had his arms partially out of the car and then caught on the restraints and
caught on the restraints.
So his hands definitely hit the pavement, but it kept his arm from getting crushed.
So, wow.
Yeah.
But yeah, it was a good weekend.
Also helped Thunder Roadster on Thursday.
Go a little bit quicker.
I'm really intrigued by those tires.
My tongue and cheek solution to GLTC as we all just run by supply tires from now.
Because they're so weird and interesting.
They're so weird.
Genuinely, like the construction is different.
So like the alignment needs are very different.
And we were adjusting the pan hard bar in the rear as one does, as one does.
I mean, we were just like testing and playing stuff like what, you know, we found
out which too much castor is so that's good.
So that's good.
Yeah, it's just and pit races surface is very strange too.
Okay.
It's not really very high grip.
So, you know, kind of everything squirms under you a lot more.
And buys wise kind of do that anyway.
But yeah, it's good fun.
It's good to see everybody with some really good
good hangs with some friends and got to see a lot of people we haven't seen in a while.
So it was positive.
Probably the worst part of the weekend was driving back with a vicious headwind the entire way.
I swear.
What was your mileage?
Seven.
It was so bad.
Like usually like I swear my average is like 8.6 or something like that.
Like it's not good.
Don't get me wrong.
But when it doesn't like when it can't go to sixth gear, it just sits in the entire time.
And like occasion like fairly often uphills and stuff has to go into fourth like that's
and I was doing 68.
Like I'm not going fast speeding.
Yeah.
So that was a thing.
I made a home and got a little bit of sleep and then went to work today and
wasn't a complete weapon there.
So that's good.
Well, your van has air conditioning.
So, you know, there's that didn't need it tough because it was delightfully cool.
But it was also raining a good chunk of the way, which wasn't great.
So okay, we've we had we really had pretty delightful weather this week.
You know highs in the mid to high 80s, but nice cool evenings until today.
We're down exploring the the Big Bend region and I got up to 98 today.
And so we're doing Brian's driving driving the car back from where we went to the end of the road
and it's a hiking around and spirited driving in a car.
And it's so hot like it's so hot in the car.
Yeah, just install a cool shirt for both of you.
Yeah, I mean, like I say, somebody convinced him to take the AC out a couple of years ago.
And so this is where we're at.
And it was a good decision at the time.
The floor was hot like it was hot through my shoes.
Yes, that's where the exhaust and I know the road is.
It was just it was a thing.
I'm just saying, um, it was cursing you a little bit.
Yeah, well, that's what you get for breaking the AC in the first place.
I guess that's karma coming back around.
I fixed the AC after I broke the AC.
I know you did.
You didn't get to experience it for a long time.
Yeah, you're the hotel room or wherever you are, it looks like a mix between your
like you're on a cruise like a cargo ship and a fiesta.
I'm in a 11 foot long Casita travel trailer,
which is the the, uh, glamping resort that Brian found, which is in a section of town,
section of trilingual called the ruins, which looks like it sounds actually.
So you have your trailer and Brian has his.
Oh no, Brian's on the bed and I'm on if I if I move the computer,
I'm on the seat that's on the end of the trailer.
That's about 22 inches wide.
It is long enough for me to sleep on, but it's like sleeping on, you know,
a galley bed on a ship.
Give me a little turnaround.
I want to see what this thing is like here.
Well, this is just a second.
Okay.
So we've got like a window shade couch covered in like traditional southwest
stripes and apparel with your sleeping bag,
a door that definitely doesn't seal.
And like a, a tiny thin mattress on like wooden things.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, that's where we're at.
It's, it's great.
Um, the, the showers when building over the toilets are building over from that.
Um, but this was, this was by far the least expensive place to stay.
And this is what Brian reserved before I invited myself on the trip.
So I mean, I'm making do.
You did this to yourself.
Oh, I a hundred percent did this to myself.
He's like, are you sure it's okay?
I'm like, yeah, it's fine.
I'm, I was the one who was like, Hey, can I come with you on this idiotic adventure?
And because it's fun and I like Brian and we inevitably have interesting adventures.
There you go.
So it's the big bend open road rally.
Open road race.
Open road race.
This is a race.
Rallys are just for people who go drive cars around.
I mean stage rally, but it's a good time.
People should ask Brian about it and should go do it.
If, if it sounds interesting to them, chase down, chase down that thing that you haven't done.
Yeah.
And first time he hasn't gone to the F1 race in Austin, I think, for a bit.
Yeah.
He was, we could talk to him about that, but he was like mostly happy about that
because he lives too close to Coda for any of his life to be decent that weekend.
It's just, even if he goes to the race, everything about being around his house
is terrible on that weekend.
Yeah.
I'd believe it.
But I mean, it probably would have been a nice weekend to watch the race.
So the drivers were hot, but everything else seemed reasonable.
It's fair enough.
All right. Well, we will, we'll put the link to the, the race in the show notes.
So if anybody's curious, you can take a look.
I'm a, I'm, I'm at least my interest is Pete.
I just, again, kind of like you weird, weird events with, with cars and things is
kind of, kind of fun to explore the edges a little bit.
Genuinely nice people, like, like terrifyingly nice people.
Everyone was so friendly and wanted Brian to do well.
But you got to the end and you were like, stop, stop being so helpful.
I swear to God.
And it was that, that level of kindness the whole time.
Were they sad, de-queued?
Yes, they were.
They were like, oh man.
Yeah.
You forgot that rule canceled on too much, but they were, everybody was cool.
So, um, just, just met, like everyone we met wanted to talk,
wanted to know about you, wanted to know about your car.
Like everyone was nice.
That, that, that one lap level of, of kindness compressed into, you know,
two or three days of interaction versus a whole week.
So.
We did, however, get to spend some decent time with one lap buddy Amos Winter.
Oh, yes.
He went to.
I love Amos so much.
Yep.
He went to Petrace with his vintage air-cooled 911 Porsche.
Had a good time.
Definitely wore some tires down and hung out.
So it was, it was fun.
Good.
He's, he's such a, such a good guy to hang with.
Yes, he is.
One of the genuinely nice people in the world.
So, well, uh, in the show notes, check out our link to the discord.
And we're at track walking podcast on Facebook.
I'll say Instagram too, although I've been really,
don't really post there anymore, to be honest.
We're theoretically there.
We are.
Well, we are there.
We are.
Right.
In spirit.
In the way that a statue is someplace.
It just sits there.
But yeah, we'll be at you next week and we'll go from there.
For the two of us, I'm not hot.
I'm boiling in a tiny trailer and hopefully we won't be that way next week.
Take care.
About this episode
Scott and Seth share their experiences from the Big Bend Open Road Race in Texas, discussing the challenges of racing in extreme heat and the unique format of the event. They delve into the intricacies of open road racing, including speed classes, safety requirements, and the camaraderie among participants. The episode features amusing anecdotes about their trip, the cars involved, and the quirky nature of the race, making it a fascinating exploration of a lesser-known motorsport. Listeners will get a taste of the excitement and community surrounding this unique racing experience.
