The Awards Dessert Reception was held in the Bicentennial Pavilion of the Sheraton in Tacoma beginning at 7:45 PM. Sharon, Jeff and the three older grandchildren attended with us. It was quite the extravaganza as the total purse of $270,000 and many large trophies were distributed. The tables were decorated with a patriotic theme and each table had a variety of delicious desserts and drinks.

Cash awards and trophies were presented to the first 20 overall positions. These range from $40,000 for first place down to $1000 for 20th. However, cash prizes are also awarded for each daily win as well as the Championship Run the last two days. So the first place team of Cunningham and Goeppinger had total winnings of over $52,000.

Many other special category awards were made and one was of special note. For many years, a "Doc Fuson Spirit of the Event" award has been presented to the individual or team that contributed in a special significant way to the success of this event. This often involved self sacrifice to the point of jeopardizing winning opportunities. This year the award has been renamed in memory of Tom McRae, one of the co-founders of the Great Race and its driving force for many years. He was tragically killed in an accident just a few weeks before this year's event. The recipient this year was a very popular one, Don Currie, the long-time Technical Chief of the Great Race. He is certainly the technical expert on all these old cars, a ready source of tips and guidance and usually the first Staff person to greet us at each finish line. Congratulations, Don, for a well-deserved award.

Our award for participation this year was not so much tangible (except for the 4 Aces, of course), but just the satisfaction of being associated with such a premier event and wonderful people as well as completing this great challenge.

Our four Aces awards!!!!!

An analysis of the final standings is encouraging and an indication of how well we really did in the competition. We had a total time of 5 minutes and 4 seconds for the entire rally. This placed us 30th overall and 11th in Sportsman Division.

Further, considering only the cars that finished, this score placed us better than:

--- one Grand Champion Team
--- five Expert Teams
--- 12 veteran Sportsman Teams

Since I had navigated in last year's Great Race, we were not eligible to compete as a rookie team. We considered ourselves in this class anyway since Dawn was a bonafide rookie navigator and I was a rookie driver, never having driven before. If we could have competed in this class, we would have finished second. There was only one of the 31 rookie teams with a better score than ours.