Early AM tasks this morning involved more car work. I added oil, reset dwell and timing and my mechanic friend readjusted the carburetor. We got all this done just in time to pick up Dawn and the instructions and get out on the speedometer run. And the car performed much better today although we still have our speedometer problem at 48 mph. Our morning pit stop was at a neat little town called Walnut, Iowa. Like in a lot of our stops, the townsfolk had lined the side streets with the local collection of antique and classic cars. One really unique one here was this old peddler's wagon.

Meeting us at this stop was Dawn's father-in-law, Gary Pearson. He drove down from his home in Wesley to meet us and to wish Dawn happy birthday.

Our lunch stop was in the capital city of Lincoln, Nebraska. There was a good crowd and an excellent buffet lunch for us. The PM pit stop was in Bradshaw, Nebraska where we feasted on homemade cookies, cakes and ice cream and enjoyed the great crowd.

The finish line crowd in Grand Island, Nebraska was one of the largest so far. Greeting us here was my son, Darin, who is spending the night with us and will be driving the Focus on the Family car tomorrow.

This was a very long rally day with several long stretches of highway where we had to precisely maintain speeds like 45, 48, or 50 or 12 or 18 mph. So this was more of a driver's day as compared to routes requiring many maneuvers. These require more of the navigator. No two rally days are the same; in fact, rarely are they even similar. There are so many variables involved that require flexibility and constant readjustments on the part of the team.

Our score today was 22 seconds, with legs of 8, 1, 2, 1, and 10 seconds. This was not a bad score but we thought we had done better, particularly on leg 5. This was the 44th overall best score for the day and 19th in Sportsman Division but our overall place in the standings slipped only one place, to 35th. This was the first day of the rally where we did not improve our score from the previous day. We plan to reverse that tomorrow!

At this point in the rally, the contestants begin to get a bit "punchy". Due to the pace, lack of sleep, and very long days, we no longer can remember where we started from in the morning, what hotel we are staying in, and what our room number is. Everything begins to run together as we visit three or four towns or cities each day. On the course, instructions are missed, and confusion sometimes reigns as we try to sort out the order of the cars. We have learned that we just have to do our own thing and not worry about where the other contestants are in relation to us. It is often humorous though, comparing notes with the other crews at the stops as we try to determine who really knows what is going on.

On to Denver!