I suppose it would not be appropriate to keep a travel weekend to myself (especially after all the fun I had). I need to share this weekend experience with everyone. I ended up with a mini van for our weekend excursion and picked up all participants for the weekend trip around 8 pm Friday evening. It was already beginning to be a long weekend as I was up at my normal 5 am, left work at noon (to get the rental), and then finished up the exterior on three new windows that I had installed the week prior at home. Around 6:30 pm I grabbed a quick sandwich, cleaned up, topped off the fuel tank, picked up two participants, and headed to Cedar Rapids to pick up the third individual, all of whom had no idea of what they were getting themselves into. By this time if you’re reading this you’re saying “where in the he_ _” are they going!! Well folks, we are heading to Batesville, Arkansas! Why in the world would we drive to Batesville, Arkansas you ask??
Batesville is home to a very well known chassis builder, Danny Nelson, owner of Racecraft Chassis. By now you may have figured out my reason for traveling to Arkansas. Yes, I am ordering a new race car chassis and I wanted to meet and greet the owner and namely, the man that is going to be taking all my money. I drove all night, arriving in Batesville around 5:30 am. We located the shop then decided breakfast was a great idea. We had no more sat down when one of the local patrons noticed we were from Iowa. He proceeded to talk to us for approximately 20 minutes then asked what brought us to Batesville. We were not surprised that he was familiar with the chassis shop and told us he had known Danny all his life. We were sort of surprised because this is definitely stock car country, and Batesville is home to one of NASCAR’s elder racers Mark Martin. You guessed it, he knew Mark Martin personally. We had a great breakfast and headed for the chassis shop.
Mr. Nelson showed up at exactly 8 am like he said he would and gave us a tour of the shop. Let’s just say it wasn’t what I expected and leave it at that. Mr. Nelson was very informative and answered all my questions. After four hours I had made the deal, gave the deposit, and was ready to head home. Yep, we got back in the van and headed back to Iowa. The nice part was that it was daytime and we would now get to see the countryside. The trip back home was uneventful, we arrived home around 10 pm Saturday, and I must say I was ready for bed. I will try to give a progress report on the delivery date of the new car as it will take approximately eight weeks to complete. It will come with all the electronics installed, completely wired, and ready for my motor and transmission. I get excited just talking about it. It will be my third new race car since I became interested in drag racing. I purchased a new chassis in 1970, 1995, and now 2010. And I might add, this car will be the most complex. Stay tuned.
