
The back of the 1934 Ford Phaeton that Mary and I will be driving in the race after all the stickers and accessories are applied. Ready to rally!
Just when we thought it was safe to take a break…the Great Race 2013 preparation continues on Thursday. After getting up early, we went through the check in paperwork and got in line for the vehicle inspections. There are 99 cars participating this year, so it’s a long process. But while we wait we continue to work on getting the cars ready. We discovered something wrong with the gas line on one car and had to fix that. It’s always something with these classics. But that’s part of the fun. It also takes a long time to put all the required Great Race stickers on 99 cars as well. So much time that we didn’t get to calibrate our speedometer as exact as we would have liked, but hopefully we will be able to do that yet tomorrow.

You are allowed to use three instruments during the race; the speedometer, a clock and a stopwatch. We wished we had had more time to do an exact calibration of our instruments.
We also had to make a last minute trip to WalMart to pick up a few basic supplies, Windex, etc… Not too exciting but a necessary part of the experience. Tomorrow we travel about 10 miles to the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in Saint Paul, where there is bound to be no shortage of classic car enthusiasts. The Minnesota Street Rod Association (MSRA) is also hosting their “Back to the Fifties” car show at the same venue. We will participate with all the other teams in the rally school and then take the cars out for a spin in the pre-race trial, the Hagerty Trophy Run. You can follow along on Twitter @thegreatrace, #thegreatrace, or on Facebook , the Spirit of Stahls’ page is being updated several times daily. Enjoy these pictures from Thursday.