St. Louis Aftermath Part I: The Trip

April 23rd, 2008

So, in the last blog I left off with everyone being on the road, having fun, heading up to St. Louis. Well things did not go exactly as planned. We meet Patrick and Struka in Murfeesboro, TN around 9:00PM. Yancey, James, and Sonja were already there in Yancey’s Subaru Legacy “crew vehicle”. We load up the car, pack the trailer, grab some White Castle, and get back on the road around 10:00PM. Traffic is light, but it starts raining. Around 11:30PM Yancey calls us and says he’s getting a bad vibration from the left front of his car. We pull over and give it a glance, and really don’t see anything. We switch people and luggage around to lessen the weight of the Subbie, and continue on. About 25mins later, he still has the bad vibration. We pull off the highway, in the middle of nowhere Kentucky, and look at the car again. After some Googling, we think it’s either an axle, or the solenoid in the automatic transmission that distributes the power to the four wheels. Either way, the car isn’t going anywhere. So after some brainstorming, we decide to back Struka’s S14 off the trailer and put the Subbie in there. Now here’s the good part. Struka had taken some sleeping pills, and they were just now kicking in. He was in no shape to drive his car, so I jump in Struka’s S14, with Patrick riding shotgun. Since there were 8 people and only one truck now, some people had to ride in the Subbie, IN the trailer! Struka was loopy enough that he didn’t care, he thought Jesus was driving his S14 on the highway So now it’s John Marsh, Ray, Sonja, James in the truck; Yancey and Struka in the trailer; Me and Patrick in the S14. My god Kentucky roads suck. Well, I think driving a fully prepped drift car on any road would suck. Me and Patrick are rolling along, and not paying attention, I roll over the rumble strip on the highway, and BAM! blow the bead on the passenger rear. We get out, and Patrick changes the tire with the quickness, and we’re back on the road. Four hours, and about 8 NOS’ later, we roll into the Pilot across the street from Gateway. We sleep for about two hours and then head over to the track.