An Amazing Story

[Master Oil Racing Team]

We headed back to Texas on Monday 22nd, and it was about 3 days home. I don't remember if Harry and Jenny went all the way back with us. It seems we may have dropped them off in Dallas for a flight back to Germany.

Debbie and I had moved to Denton right after the Eastern Divisionals where she would resume her studies at TWU as a graduate student in nutrition. I found a lab in Denton where I could develope my negatives and write the Pro Nationals story for Powerboat. We didn't have time to go down and do much work on the motors after Hinton.

Basically everything was O.K. except for a sticky throttle on the 500 hydro. It was running good, I won both heats of 1100 hydro at 3/4 throttle and our 700 was still smokin'. So we didn't do any preparation prior to heading to Devil's Lake, Oregon for the kilos. It would be our second kilos to attend and once again we would go with our competition set ups with a conservative tuck for the long haul down the straights.

We didn't bother taking the 350 because you couldn't come close to Gerry Walin's record without a straightaway rig. You don't get any testing time at Kilos and we didn't want to sqaunder any runs. We already had the 700 kilo record so we would concentrate on 500 and 1100.

I flew home to get things ready for our trip and Tim and Ruth Butts came down to help and ride up to Oregon with us. The Kilos were scheduled for September 24 and 25. At that time the Butts' were tired of the cold weather in Michigan and found we had a perfect testing spot as they had come to be spending the last few New Years day testing with us. At that time they were still deciding whether to move down by us or up by Joe Rome near Houston.

We went up through West Texas, New Mexico, a drive by of Arizona, Utah, Idaho and into Oregon to the West Coast where we stayed at a Hotel built into the side of a cliff on the Pacific Ocean.