The Gator ate Melissa’s ribs -
This is the saga of team Kelley’s trip to the Moroso/Jegs 5 day bracket race in November 2002. Your author, Greg Kelley, along with son Mark, brother Paul, and Paul’s son Jeff made the trek from New Jersey to Florida.
Departure time was set for noon on Tuesday, making arrival time 9AM Wednesday and leaving time for just a few short stops. We had packed our 38 foot goose Monday night with the Cressman 4-link, S&W hardtail, 25 DragLifts, an extra scooter to sell, two full drums of alky, and lots of EGT kits and spare parts. Paul calls at 8:00 AM telling me to get my butt down to his house to help assemble the last 10 or 15 DragLifts. Mark and I head to Paul’s house at about 10.
After packing his Ford dually (yea, the Ford distinction will be important later), his Quay dragster, 10 more DragLifts and his stuff, we jump in the trucks to go. NOPE! The Ford will not start. My Chevy jumps the Ford and we are on our way. Goodbye New Jersey, Chevy trucks rule.
The noon departure is important because it gets us around Washington DC’s wacky traffic before it is a total late afternoon mess. Well, we still get snagged around the DC area. Some wacker (Wacker: n., one who exhibits wacky behavior) decides to come to a complete stop about 150 feet in front of our 12,000 pound rig going 50 mph in the traffic. Mark is driving and jumps on the brakes with both feet and yanks on the electric brake controller lever. Thank God we manage to stop without crushing the yuppie’s silver Jeep.
About 20 miles later Paul calls and says he sees smoke coming out of our trailer. After a few minutes of yelling back and forth, it appears he is serious. We pull over and find the left rear brake is smoking like one of those Arizona forest fires. After a cool down and in-depth diagnosis somehow attributing the problem to the wacker in the silver Jeep, we back off the adjuster as far as it will go and travel on. Chevy Trucks:1, Ford Trucks: 1.
Things are going smooth ‘till about midnight when some nice traveler starts blowing his horn and yelling next to our truck. We pull over, thinking he is maybe just a drunk rebel-wacker, but better check. It turns out we have a completely shredded center tire on the trailer. Now, me—the guy who sells DragLifts—does not carry a floor jack in his trailer. But we do have flares!
Since it’s night time, everybody gets to play around with a safety flare – well fireworks are legal down south aren’t they? Paul has a jack but it’s one of the little ones and will not lifter the trailer. We use the trailer hydraulics and change the tire. In the middle of this, one of the 18-wheelers goes by at 80 MPH and blows my favorite hat off and lands in a puddle of you-know-what. But it’s my favorite hat, and long from retirement… So I dust it off and, yes, put it back on my head. Who’s the wacker now?
The truck war is still a tie score, even though Paul tried to put the trailer problem as score points. As we get into the trucks, I hear him mumbling something about the flares.
We arrive, unpack, warm-up, make a couple of runs, and complain about the terrible track conditions. Mark is bitten on the ankles by no fewer than 500 fire ants because of the parking spot I picked on Atco row. It turn out the ants are immune to Glatt’s alky—he probably has soy in the lube—but we dump generator gas on them and they retreat. Mark goes 4 or 5 rounds, Paul and I lose 2nd. We get to the motel ready to sleep.
Thursday is a rainy mess. Two of us are in when they call the race. Mark picks up his girlfriend Melissa at the airport late. The Pace trailer guy nicely services a non-Pace customer and sells me a trailer tire at a good price. Paul yanks a neighboring racer’s stuck-in-the-mud Chevy dually and down-to-the-axles 40-foot goose out of the mud. Ford Trucks: 2, Chevy Trucks: 1.
Friday is hectic with the Day Two continuation mixed with time shots from Day Three. Things start out bad when Paul, who is allergic to bee stings, gets nailed by some Florida killer bee. His left arm (including his elbow, somehow) and wrist are swollen to about twice the size of his normal size, but he’s otherwise OK. No beer for Paulie for two days—poor baby. I think this is the day Paul went 5 rounds and was in a week-and-half burn down with Jimmy Jones. Mark and I went a few rounds.
Better yet, Melissa started cooking so we got to eat well—real cheese burgers & and not burnt dogs. Jeff also brought a crock pot of good Chili. Joe Sway just needs to have a track food school or something; maybe he and Harrington can cook up a package deal. Finally, with lakes and mud holes everywhere but where we were, my pick of our high ground, pretty dry parking spot is finally getting the credit it deserves. Paul is checking his hero truck and notices a flat. Off to the Goodyear man—pickup the trailer tire, drop off the truck tire. Paul tries to evade a point, but sorry brother: Chevy Trucks: 2, Ford Trucks 2.
Saturday, we had the same continuation of the prior race and all of Day Four’s race. The days are really running together now, and time shots are long forgotten. Besides not remembering what day of the week it was, I had no idea what race we were in. I went 5 rounds, Paul and Mark lost early. Melissa made the best ribs. If you can’t win, then at least eat well.
Sunday. It’s time for team Kelley to do something. The tree had been tricky with each of us having .490 reds with safe day numbers yet night seemed about right. We have a strategy meeting and decide it’s the background colors behind the tree, and we just need to be sure of the box before we stage. Mark and I loose first round. Mine was due to a .492 red and I’m thinking of taping a WACKER sign on my back. Jeff, who is 19 and has been watching us screw up pretty royally all week, jumps in his dad’s car Sunday and looses first round with .518 and .04 stripe – it must have been Paul’s problem with figuring the 50-pound weight difference.
In the process of packing-up, my brother discovers some of Melissa’s leftover ribs in the gas grill. He and Joey D. decide to see if they can get the gators to eat them. So we hop on the scooters and try to do just that. Guess what:
All packed and time to leave, the internationally famous rib cooker (at least according to the gators in Southern Florida) is taken to the airport by Brittany Shapiro and the boys set out for New Jersey. Paul gases up his wimpy 40-gallon tank. Mark decides our 140 is fine and we can make it to El-Cheapo in Georgia.
Around midnight, Mark is driving (no, no pattern here) and the truck starts bucking and popping like it’s out of gas. I’m yelling on the CB for Paul to stop and yelling at Mark that it’s not out of gas because it’s acting like the fuel pump is bad. He of course is yelling back that the gas gauge reads half a tank.
After messing with it for a while, and getting caught up with Paul, we put out flares and consider our options: A) Dump the 3 alky jugs back into the 55, take Paul’s rig up to the gas station and back around 20 miles with the gas-filled jugs. B) Take the jugs back and forth on the scooters (not the most appealing option, since it’s about 50 degrees outside and it is a major highway, after all). C) Use Paul’s dually to tow our rig up to the gas station.
We go with plan C. I’d love to know what those 18-wheelers were thinking when they saw a dually, a 26 foot tag, a tow strap, another dually and 38 foot goose going down 95 at about 25 MPH—half on the shoulder. I guess it was something like WACKERS.
So, I’m steering my rig only 10 feet behind his trailer, sometimes without power brakes or steering, when my truck wouldn’t idle. I’m thinking what a mess it would be if I ran into the back of his trailer. I’m also not entirely convinced that the problem is that we’re out of gas.
It’s only a mile or two to an exit, and thank God there is a gas station with a lighted sign. About then I’m thinking we will never get around the jug handles and gas station entrance with this 120 foot long parade. Paul just drives on and I can’t see nuttin’. Basically, all I can do is hang on and try to keep the engine idling so I have brakes and steering. We get off 95 with only about 20 18-wheelers blowing their horn and calling us wackers.
Now we’re officially off 95, but I’m still thinking we won’t be able to actually pull up to the pump. No, Paulie just motors right on thru and when his trailer stops, a pump has magically appeared. We begin filling up and the cell phone rings it’s Dom Balducci Jr. asking if we are OK. After Mark says yes, Dom says that’s a good thing because he’s already in Savanna, GA.
Keep in mind that all of them are busting on me the whole time I’m pumping 170 gallons of gas. Chevy Trucks 2: Ford Trucks: 3. The rest of the trip was gratefully boring.
At the end of the week, we had less than $2000 to show, even including the value of next year’s free entries—pretty smart thinking, Sue Moroso. Congratulations to Grump with his Sunday win and Joey D’s semi. Next year, we’re going to hit the Bradenton race, stock up on flares and hold a rematch of Chevy vs. Ford trucks. And we’re going to figure out what else we can feed those gators.