Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

[Nick]

Re: Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

Outback.... best place we found to eat.

I dunno, Ole Hickory BBQ in Hoxie was crazy delicious.

[John in Houston]

Re: Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

Where the hell was that? Was it safe after dark?

[Nick]

Re: Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

When you go north up 67, Hoxie is the town that kind of runs in to Walnut Ridge. The airport (event site) is north of Walnut Ridge.

We stayed at the Ole Hickory motel (conveniently located next door to Ole Hickory BBQ ), and ate at the BBQ place Friday night. It was good food. There were a couple of other "local" joints we noticed, just never got time to stop. The Pizza Den, and something about ice cream and burgers (iirc).

Just FYI for the Dallas folks, we made it to Walnut Ridge from Duck's house in 7 hours (6:30am to 1:30pm). Cruising at 70-75mph, stopping maybe twice, once for a quickie gas stop, once for lunch @ McD's.

[hancheyb]

Re: Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

[Dean!]

Re: Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

So how do you really read that ? How do you decide if it will rain ? Not that I'm going, just curious for my own edification....

[John in Houston]

Re: Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

So how do you really read that ?

yeah... what he said.

[hancheyb]

Re: Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

It is really hard. The bar graph at the bottom says "Occasional", "Chance", "Likely" etc. If the bar graph touches the line associated with those fields, then you know there is a chance of rain (for example). It even tells you the amounts for the given hour. Does that help?

[John in Houston]

Re: Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

Okay... so only looking at the bottom 1/3, looks like chance of Rain from the start of your grid to about 6 a.m. on Saturday.

Not too bad.

[McCall]

Re: Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

I just booked this

http://www.besttownhousemotel.com/

They have rooms, no deposit or CC required!! I love small towns.

Ok, lets just say there's a good reason why they: had rooms, don't take deposits, or require a CC. OMG!!! Talk about scary. You remember that stereotypical dumpy motel you see in movies? Well, I think they got their inspiration from this place!!

Needless to say I got booked into the Days Inn right down the road tonight and am switching over to the Quality Inn in Jonesboro for the weekend (the Days Inn is booked).

[McCall]

Re: Pro Solo- Friday Practice

Ok, here's the recap of Friday at the Pro. I got up about 9, took a shower, packed up, drank some coffee, did my expense report, called a few customers, washed the car and truck and then cruised on over to the event site about 8 miles away and got there about 12:30pm. I believe everyone else got up at the ass crack of dawn (5 am??) and drove the 7 hours out here.

Anyway, I unloaded the car and decided to walk the courses since tech wasn't open yet. Paul and Jeremy showed up about 2:00, unloaded their car and by the time they got their tires on Terry, Amy, Brian, and MeL showed up.

There was a mad dash to get their cars prepped as the Pro-Solo Novice class started about 2:15ish. Amy, MeL, Jeremy, Paul, and I all attended. In this class we learned the basics on how the event operated and some techniques on the launch and running with the tree. After that we, the novices, were put in the front of the line and each got to run 4 times on the tree and test our reaction time as well as our 60ft. All of this was free btw.

While this was going on, Brian and Terry gridded the BMW and got ready for the practice launches. It's $10 for 6 runs or $2 each. Well us novices wrapped up our practices and cruised back to the paddock and chilled for a bit while B&T waited for 2.5 hours to get their turn on the lights. Also, while they were waiting a large rainstorm came through and it rained enough to leave a few nice puddles. Practice kept up through all of this but needless to say they ended up running on a very wet launching pad.

After everyone wrapped up practice we headed over to registration and signed in and grabbed some free BBQ. Finally, us novices had meeting to go over some last minute stuff and did a walk through together. As dusked began to settle we all did a bunch more walk-thrus. We all left the sight about 7:45ish and got to the hotel about 8:30. Jonesboro is a lot farther away the place I stayed last night but the hotel and area are nice enough.

We'll be at the site about 7am to do a few more walk-thrus and cars will be on course about 9:15. I'll report back tomorrow night on the day's events.

[Dean!]

Re: Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

Hey McCall, cool recap! The Internet brings a whole new dimension to out of town events like this....

Good luck y'all !!

-Dean! in Temple

[Dean!]

Re: Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

It is really hard. The bar graph at the bottom says "Occasional", "Chance", "Likely" etc. If the bar graph touches the line associated with those fields, then you know there is a chance of rain (for example). It even tells you the amounts for the given hour. Does that help?

I see the bar graphs and yes that makes sense, but I've always wondered about barometer, dew point, temperature.

I assume those bar graphs are the output from some extrapolated data above it, just curious on what indicators you look out to determine the chance of rain and at what time. (Assuming they didn't already provide the bar graphs)

Okay I'm rambling...
-Dean! in Temple

[hancheyb]

Re: Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

Congrats to Jeremy and Paul. You guys did great! All that Pennington Field time paid off. This course was a total joke. It made Pennington look "open" in places.

I talked to Teucci last night. He ran an event on Yokohamas yesterday on concrete. He said, "these things have MAD grip on concrete!" I said, "....yes.....we know that now."

We were out driven and out prepped. Good job guys. Thanks for putting Vorshlag on your entries.

Highlights of the event for me:

1. Waiting two hours to do practice starts since the timers broke after the "rookies" got their free starts. Rookies include McCall, Jeremy, Paul, Amy, MeL. And of course, as we got up there it started raining so that was a waste.
2. Red lighting my first two runs on the left side since I didn't get any real practice starts.
3. Being the first one to find the pool of antifreeze left by Grady Woods on the start line. This is AFTER the car came into the pits with known issue. Uh, didn't anyone think to CHECK the course for that??
4. 25 mile drive to and from the hotel. Thanks McCall for driving!
5. Being the person with the most teeth at the McDonald's. You would have thought we were aliens the way they stared.
6. Being the 2nd driver and the idiot doing grid sending all the karts btwn us and our first drivers. 15 minute wait ruined any heat in the tires. It was, what 50 degrees out?
7. Same idiot sending the karts AGAIN before my LAST of 4 runs. Another 5 minute wait for my last run. Again ruining any heat in the tires.
8. Watching AWD cars put .5s on us in the first 60'. That was pretty impressive.
9. Sticking my finger nail in Paul's Yoks after his run then sticking my finger nail in the Falken.
10. Watching a C5 Corvette lose brakes in the finish and almost hit a woman. If the karts were running (they were 5 minutes later) there would have been a death, I'm not kidding.

I won't be going back up there, what a beating of a trip.

[hancheyb]

Re: Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

Map of the event in pdf

[Paul]

Re: Pro Solo- Walnut Ridge Hotel

Map of the event in pdf

Who is what color?