Friday, June 8, 2012 – to Arlington, Texas (QuikTrip Park)
267 miles travel distance
Today's weather was sunny and clear, morning temperature in the low
70's, highs in the low 90's
Final driving day of the Power Tour!
Leaving Stillwater, Oklahoma, we made our way south on back country
roads that ran next to Interstate 35 South. The Oklahoma roads are
really scenic and great to drive on.
Our last hospitality stop for the Power Tour was in the small town of
Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, home of Covercraft. They make car and seat
covers.
http://www.covercraft.com/
We found a nice shady spot to park and headed to the porta-lets before
heading inside for the factory tour and free lunch.
“GENE GETS CAUGHT”
We found six porta-johns nearby and headed for them. Three of them
were marked with blue signs marked MEN and three were marked with pink
signs marked WOMEN. There was a line of 5 guys waiting for their turn
and no women in line. The women's porta-johns were all empty. Gene
needed to go real bad and was going to be a “rebel” and use the
women's porta-johns. Without looking around he walked to the women's
section. As he put his hand on the door to open the women's stall, a
woman appeared out of nowhere and loudly said...
“OH NO YOU DON'T!”
Gene's face turned bright red as he slinked back to the end of the
men's waiting line.
As the woman was entering the porta-john she said...
“These are for sprinkling not tinkling!”
Covercraft served us a free lunch (pulled beef, coleslaw, beans,
cookie and drink) and gave us a free t-shirt. We toured the factory
where they make car and seat covers. We walked around the parking lot
and looked at cars for awhile. Cars were still arriving when we left.
As we were driving to our last stop of the tour, in Dallas, we found
ourselves in a group of about 10 Power Tour cars at 70 mph on
Interstate 35. Among them was the 2013 Raybestos Roush Mustang that I
sat in at the Roush factory in Detroit, just last Friday! The car
accelerated strong and sounded awesome.
“Three Highs”
The back roads we were driving on ended up merging with Interstate 35
South into Dallas. There's a lot of road construction in the area, so
Gene drove the last portion of the day's drive, since he knew the
area. I've seen freeways above roads before but never 3 freeways above
the Interstate road. Gene said they're called “3 highs” and there's
even a “4 high” in another part of Dallas (5 highways crossing over)!
We pulled into our last stop for the tour, QuikTrip Park in a suburb
of Dallas. (QuikTrip is like Florida's 7 Eleven – convenience stores).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuikTrip_Park
We walked around the parking lot and visited all the vendors. We
watched the autocross event in a nearby parking lot. This was a
invitation only, qualifying autocross event for the final autocross
event at the Las Vegas SEMA show this November.
The fastest autocross car we saw (30 second lap time) was a 2006
Lamborghini Gallardo V-10 that was one of the top 3 qualifiers at this
event.
The attached photo is a “rat rod” we saw in the parking lot at
Covercraft. It was a scary vehicle build because of the Chevy motor
with a 6-71 blower and the skinny and tall tires. The driver can
barely see over the balding front tires!
The Power Tour closing ceremony is tomorrow for all those that made
all 7 stops on the Power Tour (Long Haulers).
-Mark R
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