Hot Rod Power Tour 2014 Recap Pt. 1

The Team Amalgamated Power Tour ’14 crew forecast initially included six cars. That’s admittedly a pretty lofty number but we’re nothing around here if not optimists. The Duster was under the gun for completion the year prior so only something catastrophic was going to knock it out. Beyond that there were no guarantees. As June approached it was clear that Tim’s ’63 Impala would not be part of the journey. He had made the rookie mistake of dropping the car off to for paint before it was anywhere near being a running automobile. The Impala would languish in a body shop for months and languished still when the time came to head to Concord, NC. No bid deal, though. Tim could ride along for his first Tour having his choice of five cars to copilot. Oops, make that four. Disaster struck just days before Ralph was scheduled to depart Texas for the zMax Dragway. Something about a transmission or a torque converter or maybe a bruised ovary.

The roster was set. Jim’s ’66 Charger, Michel’s ’68 Camaro SS, Mr. Black’s bone stock ’74 Lincoln and the aforementioned Duster would be ready to roll. Mr. Black and I departed Kansas City early the day before the Tour. Our plan was to drive until it was time for dinner and cocktails and then find rooms for the night. The Lincoln was burning more oil than we liked but we weren’t too concerned yet. As we would learn, turned out that it just needed to log some miles to get itself right. She does a lot of sitting these days and seemed to appreciate a long trip. It is a Lincoln, after all. No real issues with the Duster, either. Of course it was too loud, hotter than the AC could control and the rear suspension tended to bottom out over certain types of bumps. I could have had the latter ironed out before the trip and I would come to regret not doing so.

The Charger and Camaro would be starting in Atlanta so they’d be able to depart at a decent hour the day the Tour started. Possibly after a leisurely breakfast. I mean, how long can it possibly take to get to Concord from Atlanta? Mr. Black and I weren’t so lucky. we had a long haul from just East of Memphis, TN. Like the day before, it was a fairly carefree trip. At some point we got word from the Atlanta crew that they were on the road. I looked forward to them staking out some sweet real estate for the kickoff festivities.

Mr. Black hails from North Carolina so we took a scenic route to see his old stomping grounds. We grabbed lunch and he showed me the lay of the land. This detour didn’t take all that much time and allowed us to stretch our legs and maybe have a cold beverage or two. Then we were off again for the last leg of our trip to Concord. The excitement built as we saw the first Power Tour cars of the trip. There would be thousands to come over the next week. Record numbers, actually. Mr. Black and I fell into a loose pack of cars unofficially led by a baby blue ’66 Ford Galaxie. He was astonished by the pace it set and that it didn’t get any of us arrested.

We had received a couple updates on the progress of the Atlanta crew early in the day but hadn’t heard anything in hours. Surely they were awash in Power Tour awesomeness and swag. Jim just adores those t-shirts that feature a ’69 Camaro, a ’71 Chevelle and a ’68 Mustang on the back and sweet graphic all around. Sometimes there’s a ’69 Charger instead of the Chevelle. I swear he must have fifty of those things. Oh, and the hats. The hats! Jim’s wife, Rachel was on board for the first couple stops this time around. I couldn’t wait to see her in matching, head-to-toe Power Tour garb.

As a bit of a Power Tour veteran, I didn’t think twice about the wall to wall cars, circus atmosphere and overall lunacy of it all when Mr. Black and I rolled into the zMax grounds. The same can’t be said for Mr. Black. By the time I had navigated to and parked near the registration tent he appeared to be on sensory overload. I had to snap my fingers and make clicking noises with my tongue to get his eyes to focus on me long enough to guide him to the tent. Once registered, I gave him a piggy back ride back to the cars because his legs had given out. There we applied vital participant decals to our windshields after digging them out of our goody bags. Credentials were slid into the transparent sleeves worn around our necks and cold cans slid into cozies. It was time to find the rest of our crew and relax after a long day of driving.

Once I had contacted them I found it curious that they weren’t set up deep within the throng of cars like I had expected. In fact, they were not that far from the registration tent in a sparsely populated parking lot far from the action. I would soon learn that they had predated our arrival by a mere thirty minutes. What in the hell was going on?

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