To all, Although I have not had time to put down my final thoughts about the Great Race, my cute wife Theresa has done so. Here are her “end road thoughts”. She writes pretty good!

-C

From Theresa:

Here are the end road thoughts from the navigator of Car #88 aka the aggravator, as Corky calls me. I am proud to say that I am now a two year veteran of the Great Race. As you have been reading our adventure notes I know many of you have been asking, “Why in the world are they doing this? How could this be fun?” Well it is hard. I have said it is the hardest thing I have ever done next to nursing school. The race is a once in a lifetime experience that happens every year. It is full of character building opportunities for sure! It is hard to work your best under long days, scorching sun, hard rain especially when you come in with a lousy score. You put on your best face and try to be happy for the rookies who are beating your socks off. And for sure you ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” Then I am reminded of all the people in the crowd who came to cheer us on at each finish line. I have learned that the most difficult things you do are often the most rewarding. We drove over 4100 miles, visited 48 cites in 18 states, met countless numbers of wonderful volunteers and saw America from our wonderful open Indy car. We did all this with a rolling history museum of 97 cars, countless number of support vehicles and traveled with people who have become our very close friends. I have said the best part of the day was when we went “off the competition clock at our last instruction” but before we saw our score. The finish cities were fun with a party in every venue. We could laugh with other racers about the incidences that happened to us during the day that were not so funny at the time. And we ALL had them. It was nice to feel vindicated with my driver to find that 44 other navigators had also missed the same instruction.

One statement that I got repeatedly from people who saw the small cockpit in the Shafer 8 was, “Wow, I hope you like each other.” Our response was yes, we have liked each other for 29 years! I have to give a great amount of credit of our success to my driver and husband Corky. I tell him that if he had a decent navigator he could win the race. I think he is the best driver on the race. He can hold that speedometer needle at 48, 24, 15 or 10 for countless minutes or hours as the course instructions dictate. He can also hold the car barreling down mountain curves at 30 when it should have been 25, (oops). He can also get back in place when we are 20 cars down because I took the wrong turn, (oops again). He is a fantastic problem solver under stressful conditions. I can solve problems; I just can’t do it in 10 seconds.

So there were plenty of “fun” moments. It was fun seeing Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell getting the ride of his life in our car in Durango. It was fun seeing our personal friends meet us in cities across the country (too many to name). It was fun throwing water on each other at red lights and in the trailer at the end of the day. It was fun seeing people I mentored get a good score and an ace at the end of the day. It was awesome hearing the crowd get excited when Corky revved up the car skidding into the finish line. I loved riding in our 1937 Buick Indy car. Hearing the sound of those four 97 Strombergs with that big chrome header/exhaust is down-right exciting every time Corky starts her up. I was in the coolest car with the coolest guy for 14 days. People told me I was downright “gutsy” for doing what I did. I liked that. Being on the race with Corky is an adventure, but for those of you who know him, just gettin’ out of bed everyday with him is an adventure. He can get into trouble and solve problems in the same breath.

I can’t write this without giving mention to the rest of Team Coker. Big thanks go out to Andrew Givens and Jerry Priesel our support crew. They serviced the Shafer, and helped Curtis on his Packard. They met us at every venue with our show trailer cool, and drinks iced down. I know they had their challenges with getting that rig across country under stressful conditions too. Our teammates in Car #2 Curtis Graf and Bruce Gezon did an awesome job winning third place with the 1916 Packard. They are true ralliers (is that a word?). They had a great factor, but I personally choose torque and horsepower over factor any day! Bruce has mentored me over the last several years in the art of navigating. He knows that I am “math challenged”, but has tremendous amount of patience.

The absolute best and most fun day was coming into the finish line at San Rafael and learning that we had kept our 25th position by coming in 11th for the last championship day with a score of .08 seconds. Guess it was proof to me that we could do it. Check out our finish line picture at greatrace.com (stage 14).

Way back on June 25 we heard a wonderful message at chapel from John Borschein who drove a week for Focus on the Family. John is in charge of the National Day of Prayer and a great guy to know. He used the scripture in 1 Corinthians 10 quoting Paul on “running the race in such a way as to win.” But then he went on to say that the prize is a perishable wreath. The most important thing is not the prize, but how you run the race. With this in mind, I can say that winning is good, but the character of those who win is even more important. Hopefully we have helped others along the way as we have been helped and most importantly, we credit God for protection, strength and help all along in ways we will never even know.

Thanks for following along in our journal and sharing in our “once in a lifetime experience that happens every year” this year.

Theresa Coker, navigator, Car #88

Just finishing the great race, owner Corky Coker was surprised to find that a descendent of The Lozier family had contacted Coker Tire for information about one of Corky’s car. The car in question happened to be a 1909 model J Lozier, the only one of its make and model known in existence. The Lozier Motor Company was a Brass era producer of cars in the US. The company produced luxury automobiles from 1900 to 1915. Loziers were top line luxury cars and for a time were the most expensive cars produced in the United States. The Lozier was the first car to ever cross the finish line at the Indianapolis 500, but lost due to a technicality to the Marmon Wasp in 1911. Corky obtained the car from a close friend out west, outfitted it for the Great Race and drove it across the country with his son, Cameron. Mr. Glenn Lozier of Oregonia, OH drove all the way to Chattanooga just to see the famous car. After arriving with Eva Richmond also of Oregonia, the two were given a tour of The Coker Tire Corporate Headquarters. Mr. Lozier was quite happy to see the Model J named for his family. Coker Tire was happy to show Mr. Lozier around and wishes him the best.

It feels pretty good to wake up knowing that you had a pretty good score and move up ten positions in ranking. But it also feels good to know that you have transported your car, your aggravator safely all the way across the country 4100 miles. It also feels good to know you are going home.

It has to be the end of the race because the second stash of Carol Gezon famous cookies are now all gone. Thanks Carol for keeping us in cookies. You have to come with us for the two weeks next year. The only thing required is one of your bags must be full of cookies. After baking these wonderful cookies, Carol would place about five cookies in a plastic sleeve and tie them with red metallic twist ties. A friend of Bruce Gezon’s, Uli Reichman after consuming an individualized bag of Carol Gezon cookies would tie the red metallic twist tie to his pit pass name tag all Great Racers are required to wear. He looked like a wire tie Christmas tree he had so many wrapped around his GR pit pass!

Our tire warm up this morning was in the coldest weather we have had so far. Theresa and I both were suited up in our polarlite sweaters but were still shivering. During the speedo calibration, we drove up “the 101″. (That’s the way Californians speak about their highways). You don’t say I am going up Interstate 75 to Athens today. You say I am going up the 75. Albeit 75 is in Tennessee and if I spoke like that back home they would look at me like I was from the land of fruits n nuts. Ok back to going up the 101. We turned around a Sausalito which is the last exit before the Golden Gate Bridge. We got a great view of the fog coming in the bay, the GG Bridge and Alcatraz Island. It was too far to see if the Birdman was still there.

Our new friends Thom and Ourata (ain’t sure if I am spelling it right) broke down on the speedo run. They were calibratin along the 101 going north when smoke or water vapor came out from under their car big time. Maybe that big ole 38 Cadillac had had enough.

We had a good morning rally with five check points. The first two were on the Infinion Raceway. We did two laps around the track at 15 mph, 20 mph etc. I thought it was a pretty sneaky way to keep crazies like me from opening her up when I get on a race track.

Theresa reminded me that we rallied through the hills of Sonoma and Napa seeing many fine estates with famous wine names on their gates and rows n rows of grape vines all neatly manicured. Looked a lot to me like the dial of my Great Race speedometer with my navigator saying “going 35, looking for a stop n go right to 40″. Well, maybe I can go back and really see it.

We finished the rallying at about 11 AM and made our way to Charlie Goodman’s “collection”. He said he didn’t have a museum but a collection. He had a nice array of cars from late model sports cars to muscle cars and big classics. He and Barry Dougherty drove Charlie’s 38 Desoto Phaeton. They did pretty good too, placing third place in rookie division and 16th overall. Just so you know, I made pretty much fun over Barry Dougherty (pronounced Dockerty) not knowing who Wyatt Earp was. He also did not know who “The Duke” was. He said he grew up learning names like Packard, Bugatti, Isotta Franchini etc. You know I am not really sure I buy that from a guy who cannot even pronounce his own last name right! Enjoyed getting to know Barry and Charlie better. But I will be nice to Barry, he has a cool original Stutz Bearcat that I would love to have.

After a great lunch at Charlie’s, we were instructed to parade into downtown San Rafael (correctly pronounced San Ruh Fell ). We arrived through the final finish gate to a great crowd and the surprise that we had an 8.45 seconds for the day with five check points. We placed 11th for the day to hold our 25th position in the whole event. Curtis and Bruce got a 2.64 seconds and finished in third place overall in the Coker Tire 2nd car.

David Reeder and his grandson Sawyer Stone won the whole event with total score of 2.05.40. They were on their game for sure! Confetti blew out of the confetti cannons and the crowd cheered. They won how much you ask? Remember corky talk for 100,000? A hundred sows and bucks!

It was a great event that could not have been accomplished without a great team of volunteers who do so much from scoring to putting up and taking down the gate to organizing the city stops etc. The Great Race Staff did a wonderful job and we appreciate them.

The Awards ceremony was good with “Motormouth” and Wayne Stanfield doing the MC thing. The night was capped off with a wonderful slideshow presentation of our Great Race 24 set to music. It was great!

As I crackberry this final Great Race update, Theresa and I are on one of Delta’s finest jetting our way back to our “neck of the woods” and our wonderful farm, two adult (most of the time) children and our dog “Banjo”.

We also could not have done without Andrew Givens. He prepared the car and the trailer, drove it to Philly and then across the USA and helped many other folks along the way. Jerry Priesel was his navigator and salesman for the company in the evening stops. He also did a great job.

We thoroughly enjoyed having Curtis Graf and Bruce Gezon on our team. Both great guys and excellent rallyiests. Bruce enjoyed teasing Theresa. He even lightened up and tossed water on her one afternoon. He probably hates that I put that in here.

From the Adventure of a lifetime that happens every year,…The Great Race,

Corky

Thursday, we finished a long day in Placerville, CA which is an old Gold mining town. Cameron and I had finished a stage there several years ago. The townspeople really came out last time and this time too! When we finished up the Parc Ferme, we transited from Placerville into Sacramento about 50 more miles for the night.

Friday morning was cold since we were down in the SF Bay area. We were 82nd car out. Our friends Sheila and Linda (the Lacy Racers) from Searcy Arkansas were the last car out. Kinda stinks. All the people are gone and most of the food too when you get into town. But that’s the luck of the draw on Championship Day.

Great Race Rallymaster John Classen really throws the book at us on Championship Day. I mean that literally too. The Course instructions were 45 pages! I didn’t know that there were that many turns between Sacramento and Vallejo!

It was a really hard day. 64 timed maneuvers and 57 stop and go’s. There was a sneaky 30 second stop and go mixed in with all the shrilling 15 second stop and go’s, but my faithful aggravator, sorry…. I mean navigator, didn’t get caught!

Six time Grand Champions Burdick and Bell were the car in front of us. Occasionally you can see and “mark” the car in front to “verify” your position which is always a good thing to do. If you make a change to your position based on your “verification”, this is called a “hack”. Now you can go to a cocktail party and talk like a Great Racer with rally talk. Burdick and Bell won the day with an 11 seconds. I told Wayne Bell that if I had known he would win the day, we would have hacked all day.

Curtis and Bruce took a speed change at the apex of a turn instead of at the sign before the turn for a time maneuver as they went through a check point which put them in a double jeopardy situation. Two legs were affected so they made a 34.

We beat them with a 31 seconds. We did not know if it was a good score or not until we got to dinner at Buck Kamphausens museum in Vallejo. Apparently all the scores were high and we were 8th place for the day.

Buck Kamphausen is one of my partners (Rally Partners) who owns the Great Race with me and another 8 guys. He is an undertaker, investor, and all round good guy. He supplied a car for two Hemmings Rookie Challenge cars; one for Shawna Rohbock and Mike Kohn from the National Guard and the other for the Philadelphia School group. He put on a spread for us with a band, and some great food.

At the entrance to his theater he had a bar, which was chocker block full of Great Racers by the time we got in since we were one of the last cars. I stepped to the bar to get something to drink and saw a sign hanging over the Bar that looked mysteriously like my Coker Tire logo which features a wide whitewall tire but this one was clearly flat. The sign however was for Coker “pure Tennessee sippin whiskey”

“Guaranteed to flatten you”

And sitting with all of the other bottles were these square lookin bottles (which looked a lot like Jack Daniels) with Coker logos on them! Buck is such a practical joker! It was a kick! He gave me one of the bottles and a copy of the sign.

Sister and Sandy McRae flew up from Granbury Texas to see the finish. It was so great to see them both. Sandy’s husband Tom founded the Great Race with Norm Miller( founder of Interstate Battery) 24 years ago. Last year we renamed the Spirit of the Event Award after Tom McRae.

After the dinner party, we booked it on over to San Rafael for our headquarters hotel at the Embassy Suites. We have only one more day of rallying. You can tell that everyone is pretty dog tired. Theresa and hit the bed as soon as we could to try to catch up on some much needed sleep.

“To finish is to Win” and we only have one more day to win!

From the road,

Corky

Today is one of the Championship Runs although it was not originally planned to be so. We were the 79th car out and Curtis n Bruce were the 80th car. We left Best Western High Desert at Official Start time plus your start order. Theresa and I got to sleep in just a bit. We got a good speedo run so we felt pretty good about the chances for the day. Early in the morning there was about 5 miles of roller coaster washboard road. Not much you can do there but TRY to keep speed. Hard to do.

We had lunch in Colusa California. Nice little town. Saw a cool rat rod similar to mine. 41 Ford pickup chopped channeled and ratted just right. There was also a beautiful 1920 Pierce 7 passenger touring car.

Leaving lunch we went back on the clock just outside town. We rallied about 5 minutes when we came up on a stop and go right 35. We saw all the traffic backed up including Great Race cars behind a flag man. We sat at the sop sign a minute until it looked like the traffic went through. We decided to go when it looked like he let them all through. We got up to the traffic quickly. There are a lot of things you can do to keep track of your time. We decelled 20 percent for 20 seconds and loss 4 seconds. Did that twice. Then we pulled over and kept the clock running with the plans of letting traffic by and submitting a time delay. I was proud of us! We kept presence of mind and worked it out. I think we got a 10 seconds on that leg although turning in a 5 minute 40 second time delay.

We saw some absolutely beautiful lakes up in Sierra Nevadas. Drove by Kirkwood Ski slopes. We tried to ski there this past winter but could not get there from Tahoe because of the huge amount of snow.

Curtis’s Packard is running well and so is the Shafer. Both cars are like mules smelling the barn. They know its about over and time to go home! I know this country boy is looking forward to coming home.

The whole town came out in Placerville. The streets were packed. They fed us gourmet pot pies and they were good. They gave each driver and navigator a bottle of wine. Everyone was happy to see us. We were pleased to be able to get out of the car.

We had a 50 minute drive to our hotel in Sacramento where we start en route to Vallejo. Buck Kamphausen has a cool museum there. Guess he will feed us.

Andrew and Jerry had quite an experience getting in to Placerville. The Rally master also prepares instructions for the support vehicles. Well, he routed the folks down HWY 49 which was way too small, curvy and dangerous for an 80 foot rig. Andrew said he thought that they would never get out of there. The tractor bottomed out on the trailer skid pads n all. If it wasn’t for a local guy who stopped traffic, they would have still been stuck!

From the road,

Corky

Stage 10 started EARLY. Official start time was 6 AM. Since I am posting this a day late I really do not remember what our “out” time was. That’s rally lingo. I guess our Rally Staff realized that since all us Car Crazies would be revvin our motors to get ready to go, we picked up our instructions at a McDonalds. Was pretty smart actually. Solved two problems at once. While all those smart navigators were settin their clocks and pickin up their route instructions (no sooner than 20 minutes before their out time)…all us “dumb drivers” got a McMuffin or McGriddle so we could Mcmake it to lunch! Also the folks at the hotels got to sleep without all the ruckus.

If you have ever driven across the desert, the ONLY real way to do it is to stare at a speedometer at 55 mph for 8 hours. Ain’t much to see any way. Sorry, not really true. I like the desert some. Just not much. We saw Ships Rock. It’s a big ole Outcropping sittin out in the middle of nowhere like it don’t belong. Didn’t look like a ship to me though, come out here ‘n look for yourself.

Can’t tell you too much about Rallying. Theresa and I must be trying to make this thing too hard trying to factor for tires and altitude and stuff. It was so serious that we actually discussed buying an altimeter during our short lunchtime visit to Cedar City Utah. Sick. No wonder our scores are just okay. The Great Race COO Wayne Stanfield, who is a 5 time Grand Champion says “keep it simple, stay on course, stay on time”. Sounds easy. Yeah right.

We lost eight cars yesterday from one thing or another. This Great Race is endurance for Man and Machine.

We finished the day in Tonopah, Nevada. Those folks worked very hard and received us well. They have some Great Race history too. George Schuster and guys came through Tonopah in their 1907 Thomas Flyer and got some repairs done in town during the Great Race from New York to Paris in 1908. The Tonopah townsfolk commissioned a Mural depicting the arrival of the USA team in their town which was unveiled during our parc ferm’e. (explained that word earlier).

Andrew put a new tire on the Shafer. The old one was slicker than snot on a door knob so we changed it.

Theresa and I splurged and had dinner in a “sit down restaurant”. Usually we either don’t have time or would rather go to bed. Days are long on Great Race.

I will mention that this post is a day late cause Tonopah Verizon has a computer to probably handle the calls of 150 townsfolk and here we come and jam their lines with hundreds of cell phones. I absolutely could not get a download.

Both cars are performing flawlessly.

Oh, one interesting story before I move on to Stage 12. The car in the lead is piloted by David Reeder and Sawyer Stone, David’s 13 year old Grand son. All the Great Race participants came across the desert where the cattle roam free. Yep, he creamed one.

From the road,

Corky

Durango, Colorado’s Historic Strater Hotel is absolutely world renown with its heritage, cowboy spirit and feel. My absolute favorite author would lock himself into the now famous Louis LaMour suite for three or four days and come out with a book like The Sacketts or Conagher. He liked it because of the Rinky Tink sounding piano at Diamond Belles, the first floor saloon at the Strater.

Linda Campbell (the Senator’s wife) told us last night that she is friends with Louis Lamour’s wife Kathy and that their farm…dang….. forgot …out West they are all called Ranches… Well anyway, the Lamour Ranch is close to Durango. I was impressd.. Cowboys are an important part of American history, and Louis Lamour documented a bunch of that history with amazingly accurate fiction.

Durango is located in the FOUR Corners of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. After leaving at our 830 start time…. We rallyed through ALL FOUR STATES..

Our speedo calibration was weird yesterday. It was in two parts. I should have left the speedo alone (now in retrospect) BUT I didn’t. I saw .6 seconds fast per 10 run so I slowed the car down by 3.6 seconds per hour. We got a 28 seconds and worked our dang tail off doing it all day. I factored for loss of elevation. I factored for tire growth at 50 mph. Rallied perfectly. It was REALLY frustrating coming in to that score after working so hard all day.

It was a very hard day. I think that if I had not have changed the speedo, we would have gotten around a 15 or 16 for the day.

Bruce and Curtis got something around 13 I think. That ole Packard keeps on chugging. But not without a lot of attention from Doctor Graf!

The reception at Page, AZ was okay, just mediocre. We were able to roll off to our hotels by 8 PM and Theresa and I were ready for bed! We saw fireworks out our window before we sacked out. God bless America.

Wednesday we will have a very LONG day with over 500 miles across the Nevada desert! I hope we make it. Andrew and Jerry have to leave Page at 515 AM.

Carol Gezon came through! We got cookies! Thanks Carol!

From the road,

Corky

P.S.

I finished this update before the alarm went off Wed AM July 5. The alarm just went off. Theresa got up and said “its Ground Hog Day”. Meaning the movie with Bill Murray where he makes the same mistakes over and over again and he goes to bed and he wakes up the next day and its Ground Hog Day allover again.

We started in Pueblo, CO under cool clear skies at 715 AM and another opportunity to win a hundred sows and bucks (Corky talk for $100,000.) But only if you get all Aces (that’s Zeros at every leg. Most of the experts who had rallied mountains before were ready with long sleeves and rain suits. We knew we were going to climb some big elevation today.

Theresa and Corky Coker were 5th car out followed by Bruce and Curtis in 21st. Just a reminder that each car is theoritically one minute apart. We headed toward Durango on the Freeway for our speedometer calibration. That’s where each competitor checks his speedo against the speedo of the rallymaster and the computerized course.

As we got to the sign where we were to “go on the clock” my new friend Thom Wells had a terrible leak coming from the gas tank of his 38 Cadillac 75 series Convertible. We backed it on a curb so we could get under it and pulled the gas line off, re-tightened the hose clamps and sent them on their way. Problem was they were first car and I had 30 seconds to get back to my car for my start exactly four minutes after Thom was SUPPOSED TO HAVE started. I jumped in to the Shafer 8 to a VERY unhappy navigator but perfectly made my start on time to 50 mph on the side of the road right next to a Van that finally got the picture and sped up! The rest of the morning was normal but I smelled like 92 octane all the rest of the day.

Great Race tip here. I checked our elevation as soon as we got off the Speedo calibration. As we climbed elevation we had to slow the car down one second per hour per 1000 ft elevation. We do this because the pressure in the tires is constant as it is a closed container but the atmospheric pressure is less because of the altitude making the tire bigger speeding the car up according to the speedo. Think it through…

We stopped in Altamosa CO and Pagosa Springs and finished in Durango to a wonderful reception by the folks of Durango. Car 2 with Bruce and Curtis pulled a 10 second I think and we got a 16 second with four Ones, a two second and a 13 on the big altitude leg. That put Car 2 in 16th place for the day. There were some low scores!

We had dinner with some of our Friends Nile and Jeanette Cornielison, Dave and Judy Holmes, and Dennis and Marion Pierce. We had a great Italian meal and great conversation.

Monday in Durango was a day off for Great Racers giving everyone the opportunity to wash clothes, work on their cars, including changing tires.

We had dinner with my friend Senator Ben Campbell and his lovely wife Linda. I took Ben for a ride in the Shafer 8 and made his knuckles white. He got a turn driving after calling me crazy. Of course I am! Great people. Wish he was still in the US Senate. He is a real car guy and a solid leader.

We are off to New Mexico tomorrow …up the mountains again!

From the road,

Corky