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Cannonball One Lap of America 2007 ScheduleThe abbreviated schedule for Cannonball One Lap of America is as follows:
04 May 2007 04:05 Special Thanks from Mark Aaron Murnahan Peggy Murnahan - It all starts with Peggy Murnahan. Peggy, you are the inspiration that makes everything possible. :-* I love you. Dan Burns - Thank you for all of your research into the event. Your lists and advice are already being put to good use, and the event is not yet underway. Carbotech - We would like to thank Danny at Carbotech for supporting us with great advice, fast shipping, and excellent service. Driven Performance Equipment - Phil, you are always very helpful, and we appreciate the help. Branden Burkhart - You pushed me into this. Thanks for being a great friend and inspiration. I appreciate you very much. Will Rogers - You are a great inspiration, great automotive engineer, and great friend, but I am still faster. :-P Brian Forsythe - You are a great instructor and driver. I appreciate all of the feedback and training. Kirk Kiloh - I know Kirk as Grandfather Speed. Kirk practically invented speed, and is a huge support to many drivers. I appreciate all of your training and positive input. Chuck Vossler and Ned Smith - Thank you for your insight. I appreciate your assistance and advice on the Cannonball. I am sorry that you cannot return this year. All of the many others ... - I do not want to make this too long, but there have been many helpers with this sport and this event. I want to thank you all very much. 03 May 2007 01:05 Filling the Corvette with gas in Topeka, Kansas. I miss Peggy, Simon, and Madeline already. I am off to pick up Angel in Kansas City. 03 May 2007 02:05 Arrived at Angel's house in Olathe, Kansas. We are getting packed and installing a Valentine RADAR detector. We will leave momentarily. 03 May 2007 05:05 Quick pit stop in Rantoul, Missouri. We have encountered a lot of wet road, but only light showers. 03 May 2007 07:05 First fuel stop since Topeka, Kansas. We made it to Collinsville, Illinois. We were stuck in St Louis rush hour. Still raining, but just lightly. Mark still driving. Having fun and laughing a lot. Hi Peggy, Simon, and Madeline. I hope the 3D dinosaur movie is great! :-*
04 May 2007 12:05 Burns Harbor, IN - Pilot Truck Stop - Mark still driving. OnStar sent us to a rib place in Joliet, IL. All we found was The Chicken Shack, 24 inch three spoke wheels, a gal in a mini-skirt and fuzzy boots, and not a single left turn. We thought we were in a horror version of Groundhog Day. I wanted to smoke but was afraid to open the window. We are in a much Happier place now. Time for a wonderful meal at the golden arches. 04 May 2007 02:05 We made it to the hotel just in time to check in and make it to the hotel bar, Gippers Lounge, in time for last call. Cheers! We have had a wild ride to Indiana. I will tell more about the event as we get moving, but for now, I am running low on fuel. With only a couple of hours of sleep in the past 24 hours and a long drive behind me, I hope that you will not mind if this is brief. I drove from Topeka, Kansas to South Bend, Indiana today, and I am growing tired. Our mileage log has a good deal of commentary. Joliet, Illinois was about the strangest thing we saw today. I will try to get some photos uploaded soon. For now, I just hope to get two to three hours of sleep before I am up and ready for registration, technical inspection, washing the car, applying a ton of stickers, getting new tires installed, changing my brakes, etcetera. All my best from Indiana! 05 May 2007 12:05 It was a very busy day for Team YourNew.com, so this is Peggy providing a status report on the event: Fortunately, our co-driver has been more productive in today's blogging activities. You may find detail of much of today's activities at Angel's Blog (http://www.n2toyz.com) . True to form, Mark has spent his time seeking interactive knowledge from others while Angel proves his book-smarts by actually reading the event handbook. During the drivers meeting, we were told that we will likely hate each other, periodically, by Monday. We certainly hope to overcome this, as Mark has come to enjoy and respect his new found friendship with Angel. We apologize for any lack of communication today, but Mark is still performing much of his daily duties as the CEO of YourNew.com, Inc. As the two drivers share both track and transport responsibilities, blogging efforts will likely be impacted proportionately. Keep checking back here at YourNew.com for reports on this drive of a lifetime, Cannonball - One Lap of America. 05 May 2007 02:05 Leaving Gippers Lounge. My endurance will be evident within the next week. If I nap, it will be here on the log. I will sign out in 30 minutes or so. We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there ... :-) No worries ... I would do it on my chopper if they let me. 05 May 2007 03:05 Showered and ready to roll out the door in a little under three hours. Angel has been crashed for many hours, so I hope he will be fresh in order to bring me to quick life at 5:45 a.m. in order to further prepare the Corvette and get the first event. 05 May 2007 06:05 I messed up the wet skid pad and sent us to 60th overall this morning. That hurt, but not as bad as initially expected. It was a good job, if not for the spin. :-/ Angel drove the oval at South Bend well, but it was a slick surface. Angel also did some awesome work at Autobahn Country Club. We should look better in overall standing now. Mark will give some strong competition at Mid-America Motorplex tomorrow. MAM will give us a home team advantage and Mark knows every bump on the track. Cops are drooling for Cannonballers, but we have the Valentine V1 on our side. It has saved us many times from 90+ MPH tickets. 05 May 2007 09:05 We found out that we moved up to 45th overall. We are on our way up! The cops are swarming around the Cannonball route. We saw the lizard wrapped Corvette and the Ultima GTR stopped by cops. We have never seen so many cops! 06 May 2007 01:05 Bellevue, NE - Days Inn - Hopefully the rain will dilute the gene pool and wash off what the devil left behind. OMG! This place has got to be the inspiration of Rob Zombie movies. As we sit here at a bar called Tooters, I finally find myself at a loss for words. There is a huge NO DIVING sign at this gene pool! Oh, I had better go ... some gal is freaking out because her purse was stolen! Yikes... where are we? Side note ... the staff here are really nice. 06 May 2007 04:05 We are still working with picture and video issues and planning for tomorrow. I have a feeling that we may be tired soon. I did not nap an instant today. We started in South Bend, IN and went to Joliet, IL for an event and the beat it here to Bellevue, NE. I will drive at Mid-America in the rain at 8:00 and then drive straight to Salt Lake City, Utah in under 19 hours (including sleep and pit-stops. I will go hose myself off here at the hillbilly hell house within the hour and try to wink for 45 minutes before the 5:45 wake up call. I am very excited to see Peggy, Simon, and Madeline. I love you all, and I miss you much. Kids, please be good to Mommy. Simon, remember how much Maddie learns from you (good or bad). I am also happy to see my mother-in-law, Bette. Wow! How many guys can say that? Bette, you are cool. Thanks for the time and trouble. :-) I hope to see friends and family from Kansas tomorrow. Wear your rain gear! 06 May 2007 05:05 The hotel is so dirty that I am afraid to touch anything. The shower head peed on me enough to fill the tub because the drain worked even less. I can see why the locals are genetically deprived ... they are missing HY gene, (among others). It is amazing that these people are walking upright. You will just have to get the whole story later (with photos). I will have more for you later, but I have to check a few loose ends and sleep before the 5:45 call-of-doom. It is still raining and the thunder sounds near. If a 5:25 tornado (or one of these gender-indefinite ogres) does not carry me away, I will see Mid-America Motorplex in two and a half hours (7:00 arrival) with a smiling face. :-) 07 May 2007 11:05 Team YourNew.com BUSTED! 148 mph in a 70 mph zone. More to come later. 08 May 2007 05:05 My blogging has been a bit delayed due to an exceptionally busy schedule. I will try to be much better at this, and I plan to do more blogging from the road instead of hoping that I will have time when we get to the next destination. I will try to catch up. On our way to Mid-America Motorplex, we drove through a horrible storm, and found a semi-safe haven in a convenience store. The store was filled with close to a hundred people, including a school bus load of kids waiting for the storm to pass. When we arrived, we heard the tornado sirens, and the clerk informed me that there was a tornado on the ground a short distance from there. Once back on the road, we passed a truck piled up on a guard rail and nearly over the edge of a bridge. it was a big day for storms in the Midwest. Sunday started with a panic. Angel just happened to wake up and saw light coming through the window, and realized that we were going to be late. We should have been up by dawn, and lining up for grid in just a few minutes. It seemed impossible to make it to the track before our early grid time. Fortunately, I showered and dressed before I went to bed. After all, I did not go horizontal until after 5:00 A.M.! I never even peeled the blankets back, for fear of what may be beneath them. Since I did not have much time for sleep, I wanted to be ready to leave in a hurry when it was time to wake up. In order to be ready quickly, I went to sleep fully dressed, including fire suit and racing shoes. It was just a nap, not a long restful night of sleep. We rushed to pack and I was absolutely nuts, and not very nice for company. We still needed gas in the Corvette, so we had to stop for that, and then beat it to Mid-America Motorplex. We arrived at Mid-America in record time, and checked in with the grid master. It seemed that we had rushed for nothing, because the tornado sirens were going off and they decided to postpone the first run-group to 10:00 A.M. This would be our second drive through a tornado warning in just a short number of hours. Peggy and the kids greeted me at the track along with my mother-in-law, Bette. It was very nice to see them, although brief. I do not keep it a secret that I hate driving on a wet track. It is even less enjoyable after watching another Corvette hit the wall at turn one just before I was to go on course. He was a very experienced driver, and I know that he was familiar with Mid-America because I met him there just weeks earlier. If he had trouble with it, I would surely need to keep it slow. Seeing emergency vehicles on track just before my session was enough to give me a really bad feeling. I did not want them coming to pull me out of trouble, so I was just out to stay on course and not break any records. I looked at the bottom line ... you cannot win if you do not finish the race. I tried to keep close to my normally fast line for the recon lap, but then decided to abandon the line when I found mud at turn seven and that 8-10 feet of track-left was underwater after turn eight. It was a mess, I was a mess, and it was not a good time for me. The one track in this event where I would feel most confident turned out to be a nightmare. I finished 54th and brought us down to an overall standing of 51st (a bit below mid-pack). It was a huge disappointment, again, but better than hitting a wall. Moving on, we took the long drive to Salt Lake City right after we left the track. This was a huge transport leg of the event, and we only had until 8:00 A.M. to get there, get rest, and be on grid at Miller Motorsports Park. The journey was long, but the arrival was worth the wait. Driving I-80 into Salt Lake is amazing. We had a group of Audi, and BMW Cannonballers to our back and a breathtaking smooth downhill series of twists that make for a killer drive at three digit speed into the city. I could never imagine a more exciting and fun daily commute than the trip to Salt Lake City from I-80 West. It was a blast, and would be worth a set of brakes and tires twice a week to take the drive. We made it to the Best Western in Tooele, Utah around 2:00 A.M. This hotel was a huge improvement over Hillbilly Hell in Bellevue, NE, and was clean and comfortable. I must thank my good buddy, Prewitt Turner, for calling ahead and booking the room before they were booked. We did not have a good signal for hundreds of miles, so blogging has not fit into the schedule. We got a good rest from about 3:00 A.M. to 6:00 A.M, which felt like a full night after the last few days. Monday has been a great day, starting with enough time to pack, have coffee, and visit with some other Cannonballers at the hotel. We stopped to fill the car with gas and headed off to Miller Motorsports Park about ten minutes away. it is all a dream compared to Sunday. Miller Motorsports Park is like nothing we have ever seen. They have a different track for everything! The park is complete with a go-carting course, motocross course, a highly configurable road course of up to four and a half miles, and world-class facilities. Miller Motorsports Park is truly an amazing place, complete with a view of mountains in every direction. I could live at that place (we should talk, Peggy). Angel drove amazingly well. While I was watching, I was told that the V-10 Audi S6 (a.k.a. "Bad S") was being driven by a professional driver whom was hired by Car and Driver to compete in the Cannonball. Angel nearly passed him by the third lap. Afterward, the driver was talking about the Z06 that was catching him, and Angel told him that it was not a Z06 but rather a Z51. It truly was an amazing run, and it was a 21st place run in the event. This brought us up to 43rd place in overall standing as of the morning event. During lunch break, we replaced the rear pads (just in time) and had a nice visit to the Phadt Race Engineering hospitality area where we visited with Aaron and Robin Pfadt. They are very nice, and we hope to see more of them (to dress up the Corvette with some new suspension). The afternoon event was on the 4.5 mile course with a 3500 foot main straight and 24 turns! It is a good thing we replaced the pads, because this course would need some strong brakes. Angel felt good about the run, but did not think it was as good as the morning. It was an easy course to become lost, and would take a lot of lapping to learn the line. It turns out that he placed 9th (although they posted it as 10th by mistake)! That puts us back up to an overall position of 35th place, which is fantastic for a new team in this event. After leaving Miller, we stopped for gas and hit the road for Pueblo, CO. We decided on the route from I-80 East to I-25 South in order to miss the snow on the originally state Troopers planned route. Team YourNew.com BUSTED! Just outside of Coalville, Utah, where we filled up with fuel and junk food, we were hit upon by what seems to be a very overzealous cop. The State Troopers even seemed to know that this cop was full of crap. He said that we were doing 148 MPH in a 70 MPH zone. He initially said that he used RADAR, but under scrutiny, and once the State guys showed up he said that he was trained to judge speed visually, and that is how he "caught" us. Well, visually, my car does 148 MPH in the garage. It is a race-stickered 2007 Corvette Z51 for the sake of Pete! In short, this cop was lying and he will lose in court because the truth prevails. He knew this, or otherwise he would have hauled Angel to jail, confiscated my laptop, and impounded my car ... just as he eluded to as he attempted to sequester and intimidate us. It was like any other ugly event in a Podunk town with a high and mighty cop ... except that he seemed to become nicer the more he cooled down and realized that he would have to commit perjury to make it stick, and lies always come back to haunt a person. I will be checking out his history once we are back home. I am certain that he has done this sort of thing before, and you simply cannot get away with lies forever. Especially when a World-class hack is on board. Besides, if I have to get cocky, since I know he will read this, I will ... To you, Cop (I am not naming you *for now*), you cannot lie forever. If you even so much as show up for court on this, your life will be exposed to scrutiny to the likes that you have no comprehension. Your town may defend you for the moment, because you do this to people and collect great revenue for them. However, I have means so much greater than you that you do not understand. If it is money that you are seeking, just consider that my garage is probably worth more than your courthouse. If you can muster any wisdom, you will stop before you get caught speeding and end up in my jurisdiction. 08 May 2007 06:05 It is time for this racer to sleep. I will do my best to find a good line and be smooth at Pueblo. My wake-up call is in about an hour and fifteen minutes, so I will try to rest and wake up ready for the challenge. 08 May 2007 08:05 It is a beautiful morning here in Pueblo, Colorado. The sky is clear and it is warm enough for a t-shirt. I am already suited up and getting some coffee at the hotel. I am tired, but feel good about today. I will let you know how it goes soon. 08 May 2007 01:05 I was nervous as ever at the grid, but was fine once I was moving fast. I ran my first session and gained confidence with each lap. I blew turn seven, but will work on it this afternoon. It is a very slow and tight turn. They serve a good cheeseburger here at Pueblo Motorsports Park. I will run my second session much faster. I will post the results as soon as possible. 09 May 2007 05:05 We drove all night from Pueblo, CO to Tulsa, OK. We paired up with an Audi S4 for hundreds of miles until we needed gas. We split for gas and once we were back on the road we were surrounded by a tornado on three sides. Our friends in the Audi were first to arrive on the scene where a tornado plucked five tractor-trailers from I-44 and threw them as far as 500 yards away. Kudos the Audi guys for pulling a trucker from the cab of his truck. We had to wait for the cleanup before the highway was re-opened, so we were running behind. We drove straight to the track where we slept for about an hour and a half. Angel completed an amazing morning run and finished fourth over a group of semi-pro and professional drivers. We were in 29th place overall and 8th in our class as of lunch break. We anxiously await news of the second half standings. We are on our way from Tulsa (just leaving) to O'Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis, IN. 09 May 2007 07:05 Peggy called to inform us that Angel's second session landed him 14th and moved us up to 8th in class and 28th overall. :-D 09 May 2007 11:05 We are on our way to Indianapolis and making good time. We hooked up with an Ultima GTR, Ford GT, BMW M3, and a couple others. We made up for little time to get there. I need to find some front rotors, but the biggest trouble with brakes at present is a terrible pad transfer patch that only runs through the middle part of the rotor. I think they must have been applied while in cool-down and took the pad material off the rotors. We are roughly 200 miles from Indy. 10 May 2007 01:05 We are about 60 miles from Indianapolis and changing divers. Angel is about to the safe limit, so I will drive the rest. We are at Little Point (by Cloverdale ... it is a very little point). 10 May 2007 03:05 We stopped by Indianapolis Motor Speedway before the hotel. That is a cool place. We are not at the hotel and it is the same thing all over. I will have very little sleep and then go and drive fast on a track that I have only walked once. It looks fast in the track map, but I am sure that there will be something tricky. We have two road course events and two drag events ahead of us. I am feeling confident. 10 May 2007 05:05 It was a long time since I felt a bed, so I am off to learn an old study. It will be brief, though, as I will be on my feet in under two hours. 10 May 2007 07:05 It is time to head to the track in a rush. I will let you know what I see. 10 May 2007 11:05 It has been a really big day for Team YourNew.com. We arrived at O'Reilly with just enough time to walk the course and figure out how I would be able to edge-out the competition. The first session went great. We were listed as 16th place, but after an adjustment for errors, it turned out to be 19th place. It may not sound impressive, but considering the group we are driving against, this is a really great placement. Remember, there are a lot of professional drivers in this event. The first session moved us up from an overall standing at 25th to a new position of 24th. I knew what I needed to do, and I knew where I could make improvements in the second session. The second session was much faster, and overall time was cut from 5:46.664 to 5:43.751 ... which is a big improvement! This moved us up, again, to an overall standing at 23rd place ... but the day was not done. The drags were just one more place to gain a few points. It was hot, and traction was elusive, but I ran a quarter mile time of 13.241 ET. This brought us up one more place to an overall standing of 22nd! This is starting to look like a trend, don't you think? Our plan is to conservatively run the remaining events and lock in a top twenty placement. /this is looking quite realistic for us, which would cause a huge upset. Most notable about this upset is the fact that we are doing all of this with a stock 2007 Corvette Z51 with the only modifications are as follows:
Everything else about this car is absolutely stock! We have hear a lot of questions about what we are doing for suspension, horsepower, etcetera. After all, two "Lap Puppies" just cannot do this without a lot of help from the car. This is a myth! We are doing it. :-) We will be running at Mid-Ohio Speedway tomorrow, and Angel will be driving. We expect him to keep up the team's lead and push us up into the top twenty. 11 May 2007 08:05 We are finally in Ohio to compete at Mid-Ohio Race Course in Lexington, Ohio. It has been another beautiful day for Team YourNew.com. We started out strong when Angel seized a 19th position finish (after the scorekeepers adjusted it from 16th ... grr). This brought us up to a 21st overall standing. I finally decided to have the Corvette detailed today while we were at mid-Ohio Race Course. I figured that it should go faster without the thick coat of road grime. The afternoon was even better. Angel finished at 16th place, which brought us up to 20th place overall. Many people think that it is impossible that we have placed this high with a stock car with the "wrong" tires, and driven by first time Cannonballers (known as Lap Puppies). We came to learn about the event and come back another time to be more competitive. I had some very respected people, including "Grandfather Speed" Kirk Kiloh tell me that if we finished in the middle of the pack that we would have done something amazing. This is because this is a highly competitive event with a large contingency of professional race drivers. We have one more event coming up tomorrow at The Tire Rack, in South Bend, Indiana. The event is the dry skid pad. I totally blew the wet skid pad, but as long as it is not raining tomorrow, I will complete our journey with a top 20 position and prove the viability of our racing team. 13 May 2007 01:05 We made it to the end of this big race challenge. The last event was the skid pad, and fortunately it was dry. I have not practiced the skid pad, so it is anybody's guess how this will go. The skid pad is merely a big circle and you drive around the circle as fast as possible while maintaining control of the car without sliding. My performance on the skid pad determines our final placement in the event. The pressure is pretty great, because we very much want to complete the Cannonball in the top twenty. We tied for 20th on Friday, and we must do well to hold our position. One thing that I should mention is that regardless of how we place in the end, we have had a great run. We have placed higher than many highly experienced drivers, and most of the teams above us are professional drivers. Driving fast is what many of these guys do for a living! Another thing worth mention is that these guys work all year to get their monster cars ready for Cannonball. There are cars in our class with well over twice the horsepower and incredible suspension and weight reduction that gives them advantage over our 2007 Corvette Z51. Many of the other participants would never believe that a couple of amateur drivers could place this highly, and especially not in a stock car. Here we are, 20th place and rising to the occasion. Well, we did not hold our position, but in the end, we placed 8th in our class and 21st overall in an event filled with professional race drivers in prepared cars. This is a huge feat, and we are proud of our work. The experience has been incredible, and it has prepared us to come back next year when our goal will be a top ten overall position. The boys from Kansas did ourselves proud, and we thank you for keeping up with our progress. We will be adding stories of our travels and many photos and videos here at YourNew.com very soon. Since it is Mother's Day, I will break from the blog, but I will have much to show and tell you within the next couple of days. Keep coming back! |  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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