2008 DC Pro Solo

What a weekend... the Washington DC Region of the SCCA hosted the National Pro Solo this weekend at FedEx Field. It's a 2 day event that requires all sorts of extra planning and work making it more like a 4 day event. But boy, it's the best autocross format out there.

Steve was assigned to help a national level course designer with designing the course, so he went out to FedEx after work on Thursday to start laying out cones and determining where stuff would go for the course. Then he had to be back out there at 7am on Friday morning for full course design and setup. The courses are two mirror images of each other even though the reality is that they are never true mirror images due to the topography of the parking lot. They are required to do measurements and all sorts of crazy stuff that we don't have to do for a local autocross. They were done by 11am, but still... long day already.

I drove down Friday with 20 cases of water that I think we finished over the weekend... if we didn't, we were close! We had the Miata tech'd, which always includes putting on that stupid TIRE RACK sticker on the front windshield - that's a 20 minute ordeal. We didn't stick around for practice starts; we wanted to get back into Baltimore before really bad rush hour traffic hit. We got to Eleanor's to pick up DJ around 4, and he was still napping! We missed the Welcome Dinner, which is always really good, but it was nice to be home a little early.

Saturday was a long day for everyone, and we got to leave the event early! Grandmom came at 5:45am to watch DJ, and we left the house a little after 6. Upon arrival, I was working with Shawn and Clyde to get the worker stations set up, except that we had to wait for Ian to show up with the bus key! Jane got ice for the coolers, and voila, worker stations were done. We had our check in list in hand, and were chilling out under the region tents when National came over to ask us if we had done this that and the other thing. Yes yes and yes. "Oh, well, you certainly don't need me because you're on top of it!" National forgets, every once in awhile, that we run events bigger than theirs generally. ;-)

4 runs in the morning.... 2 on the left side course, 2 on the right side course, all back to back. Drag strip start. The best time from each side get added together for your score. Steve ran his runs first, then I ran mine. Then go sit the car in impound and wait for results. Results come out: Steve's in 6th, and I'm in 7th. Nice! Oh wait, Mike Snyder is DFL with no left side times due to red lights. Yeah, ok, we're dropping a spot when he finally gets a time on the left.

Sure enough, after 4 more runs in the afternoon (2 left, 2 right), Steve was down to 7th and I was down to 8th. I'm still standing on my very first left side time since I'd spun twice and red lit, too.

Because the event was running behind due to timing issues, we didn't leave FedEx until 5:45. We got home just in time to play with DJ for a little bit and put him to bed. DJ melted down when he realized he was going to bed and wasn't going to play anymore with Daddy. Wow. First major meltdown like that ever, and it certainly won't be the last.

Grandmom came back over on Sunday at 7am to watch DJ, and we left shortly thereafter. 4 morning runs revealed that we both improved our times, but I coned away my best left side run. Had I not coned that run, I'd have actually beaten Steve in outright competition by 1 tenth. But I didn't. :)

I left before all the Challenge rounds were finished to go home to DJ and relieve Grandmom of babysitting. I probably wasn't home 45 minutes when Steve texted that they were all packed and headed to eat dinner at Ruby Tuesdays in Columbia. I packed DJ into the car, and off we went as well. We enjoyed a nice dinner with the standard autocross crew, and DJ ate like a horse!

We got home a little after 8pm, put DJ right to bed, and we weren't far behind him. That much time on a sweltering parking lot really takes a lot of out of you!

All in all, it was a blast of a weekend. That format is the best. I can't wait until we get our own setup so that we can run our own pro solos!!!