I remember back in 2000, I flew a private plane to Ohio to spend the day at the Nats. I took a cab from the airport to the show, and later in the day when I was thinking of leaving, I was concerned about how to get a cab to get back to the airport which was somewhere 5 miles or so east of the dragstrip. Many people were leaving and I could see that the police had the roads in redirected to manage the traffic heading out.
I had run in to some people I knew from Illinois, one of whom, named Joe, at the time owned the FC7 pilot car T/A. I was talking to them and mentioned my concerns about getting back to the airport, and one of the guys who was with Joe volunteered Joe to give me a lift. Joe didn't object too much so I piled in the back seat of his recently restored trophy winning T/A and we headed toward the exit gate. One feature this car had was an NOS exhaust system including a pair of '70 date coded mufflers he's lucked into at a swap meet several years earlier.
We turn left onto the main road that runs along the south side of the show grounds, and the police had put two rows of orange cones out in the middle of the road for some reason, so traffic had to crawl along partially on the shoulder. The T/A's passenger side tires were off on the gravel shoulder, and as we slowly moved eastbound, we started hearing the muffler scrape the pavement as we encountered dips in the gravel shoulder!
I was sitting on the passenger side, and quickly shuffled over to the drivers side thinking the weight shift would help. Joe inched over closer to the orange cones to try to get the passenger side tires out of the gravel. Fortunately the exhaust didn't get torn off, but the scraping sounds the mufflers made rubbing the pavement had made all of our hearts skip a few beats. I hated to think that his doing a me a favor was somewhat responsible for scuffing that rare muffler!
Then we get up to the intersection, where police officers were directing traffic but hadn't turned the traffic signals to make them flash red. The cop directs us to proceed, and then from the left we see some woman in an S10 blazer speeding toward us oblivious to the policeman waving for her to stop, she finally realized what was going on and slammed on the brakes, coming to a halt a scant few feet from hitting the T/A's fender!
2 close calls in a rare T/A within minutes of each other, while giving me a lift. I'm guessing if I ever asked Joe for a ride again he'd refuse, and I'd understand!
