It was Friday and nearly 5 o’clock before I finally got out of the fabrication shop. I was hauling ass through Las Vegas, frantically looking for a tire shop that was still open. No tires meant no race. I found a place that was foolish enough to forget to lock the front door at closing time. I waved around the universal sign for I need help, hundred dollar bills, and I got four Yokohamas. The tire boys in the back had already started their Friday night routine of sitting on the lift rack and drinking some beers. I threw twenties in everyone’s pockets and pleaded with them to make sure these were the four most balanced tires they have ever mounted on a car. I needed the guys to overcome their blood alcohol level enough to concentrate on the task at hand as my tires would be going over a hundred miles an hour for an hour straight, and I didn’t want any problems. The cold hard cash seemed to sober everyone up, I hoped. Nevertheless, I had tires. The racing school was in Las Vegas, technical inspection was in Vegas, the host hotel, Sam’s Town, was in Vegas, and the awards ceremony was in Vegas, but I soon found out that nothing about the Silver State Classic race had anything to do with Vegas. The race is in Ely, Nevada, far, far, far, from the lights and glamour of Vegas. We traded in Scores’ strip club for a desolate, one stoplight town with a population of three thousand. After miles of traveling to Ely, which included running through the 90 mile racecourse backward, the front of the Bullitt was covered in all kinds of dead insects, some of which looked like something from the X-files. The good news was the local high school cheerleading squad hosted a car wash for all the Silver State cars. For ten bucks you could stand beside your car like a pedophile and watch underage girls in bikinis scrub off insect carcasses. If that didn’t do it for you there was always the girls’ mothers who were close by, some of which still had most of their teeth.