The next BMCU driving event is the Great Race on Tuesday, June 21st. This is an usual event because it is on a Tuesday, and it will be a late-afternoon – early evening event.
The Great Race is an 8-day timed rally for pre-1972 cars that travels a different route every year. This years route is from San Rafael, California to Moline, Illinois, and they will be traveling between Elko, NV and Evanston, WY on Tuesday, June 21st. The video link below will give you some idea of what the Great Race is all about (you only have to watch the first few minutes to get the idea).
As a club event, the Great Race will present some logistical problems because we don’t know the exact route they will take (they don’t make it public until that morning when all the racers get their instructions). Overall the race is supposed to follow the Old Lincoln Highway, so it’s almost a certainty that they’ll travel the road we traveled along 80 between Echo and Evanston on the Chalk Creek Run. However, there is no way to tell for sure whether they’ll come up along 80 or along 84. Both are listed as being once called the Lincoln Highway, although 84 was the older route and has more secondary roads to travel. Check out this link: https://www.lincolnhighwayassoc.org/map/
Given the uncertainty of the route and the fact that we don’t want to interfere with the racers (it’s a pretty serious event), I don’t see this as a huge driving event for the club. It will be fun to watch the racers come across the finish line in Evanston and to see the informal car show that follows, and we may also be able to find a good vantage point along the route and watch the cars go by for a while before heading to Evanston, but I don’t think we want to have a lot of cars driving the route during the race. There are 137 cars starting at 1 min intervals, so it will go on for over two hours. (see http://www.greatrace.com/participants for a list of the cars).
The Evanston Chamber of Commerce says the event will go on from 4 PM to 8 PM, which is pretty much what I expected given the overall route for the day. I assume this time frame covers the arrival of the cars and the subsequent car show. This means that the cars won’t be arriving in SLC area until sometime between 2 and 3 PM, I would guess. So this is going to a be a mid-afternoon start for whatever we plan.
Before proposing any sort of club event, I would like to get some idea of how many club members are planning to attend. Please let me know if you plan to attend and if you have any ideas for how to organize the event.
Thanks,
Keith Mott