Ahhh... Our dear friend, Pennington Field, greets us again. I think we were all surprised to see General "Won't be at Pennington any more" Default pull up, but we were glad too see him give the newly named lugnutjon a run for his money.

We also had a bit of fun playing with 3bean's new bling -- a quick-release steering wheel -- that we were all jealous of. After baking in the sun a few weeks ago, all we needed today was a bit more breeze to cool things off.

Turnout was light for this Equipe Rapide event, but we Miata pilots certainly showed up in force -- I count at least 14 in the photos

With heavy clouds hanging over the Metroplex Sunday morning, it was nice to see six cars lined up at the Cracker Barrel in Denton. It was windy and overcast, but that would be the worst weather we'd see all day. After a brief drivers' meeting - and a lot of time catching up with brock, we headed northward on the first leg of our journey.

We got stuck behind a handful of lost boaters on the first leg as we headed north to Lake Ray Roberts and then east to Aubrey. From there, we had a clear shot to Tioga, and kept pace behind a thankfully swift Hummer as we headed north of the lake to Gainesville. We had the food court almost all to ourselves for lunch. The burger's at CJ's Burgers and Fried Pies weren't half bad, but the pies were quite a bit better than the last ones I had at Fulton's. However, selection is a bit limited - four fruit varieties and four creme.

The Miata morning crew lines up to caravan to the MineralRing.

It was certainly a nice morning to drag out of bed at 5 o'clock. The thermometer read 81 and there was a gentle breeze blowing through the neighborhood as I pulled out of the garage at 5:30.

And then, the sun came up. It could certainly have been hotter, but we've been spoiled by tamer weather this year. The 2nd North Texas S2000 Owner's Club autocross for this season drew out 16 Miata pilots driving 13 cars. A total of 54 drivers competed in the event, with top time of day going to clovis in his white '00 S2000.

The weather is really shining on us for the 2004 autocross season. We've seen more "perfect" days already this year than we saw during the entire 2003 season. Last year went from cold to hot with little in between (and a bit of wet thrown in). These 80 degree breezy days make hanging out in parking lots a lot of fun!

In what we all hope is a new trend, the event started on time. 210 entrants completed 840 runs before 4:30. If the average run was 72 seconds, we squoze 17 car-hours in. And that's after a substantial break during the 5th heat when the computer apparently became fed up with the whole deal and spat out 120 runs in disgust. Please be patient with the Timing & Scoring Chief who will now have to manually enter those runs from the paper record in addition to normal audit duties.