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 Up
early this morning and by 8:00 am we were out into the already muggy Texas
morning. Good idea last night to drive through Dallas and get about
10 miles south because this morning the traffic was a mess coming into
the city from all sides.
 By
2:00 p.m. we had made the very nice Double Tree Hotel, which is just about
10 miles north of downtown San Antonio. So, from the relative peace
and comfort of a reclining armchair in the highly air conditioned luxury
Ford van, we thrust ourselves into the vigorous work of unloading the car
from the trailer in a high temperature, high humidity atmosphere; unhooking
and finding a place for the trailer and maneuvering for space for trailer,
van and car in the rapidly crowding parking area. That done we wrestled
our luggage into the one room ready so far and cruised the parking lot
looking at some of this year's entries. 
I've included a couple of pictures. The one at top is, of course our '36 Ford. It looks a little mottled but it is just shadows from the leaves. The pic above is a close-up of our door emblem. Car 35. The vehicles entered are as diverse as this beautifully restored and maintained 1938 Kenworth, diesel powered tractor. So, to get back to our story, we then headed off in van and car to San Antonio’s Sunset Station to register ourselves and vehicles and place our slightly bug spattered, dusty ’36 Ford into technical inspection. I'm not sure if I was more sorry for ourselves or the inspectors who were doing a marvelous job spending up to an hour going over each vehicle. They not only looked at the trustworthiness of our car from a safety standpoint, but made sure that we hadn't violated the premise of having equipment installed on the vehicle other than that which would have been available at the time the car was manufactured. Anyway, we finally got all of our approvals and Great Race official stickers and decals applied and, damp and tired, we arrived back at the hotel for a little rest and a shower. I won't tell you about our wonderful steak house dinner in a highly air conditioned restaurant, or our trip to Wal-Mart to pick up bottles of water and Gatorade and a cooler, but I will let you know that as I sit here in a very nice hotel I am looking forward to our day of practice tomorrow. Here are a
few miscellaneous pictures of early arrivals.
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