Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Counting Down the Hours







We're counting down the hours now. It wasn't that long ago that it was several weeks to go, now it's down to a couple of days. Here is a picture of the car with most of our sponsor decals on. When we arrive in South Bend on Friday they will give us the One Lap of America shield to go on the doors and the other national sponsors that go around the doors. We then need to put them on and head over to tech to get our final sign off. After all the final registration work is finished we have a kickoff dinner/gathering to get the last of the details before starting the competition at 8 am on Saturday morning.

Sorry the delay between updates, but I have been busy. Last week a group of us from the Lancaster County Corvette Club spent two days participating in a great track event on the Pocono North Course with the Cumberland Valley Corvette Club. Of course I call this practice for the One Lap. I was also draging my feet putting up a new post since it would push my last story with the appeal for sponsorships down the page and we are still anxious to keep getting the word out and raising more money for Spina Bifida Resources of Greater Pennsylvania. At this point we have raised a few hundred dollars but we are still hoping for more. Keep those checks and pledges coming in. We did get a few paragraphs in the Lancaster New Era on Thursday, April 23rd but the only part they mentioned was the competition itself and no mention of the charity part. If anyone has another contact with the Lancaster newspapers feel free to give them the address of the blog and encourage them to mention the Spina Bifida charity benefit. It may also be a little more newsworthy now that we have a picture of the car to show.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009




We are now adding a charity component to our Cannonball One Lap of America. We will be displaying a Spina Bifida Resources of Greater Pa. sticker on the One Lap car along with our sponsor stickers. We will also list them as our charity on our official entry and on the web site for the Cannonball One Lap of America. This will bring exposure to our local Spina Bifida Resources and Spina Bifida as a medical birth defect issue. To help them financially we will accept sponsorships from anyone who would like to sponsor us by the mile or for the entire trip or just as a donation to the charity. Think of this as a Drive A Thon. We will record our mileage when leaving home and at the end when we return home and expect to log about 5000 miles in total. For someone willing to donate a penny a mile that would be $50.00. You can do the math and make things work out to whatever you want to donate. The main goal is to leverage this amazing adventure of ours to greater community benefit.

Many of you may know that I have a wonderful granddaughter that was born May 19, 2006 with Spina Bifida. Through those difficult times in the weeks after Adaline was born, Michele was able to benefit from materials, direction and advice that she received from Pat Fulvio and the local Spina Bifida organization. Since the level of giving has certinly suffered for Spina Bifida Resources of Greater Pa. as well as many other charities in these difficult economic times, we felt we wanted to try to help their fundraising. If you would like to create a sponsor sheet and solicit contributions on our behalf for Spina Bifida Resources please let us know and thank you. Please make checks out to SBR-One Lap and mail to Jim Roberts 14 W. Main St. Mount Joy, Pa. 17552.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Only Two weeks to go.

Time is getting short, only two weeks to go until we start our One Lap of America adventure. The car count is up to 74 at this point. There are 18 showing in our class SSGT1Big Bore. It looks like a lot of very talented drivers participating.

On Saturday May 2nd we begin with a wet skid pad competition. Finishing positions in the Wet Skid Pad competition are awarded by measuring and averaging the maximum g's of cornering force for each vehicle while driving laps in both directions on the 200-foot diameter wet skid pad. After the skid pad we then head off to Autobahn Country Club (racetrack) in Joilett, Il. The competition here will set the run order for much of the rest of the events. The higher you finish here, the sooner you will do your Time Trial runs at each track, and the sooner you can then leave to head for the next track. The two longest legs of the event are from Talladega, Al. to Sebring, Fl. and from the BMW Performance center in Greer, SC. to Beaver Run Raceway in Beaver Falls, Pa. The cars that get moving sooner have a better opportunity to get some quality sleep in a motel instead of just in the right seat of the car, especially on these two longest legs.

There will be different strategies in play. Some teams will have a very good driver do all of the competition driving while the teammate operates only as a transit driver, sharing the driving between the tracks. Some teams will have one driver do all the driving at one track. For example if it is a two event track, the driver who drives in the morning would likely be better in the afternoon session since he had "practice" by running the early event. Scott and I will be sharing the driving duties, so that we each get to experience all the tracks possible. Not sharing the driving is kind of like going around the country to visit all the ball parks, and then waiting outside the park while your buddy goes in to see the game. We are hoping that we will be competitive and still have a good time experiencing all the tracks.

Points are accumulated similar to the Nascar system with each position down the line getting fewer points. If there are 80 participants you multiply by 5 points so the maximum points for any one event will be 400. Therefor the 1st place gets 400, the 2nd gets 395, the 3rd gets 390 and so on. A DNF (did not finish) or DNS (did not start) gets 0 points. A DNS might happen for example if something was broken on the car and it was unable to run or if they had a breakdown between tracks and were still off getting their car repaired.