Not really. But I got you, no? We were actually third. Ah, got you again! We were actually 56th. No, seriously this time. We had an okay day, getting -17, -2, -13, and -17 again. Why can’t we break that 2 second barrier? I think that 1-2 seconds may actually be the mechanical error in our equipment. The speedo is still the literal sticking point- especially at 45, one of our most common speeds. The needle will hang at the 45 tape mark, and then fall a 3-4MPH, making holding 45 a very challenging prospect.

To be totally honest, the first part was a lie. The third part wasn’t- as I said yesterday, that was our start position.

The lunch stop was in Kingston, but not the one in NY. It was our last stop in Canada in this race (I’m not even sure we’ll be cutting back through from Dearborn on the way home). It was a good lunch, though it wasn’t anything amazing. Thanks to Kingston for good food before heading back into the USofA.

Dinner was a three-step process. We had to be-bop across the border again (just as easy as going into Canada, amazingly). Then we hit the Clayton wooden boat museum for a temporary stop to admire. For enginerds like us, seeing all the old marine engines is just too cool. The one Chris-Craft V12 with 2 plugs per cylinder and combined intake/exhaust manifolds was absolutely awesome (not that I thought to take a picture, of course). We also had a debate about what driveline is better, AWD or RWD. Nick claims the AWD is better for stability through a corner, I claim the only reason he thinks RWD is unstable is because he doesn’t know how to drive it. As usual, no one won. Thoughts anyone?

The actual dinner stop was in Watertown, NY. I’ll be honest, the line was too long and the building too full to wait around to find out what the food was like. I also wasn’t very hungry at all. But the people were fun, and the lemonade was good.

We did have an error today. We got lost on leg 3, sort of. The sign we were looking for was a modified curve sign to show roads off to each side. Having thought we saw it, we slowed down the required 5MPH, and started looking for the 1st paved road on the right (coincidentally Rt. 11). We saw the 1st road, but I didn’t think it was right. Nick told me that was it, so I turned, but we immediately noticed the Rt. 12 sign. Not 100% sure if it was a misprint, we ran down the road a few seconds so we could see at least one minute ahead, to try and spot the car in front of us. No dice, nobody there. A quick whip around, in which the car died from the G’s sloshing the fuel in the bowls away from the pickup, and we hit the road, hoping we were not too late to hit the weird curve sign. As luck would have it, we weren’t, and we even managed to get back in rough formation by then. I’ve gotten quite good at kamikaze passes for when we run behind. Which isn’t something I should be getting good at.

Ah, it’s very late. We stayed up to try and discuss why some legs are very close, and others have ~15 seconds error. We routinely see 13-17 seconds. Nick has decided our clock could be fast compared to the rally clock, so we’ll re-time it off the rally clock instead of NIST. I think it’s an issue with starts, but only because it’s the only other correlation I see, and the clock causing a 10-second error seems improbable. We’ll see what happens tomorrow morning.