Today was a tough, hot day. We started the morning in Moline, Illinois, and made our way through Springfield, the land of Abraham Lincoln.

Things were going fine until we accidentally lost a full roll of paper towels out the window during our calibration run. If you were behind us, sorry about that.

The rest of the morning ran smoothly until the final checkpoint of the morning, when we started hearing a thudding noise every time we accelerated from a stop. I thought it might be a flat tire or a wheel weight. Della leaned out the window, Dukes of Hazzard style, to check and confirmed it wasn’t the tires.

After we finished the morning, we found ourselves near Pontiac, Illinois, and pulled into Heller Motors, a Jeep/Chrysler dealership. We waited for their Ford specialist, Tony, to return from lunch. He quickly diagnosed the issue: our spark plug wires were arcing due to contact with the alternator. We wrapped them in electrical tape and separated them to prevent more contact. After a test drive, we were back on the road.

We were lucky to make it back onto the course, and I had the absolute joy of speeding through it to get back in position, and not crawling at 15 miles per hour. I’m never sad when I get to do that.

We ended the day with (bad) scores and no aces, but we learned a lot about spark plug wires. Huge thanks to Tony at Heller Motors!