There are three types of thunderstorms; the ones you can sleep through, the ones that keep you awake in bed, and the ones that strike with such ferocity that you have to check to see if you are still in Kansas (or in this case Arizona) any more. The night before the AZCC staged the annual Desert Prowl, we got to experience one of those magnificent presentations of mother natures temper. We must have been bad, very, very, bad.
Storms in Arizona are different. By four o’clock Friday afternoon visibility was reduced to about 1/8 of a mile by one of the rolling walls of dirt that are called haboobs. Imagine a wave of dense fog, composed of powder fine sand and dust. The gust front that pushed this part of the southern Arizona desert into the air passed quickly and left us with a hanging cloud of fine dust that crackled with static electricity. Dust settled slowly to the ground leaving a thin layer of new fallen dirt. The rain began gently around nine in the evening, clearing the air and settling the dust into a layer of mud. While a layer of mud beats breathing air you can chew, it isn’t the ideal environment for a car show. Some time after midnight the deluge began, the winds whipping the rain side ways, some times even blowing it upwards under covered porches and patios. This was the scrub cycle we needed to remove the mud layer, handily relocating it into my pool resulting in an ideal habitat for raising catfish.
But a good thing can’t last forever, and by daylight it was still raining lightly, and the winds were nearly calm. The wet streets were littered with branches and leaves and the remainders of Halloween decorations. Not exactly ideal conditions for driving your freshly detailed, albeit slightly dusty Cougar. Hmmm… what to do. I called Scott Taylor our long suffering club President and he advised that the show would go on and the sun was breaking out 45 miles or so to my south. I didn’t want to take my fully detailed G car out in the rain, but then again it wasn’t my only choice.
For most of you November means putting your Cougar to bed for the winter. In Arizona it means the weather is finally cool enough to get the Cat out for some fun, minus overheating, vapor lock, and 2nd degree burns from hot vinyl seats. So my Cougars had all been parked for the duration of the spontaneous combustion season. Which means batteries are flat, tires are soft, and gasoline has long since evaporated from carburetors. Having more than one Cougar affords me the luxury of choices. Unfortunately, those choices all needed a few things to wake up from hibernation. So the pit crew (me) swung into action getting the GT-E ready to roll: Battery Charger: check, Oil level: check, Air in the tires: check: Water in the radiator: check, fill and prime the carb with gas: check, power steering fluid: check, cross all available body parts for good luck: check. Flip the switch on the charger to starter boost and after a few slow slow revolutions the 427 side oiler fired right up. A few minutes of idling in the driveway produced no leaks and it was time to roll, only about an hour later than expected. In the meantime, the rain had almost stopped, just spitting a few little drops.
Your pictures of your drive reminded me of some pictures my wife took from inside our Cougar. We were on the way to a show earlier this year and had some rain early then the rest of the day was beautiful.
