He got caught, all right:

After taking turns reading this (check out the bottom right hand corner),

we took up a collection for Mark — $4.16 and 2 bars of soap-on-a-rope. That doesn’t go very far in paying the $150 fine for doing 73 mph in a 55 zone. Good luck, Mark. We’ll miss you.

The drive from Indianapolis took in all that travelers could want — the past:

the present (thanks to road construction):

and the future:

Yes, that’s right. You read it here first — the 2006 Power Tour starts April 1, and ends up in Flealand. I can’t wait.

Along the way we felt better about driving the El Camino. I just knew gas would be cheaper in the South:

And to think we’re actually thankful to pay “only” $2.00 per gallon. You know, back when I was a kid gas only cost...

Into Kentucky we flew, leaving Louisville in our dust,

and then Bowling Green. We stopped at the Corvette assembly plant, where the Cadillac XLR is also built. Just our luck the last daily tour was 1:00 p.m., and we arrived at 2:00 p.m. If only we’d driven faster, right Mark?

Fortunately, across the road was The National Corvette Museum.

They were a little more accomodating. $20 and an hour later, we were on the road to Opryland in Music City — Nashville.

Opryland is considerably nicer than Flealand, we’ll bet.

After winding our way through the crowd, we found our trailer and parked the cars. Your intrepid reporter (that’s me) missed out on working the trailer to scout the crowd. In the Baer booth we found Thelma and Louise, those Road Divas, escounced in front of their borrowed Bentley Continental GT.

Those of you with children will understand perfectly when I say, “I didn't do it!”

In the informal “Who rules the cubic inch contest?”, our contestants included a Corvette,

Galaxie,

and a Road Runner.

The winner, though, was our own El Camino with 572 cubic inches. Some of the folks from GM Performance stopped by and asked about putting it on the chassis dyno for some real world numbers. With the Hot Rod TV folks recording the negotiations,

 Video

we headed for the dyno.

Before looking at the tale of the tape, take a gander at the dyno pull:

The final number, in 90-plus degrees of heat and running rich during the new-motor break-in was:

Not bad, eh? With some cool weather, I’d bet there’s another 50 horses to be found.

Upon our return, we found the booth occupied by hordes of Hot Rod Magazine folks — seems as though they were using our locale to shoot some cars AND test the roof strength of the Power Tour lead Chevy Tahoe. I can only hope he drank diet soda at lunch today.

Now you understand why those creative photographer types look down on all us common folk.

The best part of the shoot? Watching them leave.

And here you thought only Saturn had more than one moon.