The Weekly Reekie: Sick Summer 2024 Just Changed the Checkpoint Game
A week has passed since Motion Raceworks Sick Summer and my body has almost totally healed while my brain is making steady progress and should be back to forming whole thoughts very soon. Those checkpoint parties really took a toll! But I’m comforted by the words of the great philosopher Lucille Ball, who said: “I’d rather regret the things I have done than regret the things I haven’t done.” Sick Summer 2024 just raised the bar for drag-and-drive checkpoints, and I’m glad to have been amongst it.
Sick masterminds Tom Bailey and Luke Nieuwhof have always made it a point to create memorable checkpoint situations at their events. They hit a peak last year at Death Week where we stopped at the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Sequoia Forest, Mexican Border Wall, etc. Checkpoints don’t get much more memorable than that. But what we saw at Sick Summer 2024 was something different again.
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With the exception of the Field of Dreams movie set on day three, this was not just a case of rolling up to a tourist spot and having our socks knocked off. Instead this was a series of happenings across three Midwestern states over four days which took vision, planning and hard work.
Back when drag-and-drive was still in its infancy, nobody thought of a checkpoint as being anything more than a spot for an entrant to stop and take a photo of their vehicle to prove they’d followed the designated route. And while in essence that’s all it really needs to be, Tom and Luke are determined to make more of the opportunities a checkpoint provides – not only as a fun place for entrants to socialize and connect, but also as a place for members of the public to engage with our sport.
Traditionally in drag-and-drive, each day’s route was kept a secret until the entrant had handed in a timeslip for that day. Sick changed that. They now freely publicize the routes and checkpoints ahead of time, which gives everyone a chance to best plan for the event. Entrants can work out the most likely places to gas up or bunk down. Small towns and businesses can prepare to cater to our cavalcade. And local car lovers know which roads to camp by or which checkpoints to be at. It’s a win-win-win.
Monday at Sick Summer 2024, it all came together in Rock Falls, Illinois. A drag-and-drive day like no other, the route took us a pitiful 38 miles from Byron Dragway to the inaugural Rock Falls Block Party – an event so significant it had its own merch! The town of Rock Falls greeted us with open arms and discount chicken wings. The tourism committee had streets shut down and businesses offered discounts to our entrants. The local fire department were gracious enough to oversee a sanctioned “burnout pit”, and the townsfolk came out in droves.
There was a tangible elation in the air, along with billows of smoke. Watching trailer burnouts amongst hundreds of delirious Rock Fallians, I was reminded of a sample used by the band Ministry on the 1991 single “Jesus Built My Hotrod”. It’s the voice of legendary drag racing announcer Jon ‘Thunderlungs’ Lundberg, saying: “These are sensations as hard to forget as they are to ignore.” I have no idea what race ‘Thunderlungs’ was calling when he made that pronouncement, but it seemed to somehow encapsulate that profound moment. Checkpoints sure ain’t what they used to be.
On Tuesday the party continued in Fulton, Illinois, where the sheriff and fire department had set up a burnout strip in a backstreet lined with auto shops. The good times continued into Iowa at Motion Raceworks in DeWitt and HotRods By Havliks in Cedar Rapids, where parking lot burnouts rolled on into the evening.
Wednesday we returned to the aforementioned Field of Dreams movie set for the second straight year, then it was on to the Boar’s Nest in Darien, Wisconsin, where crowds packed the bar and lined the road outside. It was a similar vibe on Thursday at the Bristol 45 Diner in Bristol, WI – word had clearly gotten around that the cool kids would be in town.
The final checkpoint of the tour was Historic Auto Attractions in Roscoe, IL. We’d visited this excellent museum last year but this year they spiced things up with tasty food trucks and a constant stream of trailer burnouts. It was all too much fun.
Mark it down: Motion Raceworks Sick Summer 2024 was the week that drag-and-drive checkpoints became all-out party zones. My training for Sick 66 in October starts now. See you in the club.
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