Let's start from the beginning. We needed a car. Ryan led the effort of hunting down cars on Facebook marketplace, spending his waking minutes DMing sellers until Facebook told him he had sent too many messages. After a couple of unfruitful trips, including a car that was sold as the squad pulled up to see it, the Accord was purchased in May 2023.

The summer was spent getting the car ready to race. Among other things, we had to conform to Lemons' 10-page rulebook for cars. We started by stripping the car completely, removing the seats, plastic, dash, side panels, sound deadening, airbags, and more. A highlight of this process was using dry ice to make the sound deadening brittle so we could chip it off. And of course, we didn't have a garage, so we spent our time in the parking lot of a housing development.

Next up, we had to get a roll cage installed in the car. Unfortunately, none of us had ever welded, and we were warned not to chance it. We resisted the urge to drive the car up ourselves and had it towed to OneMotion Garage (credit to ChrisFix for the rec—  thankful he responds to Instagram DMs). A couple of weeks later we drove off the lot with a new roll cage, promptly pulled over, and called AAA Roadside Assistance for a free tow back home.

Time was running out, and we still had some things to do. Some highlights include:

• Plugging up the gaping hole in the roof of the car where the moonroof had been. Nothing that a roll of thin sheet metal and rivets from Home Depot can't do.

• Flushing out the brake fluids and changing the brake pads. In the process, we snapped a banjo bolt. We were fully prepared to get one shipped overnight when Tarrytown Honda saved the day.

• Installing the kill switch. We were hesitant to cut any battery wires and weren't sure where to start. One day, Aryan had a revelation in the shower, and he immediately sent us sketches of what he had realized. The rest is history.

• Many days were spent driving from store to store, looking for parts and buying new tools. My personal favorite was slicing through the dashboard with the power saw, who doesn't love working with power tools?

On the Monday before the race weekend, a lovely woman from the HOA decided now was the time to kick us out of the lot. As the car was currently jacked up and without wheels, this was quite a headache for us. Eventually, we got it out of there, and spent a day working at the local park until the police kicked us out as well. For the final couple days of work, a friend let us borrow his driveway and after a week of 8am-10pm workdays we were ready to head up to Thompson and race.

That Friday morning, we loaded the car up and headed to Thompson, CT. In typical team fashion, we did not give ourselves enough time and had to forego bathroom stops on the way up. Luckily, we managed to make it in time for our tech appointment. I was extremely worried we had missed something and would fail technical inspection. Ryan assured me that everything was fine, but I got the last laugh— we did fail tech. We had a short list of things to accomplish but were not used to figuring things out in such a time crunch. The "Help Wanted" sign we put on the car as a joke ended up being a lifesaver—  we were blown away by the help we got from neighboring teams. Seatbelt harnesses were adjusted, windows were removed, and rusty brake lines were fixed. Tech closed at 5:00 pm, and at 5:00 pm exactly we rolled in just in time and got approval to race in "C" class.

Day 1 of racing! Marlon was the first in the car, and we experienced hiccups right away. Turn one landed the car in the grass, and Marlon had to pull in to see the stewards, but then was unable to restart the car. As it turns out, our car was short-circuiting, and a few more laps might've seen it catch on fire. We fixed the wiring, jump-started the car, and headed back out. Everybody got to drive on Day 1, but we spent more time sidelined than not. We were plagued by constant overheating problems (automatic cars don't like shifting a lot) and spent time pinning the radiator fans and changing the transmission fluid, which was having leaking problems as well. We were happy that we had gotten laps in but were amongst the slowest teams. We decided that for Sunday, we would drive the car to its limit rather than worry about the potential consequences.

Sunday went as smoothly as we could've realistically hoped for. Nearly the entire day was spent out on track, aside from Andrew hitting a wall and knocking off our zip-tied bumper (easy fix— we zip-tied it again). Aryan closed out the day with a string of the team's fastest laps of the weekend. Seeing the car take the checkered flag (80th out of 92 cars) and drive through the paddock parade at the end was a proud moment for the team. The awards ceremony was next and we were shocked to get announced as the "Organizer's Choice" of the race weekend. The lead judge for the weekend started out by saying "Every once in a while, a new team rolls in and everyone goes, this isn't going to go well... but sometimes those teams end up surprising you." Surprises were the story of the race weekend for us, and while we were slow, it was a worthwhile experience.