Bearded and begrimed, a score of weary men disembarked at Toledo’s Middlegrounds Metropark from their fleet of elderly, patched-together vehicles Thursday evening.

Cookie, also known as Phil Norvold, had fortified them with a breakfast of sourdough French toast and coffee that morning and sent them on their way as the first leg of the Epic Willys Adventure Great Mitten Race began. It rained much of the day, and their rattletrap conveyances offered little protection from the elements.

“I’ve taken some bad-idea trips before but never gone on an organized cross-country run like this,” Nate Porteus said as he attempted to heal a balky alternator in the 1964 Jeep FC-150 named Sparky he and his race partner, Tom Moses, had driven from Butler, Pa., to Toledo. “I wanted to master the Jeep, to g

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