Things break

Saturday was not kind to Canuck. In fact, Saturday was a tough day for the Big Bore Bad Boys, period.

To begin with, in the first race, Canuck decided to do a little blackberry picking. His suspension broke, and the good news was that he wasn’t hurt, nor his car really damaged. But still, he was done for Saturday and would start in last place Sunday morning.

image001Read more…

Canuck rules

Let’s get one thing out of the way right at the top.

Canuck walked his talk.

Not only did he spank us, he broke 1:30 driving the Camaro. He had a 1:29:6xx or something. Nobody was even close. Ceegar was second in his TransAm Mustang with a new personal best of 1:31:6xx, but that was two full seconds behind Canuck.

In this game, a two second gap is huge, even though a lap takes just over minute and a half. Or less than a minute and a half, if you’re Canuck. Let’s give credit where credit’s due. He was leading the … Read more…

They’re here.

It’s a new game, that’s for sure. Old cars “reformatted.” New cars built for one purpose only.

“Beater” was out there today in his new ride. A sinister black ‘69 Corvette with an intake manifold big enough to house a family of four. “Beater” is going to take on a whole new meaning if that car goes as fast as it looks.

It’s so strong he broke the piece that holds the rear “control rods.” With that much horsepower, control is mostly a suggestion. The piece is on its way to the shop and a welder. He’ll be ready.

Read more…

Spokane

Ceegar just flies over the hump at Spokane. 

That’s not a metaphor. His Mustang has all four off the ground. We’re doing 120 mph at that point, maybe a dime more. I feel the drop, and can sometimes smell burnt rubber when my suspension bottoms out.

But Ceegar pushes harder, and gets airborne. Photographers with positions on the back straight that the crowd can’t get to come up to us in the pits, astounded that he flies over that hump. Literally.

flying2Read more…

It’s real

About seven minutes ago, I sent off the final draft of my new book to a publisher in Seattle.

They like this book, they wanted this book, they are going to pay for editing and proofreading and printing and will do all the things publishers do to a book before they try to sell it. They are very enthusiastic.

It’s hard to describe how wonderful this feels. Not loud and boisterous wonderful, but quietly fulfilling wonderful. Like seeing my daughters graduate, or holding their own in an adult conversation. Having the apple trees thrive.

According to our contract, they want … Read more…

Driver

I wasn’t always Spider.

But I’ve always been a driver.

That doesn’t make me the best, or anything like it. There’s many out there who are better drivers than me. That’s not what I mean, and I don’t know if I can really say what I mean, except maybe by example.

It goes as far back in my memory as I can reach. At age five, directing cabbies to the hospital so my grandmother’s wrist could be set in plaster after she slipped in a supermarket and broke it. My parents were out of town, she was addled even then, … Read more…

Not Racing in the Rain

Jakester and I got to Merlin’s about noon, right on time. I thought we’d be there a few hours, go have dinner, be ready to run the next day then race over the weekend.

That wasn’t at all how it turned out, not at all.

To begin with, we didn’t leave Merlin’s shop until after nine. Every minute of the nine hours we were there, every one of them, was a working minute. Jakester helped out a lot, right from the beginning, all the way till the end. I’d picked him up 150 miles south at 9 a.m., and we … Read more…

Drive it like you stole it.

Cowboy got me into this nearly 20 years ago and he keeps upping the ante every damn year. The last motor he built had compression like odds in Vegas. What, 30 to one?

When he started it up it sounded like somebody lit a string of very nasty, crackly rifle rounds. The gas wasn’t burning in the cylinders, it was popping and snapping and sounded like distilled anxiety.

One of these days something we build is just going to go too damn fast, or blow up at exactly the wrong moment, or we’ll nudge each other some place where the … Read more…

How this works

When I started writing last month in Costa Rica, I had no clue what I was writing about, why I was writing, whether it was or would be anything. I wrote because that’s what I do. If you’re curious, it begins here.

I said as much to Dick about halfway through the trip when he said he thought it should be a book: Books need to be about something.

All I had were verbal snapshots. But after a while, I noticed the snapshots were really of people, in this kind of interesting environment. After a little while longer, I sensed … Read more…

Butterflies

He turned sideways in the aisle to move past passengers still struggling to jam slightly too-large carry-ons into the overhead compartment. I groaned inwardly, because I knew exactly where he was going to sit.

It had been a long couple of nights in San Jose. My room was right next to the bar, and synthesized music pounded incessantly on the wall above my head. It was cold and the blanket inadequate. Each night I huddled with my hands between my thighs to keep them warm.

I drifted off not long after I sat down on the plane, … Read more…