In a perfect world, every drag race would take place at my house. I'd just roll out of bed, put on my fire suit, go outside and win. I'd also be home every night toggling between the "WWF" on TNN, the "WRC" on The Speed Channel and "Real Sex" on HBO. But the world isn't perfect. Races are strewn around the country in a pretty haphazard way. But if I'm going to make my living as a drag racer, I'm going to spend vastly more time driving between races than I'm ever going to spend racing. For every 10-second (and hopefully less) run I make in a racecar, I spend at least four hours on the road.
I think the sanctioning bodies are pretty diabolical in their scheduling. This August for instance, on the weekend of the 10th, we could go to one of three events, the NHRA event at the Texas Motorplex, the IDRC Hurricane Nationals at Moroso Raceway Park in Florida or the NDRA event at Gateway International Raceway in Madison, IL. Then, the weekend after that there's the NHRA Northwest Sport Compact Nationals in Oregon or the NDRA Dinwidie, Va event at Virginia Motorsports Park. Then, if we want to go racing the weekend after that, we need to make it back to the IDRC Tri-State Nationals at New Jersey's Atco Raceway, which fortunately is close to home, but a good haul from Oregon.
I love my country, but sometimes I wish it just weren't so damned big. It takes us between 34 and 48 hours to cross the country and we've done that up to three times in a week.
When things are going well, life on the road is tolerable. Five of us, me, Jason Szabo. Thad Haines, Keith Goslin, and Eric Plebani, usually share seat time in the 81-foot transporter, which is filled with two racecars, a support vehicle and my Toyota Sequoia. Since Kicker is one of our sponsors, all our vehicles have pounding sound and video systems. In fact, we just got a DVD player in the Sequoia, although it's illegal for the driver to watch a DVD while driving. Yeah, well.
Jokes aside, we do keep things as safe a possible. Fact is we're carrying precious cargo. We can't afford to be stupid and destroy our set-up. We don't count progress by the number of beer cans rattling around in the cab; if someone's tired they sleep, and we don't flip off other drivers that don't fully deserve to be flipped off. Usually we stick to about 10 over when we're east of the Mississippi and creep up to maybe 15 over out West. In some places, that's 90 mph. We also always keep a look out for the cops, and when we do meet up with them, we're polite and courteous.
We're plenty stupid, however, when it comes to eating on the road. If we're prepared, my mom will make us some barbecue or pasta we can heat up in the hauler's small kitchen. Problem is we're never prepared, which is why we're total Waffle House abusers. I order cheese eggs, raisin toast, bacon, grits and smothered, covered and chunked hashbrowns-just for myself. When the five of us start pounding Waffle House carbs by the ton, we consolidate all the used plates on one end of the table to make room for the next round of thick, butter-dipped, syrupy deliciousness.
But racers can't live on Waffle House alone, which is why we've organized an informal database of 24-hour Korean barbecue places across the country. Korean BBQ is the road food of the gods because the waitress brings you whatever you want raw and then you cook it at your table. Like your beef well done? Let it turn to ash. Like it red? Wave it over the grill and eat it, cold blood and all. My favorite is a place just off I-495 in Alexandria, Virginia called Yechon. It's awesome 24-7.
But the best part of the road, are the great people (beautiful women) we meet. I'm innocent though. Thad's the instigator. We're always eager to meet new people (beautiful women) in new places. So, don't be shy. Come right up and introduce yourself, we're always friendly and we don't bite hard.