My Need for Speed

My Need for Speed
By
Gordon England

Speed is in my genes. Genes originating from my grandfather, one of America’s first go fasters. Before cars, the world moved in slow motion, with horses providing limited speed rushes. The advent of motors changed everything. At first, only cars went fast. Then somebody had a great idea to drop a tiny motor on a small boat. Wa la, the common man had access to the thrill of speed. That’s when my grandfather came into the picture. He ran track and played baseball in minor leagues until an accident paralyzed him from the waist down, but his competitive spirit still burned. Once he saw boats with motors, he had to have one. His injury didn’t keep him from driving a boat. Soon he moved up to a bigger engine. He had discovered speed. When boat racing became a sport, he bought a hydroplane boat and entered a race. Bingo. He became hooked on a racing journey through larger engines, custom props, and better boats. Grandpa reached a No. 2 ranking in the country with his 16-foot hydroplane powered by a 45 cc engine taking him to 60 mph in 1933. He didn’t drag race in a straight line; he raced savagely in circles around buoys in a crazy competition, creating waves that routinely flipped boats.
After retiring from racing, he always had a fishing boat with a decent sized engine to remind him of his glory days. When he took me fishing one day and sped across Canyon Lake at 35 mph, the wind blew in my face, the engine roared, and water sizzled along each side of our boat like bacon frying. What could be more fun? An incredible adrenaline rush of speed officially hooked me like a drug at 12 years old. Though I didn’t ride on his boat very often, I remembered that wonderful thrill of flying just above the water.
When my best friend, Steve Craig, and I discovered motorcycles at 15 years old, a severe addiction set in. First, Steve had a minibike. Then Dad gave me a 90 cc Yamaha street bike that took me to 50 mph any time I wanted. I couldn’t get enough, even if I didn’t have a license and could only drive off the road in fields or on beaches. I hunched over my gas tank, wind blew my hair, the engine whined, and scenery flew by on each side of me as far and fast as I wanted. I had to have more of whatever was pushing my thrill button.
Steve and I moved up to 100 cc Hodaka Super Rat motocross race bikes as a cheaper way to find breathtaking speed and power. Speed took a more personal level as I ripped across a field just a few feet above the ground with the engine screaming at 10,000 rpm and tires bouncing across bumps. Throwing my bike into controlled power slides across the dirt at 40 mph took an extreme skill that I soon mastered. My learning curve of many crashes did not deter me; I was indestructible. I dated the Hodaka shop owner’s daughter, which led to bonuses of sponsorship and a custom carburetor to make my bike the fastest in North Dallas. Steve learned his racing skills also, and soon we raced side by side, nose to nose. We stepped up to racing motocross throughout Dallas. We learned fast and soon dominated the racetracks.
I found that starting a motocross race gave an inconceivable rush. Twenty bikes lined up at the starting line with engines revved in ear piercing pandemonium. Full boots, gloves, helmets, and leathers in 100 degree Texas heat. The flag dropped, clutches popped, and bikes leaped forward in controlled chaos. Leaning forward over the handlebars kept my front wheel down as I shifted through gears at full rpm without using my clutch. Jumping ahead of the pack to reach the first curve was essential for grabbing an early lead. My hopped up engine pushed me a few feet in front of the other bikes that funneled into a tight curve, inevitably causing pileups with bikes crashing into each other. A glance over my shoulder showed Steve right behind me. We power slid through turns, bounced, across a series of whoop-de-doo three-foot bumps, and flew over jumps. Leads changed several times with the smallest of mistakes as Steve and I stayed in the lead to win many races.
Steve moved up to an insanely powerful Suzuki 360 motocross bike that popped wheelies at 50 mph and would power slide at any speed. We didn’t race it, but did drive the heck out of it, fulfilling that need for speed. After a wreck put me in a hospital, I felt a bit of mortality. I hung my helmet up and rode motorcycles no more.
On my sixteenth birthday, a driver’s license opened an even better world. Mom made the mistake of letting me use her orange, SuperSport Camaro 350. I drove it as fast as it would go. My friends, and even girls, loved to ride in my muscle car as I laid scratches all over the streets with the roar of a powerful V-8. No longer was I an undersized nerd; I drove a bad car fast. Having one of the fastest cars in town led to daring nighttime car chases and highway dashes. I met my match in a drag race against Steve’s 350 Corvette, a lightweight wonder that soundly outran me. A few months later, I wore out the tires, transmission, and engine on Mom’s Camaro, so Dad relegated me to a 1945 Army Jeep with no top and minimal brakes.
About that time, Dad bought a ski boat and kept it on Lake Texoma, two hours north of Dallas. Skiing entered our lives on weekends we didn’t race motorcycles. Steve and I learned to slalom in no time, necessitating buying a beautiful, green, competition O‘Brien ski. Speed became even more personal as I pulled as hard as I could to ride inches above glittering water, kicking up a huge rooster tail of spray as I cut across the boat’s white wake insanely fast. When I reached 50-feet perpendicular to the boat, my speed stopped. I waited for my rope’s loose slack to jerk tight, then cut hard in the other direction with my shoulder next to glistening water and zipped back across a rough wake. Reaching down with one hand to touch speeding blue water made speed even faster. Sometimes I would jump across both wakes, landing with a harrowing splash. Being young and strong, we skied many long days, perfecting our skills by smoothly tearing up our boat’s wake. One day I turned foot bindings around on a pair of skis. Behind the boat, I turned my body backward to the boat with my head underwater, and Steve pulled me up. I learned to ski backward. Those were some of the best speed days of our lives.
One day my crazy car mechanic invited me to go fishing in his bass boat. I knew something was up when I saw his outboard motor painted black so others couldn’t see he had a 250 cc motor, one of the largest at that time. Boat owners know only two speeds. Slow or throttle slammed forward full speed. Testosterone causes guys to try to outrun boats next to them. Water often provides a reasonably safe setting for impromptu races. My mechanic cackled as he blew away other boats on Lake Calaveras that day, reaching 60 mph with the hull fluttering on the edge of losing control on light waves. I had seen race boats flip, so fear crept in as he pushed his boat’s control limit. With no seat belt or life jacket and a dashboard to slam into, I reached my danger and speed limits for boat. I begged him to slow down as he laughed with glee. That was my last fast boat ride.
I moved back to cars and more speed when I left for college in a fast little Mustang II with a 350 V-8 that loved to pass vehicles on a highway. Often on the shoulders. During this time, CB radios became essential to driving fast without receiving speeding tickets. Cars and trucks on roads warned each other where cops hid with speed traps. I received few tickets during those days, though I deserved many. I did my best to control my speed, but it proved most addictive to a young man full of testosterone. Dumping that clutch peeled a lot of rubber, slamming me into my seat with fierce g’s. This led to my first road race behind the Lake Travis spillway on a narrow road in Austin, where a series of switchbacks climbed almost 200 feet to a lake overlook. An absence of guardrails to keep us out of a gorge made the run more interesting, stepping speed up to a more serious level.
I took out the air filter, let a little air out of all four tires, added octane booster, took the spare tire out of the trunk to reduce weight, and entered a stock streetcar class. Several runs on the course with my rear wheels sliding next to a drop off added fear to the adrenaline. My course times were fast, but the wear and tear of racing Dad’s car as a broke student did not add up, so I raced cars no more. Friends occasionally let me drive their muscle cars over the years, giving me incredible acceleration fixes. Still, nothing new happened with top-end speed until at age 55 when my wife bought a Corvette 350. That lightweight wing flew. I decided to see how fast it flew and took it on a long, straight stretch of highway between Orlando and Cape Canaveral to open it up.
With no cars ahead of me, I turned off the air conditioner and buried the pedal. One hundred mph, one ten, my previous high speed. One twenty, thirty, and still feeling solid. Tunnel vision started at one hundred-thirty-five when the pace became too much for my eyes to take in. All I saw was a road in front of me and a blur on each side of it. My world and car disappeared in a surreal experience of just me flying above grey pavement. More pedal for the last bit of rpms. Adrenaline coursed through my body at a new high as my eyes hyper-focused to keep me between white lines. My fingers felt every jiggle of the steering wheel. At one hundred forty, the steering drifted, and the front end lightened up as it tried to lift. I backed off, savoring my new speed record with a buzz for hours. I decided to quit driving fast cars while I was ahead. Too many hospital visits from going too fast cured me from pushing my limits too far. When Annie decided to sell her Corvette, I took it out for one last fling at a large school parking lot and tried hard to flip that beast while sliding and spinning in circles for a while. The fat tires seemed to hold tight up to their rated 0.9 g’s, though I did burn around 5000 miles off them. Man, that was fun.
I thought I had reached my speed limit until one day I discovered Fighter Pilots USA in Kissimmee, Florida. At this unique business, two pilots went up in Italian Marchetti fighter trainers to have real dogfights with lasers instead of bullets. I called Steve, and we ended up in a preflight briefing prior to dogfighting each other with jets. We signed our life away with extensive legal release forms. Annie refused to come along and watch. Neither of us had flown before, but apparently, that wasn’t a problem. Each two-seat trainer carried an F-16 pilot in one seat and one of us. Our pilots took us up where we practiced barrel-rolling over each other, loop-de-loops until passing out at six g’s, and vertical climbs to stalling height. Flying beat the heck out of motorcycles, boats, and cars as a new world of speed and g’s opened for me. Then real fun began when our pilots released the controls to us for a series of dogfights to shoot each other. They froze the flaps and throttle, so all we did was steer. We chased each other at 160 mph, up and down, in circles, and head-on, shooting lasers that triggered smoke in the other plane when hit. This incredible experience was like a video game with g’s. With a score of one tie and one kill each, we ended the same way we had raced motorcycles, balls to the wall and tied. My thrill finished when my pilot let me land the jet by myself.
That was my last time to chase speed. A high-speed dogfight was the ultimate way to end my quest to live fast on the edge. I left anything faster or more dangerous to speed junkies crazier than me. My journey was incredible, and I don’t regret the aches and pains a bit. Thank you, Grandpa, for a great ride.