Kickin' Rocks

with Don Pennington

Road Rage at 200, the Ultimate E Ticket

I am told that the world was simpler years ago. Did you know that years ago there wasn't car insurance, or health coverage or mandatory deductions from your pay check? There wasn't any income tax or property tax! Thank goodness back then there wasn't any TV and you only got radio at night, so the politicians could steal your money and be out of town before you knew about it. In simpler days if you screwed your neighbor, one day you just disappeared... only to pop up a week or two later... down stream, now everybody screams lawyer. Have you looked in the Yellow Pages lately under Attorneys? THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF THOSE COCKROACHES! They all became attorneys because they could make a lot of money suing people for things they didn't do, to get them to settle (on advice of another attorney) because it's cheaper than going to court. What the hell is that all about? Some time in the past, most roads were two lanes... at best... and you couldn't go anywhere outside the county line without a camel. Did you know that one of the main roads across part of the country was wood planks? Ahhhh, those were to good old days, camels, no lawyers and wood planks and such.

Time may have moved on and most all things have changed... except the squash brains that operate stuff. Municipal employees are still stone faced and leave early most days. Car dealers are still born (or should it be stillborn) with one hand in your pocket and a brain rattling off things like "how much can you pay each month" or... "oh, you really look good in that car". For sure one thing that hasn't changed is the motor vehicle operator brain. The same mentality that operated a car when the only option was a hole in the firewall for the heater, is now operating cars with computers that dumb-found computer technicians. These "great" new cars have also given these new age freaks a green light to do whatever they wish with their cars, regardless of who is in the way.

For years I have looked at those giant cow catcher bumpers on the off-road trucks, I figured... if that guy likes that, it may not be me, but hey... it's his deal, go for it. I would never have considered having one of those, except to buy and sell at a huge profit. I write this while standing in the neighborhood 4X4 shop waiting the guys to finish the install of MY cow bumper, double strength, chrome plated with spin-out hooks. Can't wait to get out there and protect my piece of freeway from the invading Mitsubishi hoards. (Did you know that Mitsubishi built planes that attacked Pearl Harbor? Some of us just won't let it lay.)

We have got to, as the municipal community planners say, "realign the thinking process" of the unapproved drivers. We... the definitive road warriors... need to change and then enforce the rules. The absolute biggest idiot moron deal to be foisted on the car world is this cell phone/driver combination. The all magnanimous law makers can come up with a fine if you license plate light burns out or failure to carry that insurance card that anyone can kick out of a computer. What drives me nuts is that they ask for the card, look at it and give it back, no questions asked. There is no uniform format for the cards and they don't check to see if it's good. So why have them? Tickets are what they are, a piece of paper that says you need to send Big Brother some money (he's no brother of mine). If you object, you can take time off work, go to court where you will lose and still pay money. How many times have you heard of someone beating the ticket, if you do it's usually a remarkable event worthy of telling the blow by blow story to whoever will listen around the burn barrel. I guess, with this tantrum, that traffic tickets have become one of the things we need to fix too, but when was the last time you tried to dig a municipal brain out of their bunker.

Back to the cell phone deal.  These people that can't seem to live without something stuck in their ear. Next time you see someone doing 40 in the fast lane, or sitting at a signal a minute or so after it turns green, chances are real good that the idiot has a cell phone stuffed in his, or her, ear!  The law makers say it's not "really a problem, it's just a slight distraction not worthy of special legislative attention". When was the last time you heard about a traffic fatality from a license plate light being out or an insurance card left at home? Cell phones should be attached directly to the driver side air bag, so when someone in the car pulls out their cell to check the weather, the bag goes off! Not good for preventing accidents, but a really good cause and effect exercise, and pretty good for a hoot too.  

Next, noise. Back in the day, engine noise and the all important socially significant exhaust note, was just the coolest thing, the louder the motor and the rappier the pipes, the better. Now, since we have matured a bit, we realize that anything that is louder than a Barry Manilow 8 track or the speed warning buzzer on the Buick cruiser, should be outlawed. So much for the Hundai-Suzuki-Ugo exhaust megaphone industry. How about the big boomer sound systems. There was a day when they were called radios, but not anymore, the title has expanded in direct proportion to the cost of the "systems". The new rule is, if they break car windows and make ears bleed from 100 yards away, 86'em. We can combine a couple of things here and solve two problems. If you build in the phone and the "sound system" into the car but can only use them through head-phones, that would be good, so the boomer soggy sponge brains can blast their ears to Mars on their own nickel.

Speed rated tires. That is it, the answer to these unapproved outlaw non-hot rodder speeders. Here's how it would work. If your car can fit into an envelope, you get... 50 MPH tires, that meaning that at 50, they blow. Those rice burners don't need to go fast, they will just get in the way of real American horsepower. This would be good for the economy, it would build up the tire fixing business and let the tow truck guys scoop more cash. It would also be good for the O-zone too, since five or six of those roller skates cars would fit on one roll back, less trips less fuel. If your is a more "vintage" car you become more speed authorized and the blow rating goes up, 50s vintage cars with a minimum of 400 ponies would get 150 MPH rated tires, 40s 200, and if you have a stones to go over 200 in a model A, well you don't get any tires you just get a paid trip to the funny farm. The kings of speed, guys like Al Teague and Earl Wooden and the Vescos would get unlimited tires. Now there's a picture for ya, Al's 400 MPH liner running down the interstate with the blown KB's nitro ladened exhaust blowing those  rice burners into the drainage ditches.

I think the highway lanes should be labeled like Disneyland rides, A through E, E being the best or fastest. Even with the speed rated tires there are the lane parkers, the people that figure..." I pay my taxes so I can drive in the E lane at whatever speed I want". Fine, as long as he or she (let's call it... IT), IT is in the E lane and doing 150, then IT can play. But IT doesn't do 150, IT does 45, just under the 50 rated tire which IT proudly carries because IT is one of those green people, trees, birds and all that (not that there's anything wrong with that). Have you ever seen those conveyer belts in manufacturing plants that pass under a magic laser beam x-ray, spots the bad one then an arm rockets out and smacks the reject into the scrap pile? Well we need something like that in the E lane. Spotting the violator wouldn't be a problem, a simple radar would zap the greeny then a section of the road would quickly flip up and launch IT into the space shuttle time zone. Hopefully none of this equipment malfunctions and catches a genuine E runner, I guess that doesn't make any difference, if it does mess up we'll never see the guy again anyway, burn up on re-entry and all.

The "E" lane has other problems. Being a hot rodder I have been automatically approved for the 200 tires and "E" driving, so I am cruising at, oh say 125, which since I stacked the three Gear Vendor overdrives behind the six speed overdrive trans, the motor is spinning at about 800. I look in the mirror and there is some guy on my ass with his headlights smoking! Now wait a minute, I'm an approved "E" runner and I'm doing 125 and I'm a tax payer, I ain't movin' over! So the guy goes around me in the D lane, jumps in front of me with two or three inches clearance, then gives me the international high sign... sign. Well, can't let him get away with that, so off we go, road rage at 150 plus. At first glance I thought this was a problem that needed fixing, but actually this may be the best part, legally chasing each other with speeds around 200, doesn't that sound like fun, like dual lane racing at Bonneville but with only one lane. Mountains of fun possibilities.

Playing within the rules is important, but there are those people that have zero gray matter and drive accordingly. There are people in this world that make us ask, who are these people, how did they get here and why are they still alive? Their key to lane changing land is the turn signal arm. They think that if at any time before, during or after a lane change, at least one turn signal blinks just once, they are good as gold. To promote safe lane changes and also as a safety feature, turn signal bulbs should be hooked to oh say... ten pounds of C-4 through a computer's GPS that watches the lane position and when the turn signal blinks, if they don't follow the rules, POOF. I like that one, I see all kinds of people sitting on the dirt banks along side the freeway watching for the POOFS. I think you could even charge for this and run betting pools, sounds like fun to me, and at the rate these inbred whackos are pumping out kids, there won't be any shortage of players in the near future, and the welfare payout will go down too.

So all is well, we are organized, and its kinda boring though, running in lanes with same speed cars, no lane changers to dodge, limited road rage opportunities, it's kinda like the old days of two lane roads and sixty horsepower, cars are just a means to get from A to B by way of A through E. Maybe we better leave it alone, except maybe we can figure a way to keep the POOF part.

Now before we go I've got more stuff about having a bad day. In that column I talked about a guy that runs a yellow Stude at Bonneville who had a bunch of bad days, year after year working the bugs out of a 394 Olds powered ‘53 Stude built in what amounts to a two car garage. The effort that he puts out is remarkable, but pretty normal for Bonneville guys too, but it didn't come across that way in the column. Over the better part of a decade this guy has thrashed on this thing and threw ever extra buck he had at it and now has the thing running 220, and the future holds nothing but good days. He is within striking distance of a record held by a combination that has all kinds of state of the art parts, the Stude guy figures it out, one part at a time, and makes it work. A good trip to Bonneville was coming home with all the bearings looking good. This guy and those that run Bonneville are the gut of hot rodding, they deserve a ton of props but probably don't want any. Everybody has to have a bad day once in a while, how else would you know what the good ones fell like?