"He's off and flying as he guns the car around the track, he's jamming down the pedal like he's never coming back, adventure's waiting just ahead!" - Theme from Speed Racer
High speed stunt driving has always been a hobby of mine. For me, the e-brake isn't just for parking, and heel-toe is a verb, not two nouns. I like the challenge presented by road friction, and that euphoric feeling that only comes from pushing a car sideways through a curve.
As you can imagine I enjoyed the experience I had yesterday when, while traveling in the far left lane at speeds well above the posted limit on a thoroughly moistened segment of Route 9 in Cromwell, I was suddenly faced with an errant, and, might I add, very sudden, bucket. This bucket was casually hanging around in the center of my lane, leaving me with three options: either swerve right into the other lane and possibly collide dramatically with a tan minivan full of pre-teen soccer practice and snacks, swerve left to the shoulder which wasn't so much a shoulder as it was a four foot of bank snow and ice, or gun it and give the bucket what for.
I chose left. I still feel that this was the right decision, even though my rear tires caught the slick of the shoulder, which left me rowing my way out of a high-speed Swan Lake. Fishtailing at 80 miles an hour on a busy stretch of highway during rush hour is not for the faint of heart, but it is one hell of a rush for those in search of high-octane kicks. The deep rumbling noise as your car, from the driver door to the taillight drags along all that snow and ice, while nerve-splitting, lends a textured, musical quality to the moment. But that mild assistance from the snow bank allowed me to pull out of the slide victorious, and without losing much speed. The only evidence that I was ever there is the snow under my door handles and the flat spot on the snow bank.
What did I learn? I learned to trust my instincts, and also that any sudden dramatic change of direction at highway speeds is as good as any roller coaster and much, much cheaper.
Showing posts with label Snow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Snow. Show all posts
Friday, January 28, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Milk and Eggs
Crazed citizens, violence...
Tuesday night was a wholesale frantic rush - I just wanted a spark plug for the snowblower, but I got so much more. I bore witness to no less than fifteen individual beatings, maimings, robberies, acts of larceny and hit and runs. It was a rough night.
The cause of all this general mayhem and martial law was, of course, the prediction of a small bit of weather, which whipped the public in all of the Northeast into a Milk and Eggs Frenzy. Women wrestled on tiled grocery store floors all across the state over the last gallons of long-expired milk, armed criminals coordinated raids on gas stations and stuffed their pockets with loose eggs and fistfuls of wadded slices of enriched white bread.
The whole Milk and Eggs mentality belongs to a Grand Old Mythology of long ago that still perpetuates. This is the same Grand Old Mythology that supports the old neo-mystical notion that LSD would expand consciousness and somehow unlock the answers to All This that have been embedded in the mind all along - which is like saying that the top floor of a building is already there, we just have to build up to it.
Tuesday night was a wholesale frantic rush - I just wanted a spark plug for the snowblower, but I got so much more. I bore witness to no less than fifteen individual beatings, maimings, robberies, acts of larceny and hit and runs. It was a rough night.
The cause of all this general mayhem and martial law was, of course, the prediction of a small bit of weather, which whipped the public in all of the Northeast into a Milk and Eggs Frenzy. Women wrestled on tiled grocery store floors all across the state over the last gallons of long-expired milk, armed criminals coordinated raids on gas stations and stuffed their pockets with loose eggs and fistfuls of wadded slices of enriched white bread.
The whole Milk and Eggs mentality belongs to a Grand Old Mythology of long ago that still perpetuates. This is the same Grand Old Mythology that supports the old neo-mystical notion that LSD would expand consciousness and somehow unlock the answers to All This that have been embedded in the mind all along - which is like saying that the top floor of a building is already there, we just have to build up to it.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Hard Luck in Waterbury
Another weird weekend - on the set of Hard Luck with a Hip Hop guru from Hollis, Queens...
The city of Waterbury is architecturally immune to snow removal, or at least negligent. Cars moved at unnatural angles with no traction to speak of. Pedestrians, overwrought with emotion, unable to identify snowed-over landmarks or read street names threw themselves into oncoming traffic. Bums foraged for warmth, the wind having blown away their newspaper blankets. Nine AM on a Saturday, this city of filth looked strangely clean... quiet.
Inside the Palace Theater, it was another situation altogether. From the street, it looked empty - but walking through the front doors, something was happening. Lights everywhere, casually dressed people behaving professionally. Men in evening wear and out-of-context hats posed for the enormous production camera which shot dramatically up - from the floor. All this against the backdrop of a long-gone style and glory - the Palace. A fitting name for such a place of carved wood and high-gloss marble - a gold tooth in the ghetto.
Later, shots would ring out in a suburban basement, there would be blood everywhere, the hum of a snow blower and the banal bark of a foamed-mouth dog would elicit murderous rage and contemplations of poisoning from even the most mild and stable of us as we sat in the kitchen and tried not to move or talk... But there in the Palace Theater, all was smooth and easy.
The city of Waterbury is architecturally immune to snow removal, or at least negligent. Cars moved at unnatural angles with no traction to speak of. Pedestrians, overwrought with emotion, unable to identify snowed-over landmarks or read street names threw themselves into oncoming traffic. Bums foraged for warmth, the wind having blown away their newspaper blankets. Nine AM on a Saturday, this city of filth looked strangely clean... quiet.
Inside the Palace Theater, it was another situation altogether. From the street, it looked empty - but walking through the front doors, something was happening. Lights everywhere, casually dressed people behaving professionally. Men in evening wear and out-of-context hats posed for the enormous production camera which shot dramatically up - from the floor. All this against the backdrop of a long-gone style and glory - the Palace. A fitting name for such a place of carved wood and high-gloss marble - a gold tooth in the ghetto.
Later, shots would ring out in a suburban basement, there would be blood everywhere, the hum of a snow blower and the banal bark of a foamed-mouth dog would elicit murderous rage and contemplations of poisoning from even the most mild and stable of us as we sat in the kitchen and tried not to move or talk... But there in the Palace Theater, all was smooth and easy.
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