Speed

image borrowed from google

Speed

“Speed, it seems to me, provides the one

genuinely modern pleasure.”--Aldous Huxley.

I am here to tell you,

speed can be an opiate.

I experienced a taste of it

driving beater muscle cars during the 60’s,

blasting more than 100 m.p.h.

             at two in the morning, on

                       whatever that day’s designated

                                              urban drag strip was;

Dual quads,

400 horsepower,

4-speed transmission,

bald tires,

shitty brakes,

no posi-traction,

no good sense,

              mere inches from

                                  destruction,

                                  demons,

                                  danger, even

                                  death,

but a couple of stiff speeding & reckless driving tickets

sobered me up like a quick dip in an ice pond;

but what that screaming, highly revved time

did for me was to help me fully understand 

other’s cravings for speed, even 

those obsessed folks who have to prove

that wheeled vehicles, without leaving the ground,

                                     without leaping into the sky

                                     without piercing the stratosphere

can now achieve supersonic speeds.

It all started in August 1902

in Albis-St. Arnoult, France

where American William K. Vanderbilt

drove a Mors at 76.08 m.p.h.

Then a fellow named Malcolm Campbell got into the fray;

in 1926 he drove a 350 h.p. Sunbeam at 150.87 m.p.h.,

in 1928 at Daytona Beach he drove the Blue Bird at 206.96 m.p.h.,

& in 1935 on the Bonneville Salt flats driving Blue Bird at 301.39 m.p.h.,

close to the limits of internal combustion engines.

In August 1963

Craig Breedlove on the Bonneville Salt Flats

drove the turbojet Spirit of America at 407.44 m.p.h.;

returning there in 1965 to drive at 555.48 m.p.h. 

Today, the Guinness World land speed record

was set in October 1997, out on the Black Rock Desert,

where RAF fighter pilot Andy Green

drove the Thrust SSC turbofan 

at an astonishing 763.03 m.p.h.;

but wouldn’t you know, this isn’t enough 

for the plucky Andy Green, who in 2015 

will travel to the NW corner of South Africa,

where his team is already working with 

special laser-guided precision graders 

to create a perfect surface.

He will drive a multi-million dollar 7 ton supersonic vehicle

called the Bloodhound SSC, 

a jet & rocket powered monster

rated at 187,000 horse power,

designed to go faster than 1,000 m.p.h.

at Mach 1.4, faster than a bullet 

fired out of a .357 Magnum.

So all ye speed freaks out there,

                          let’s start praying right now

                                             for a successful run;

hoping that pilot daredevil Andy Green

will not crash through death’s door

before he shatters his own speed record. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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