There you are, sitting at that stop sign, redlight, whatever. It’s a nice day outside, the windows are down, the music is up and it’s a good song, with heavy bass and a good guitar riff. You’ve got your foot on the clutch and the brake, your hand is on the shifter, and suddenly you just feel it. The vibration of the engine touches you in that certian way, you know the road ahead really well. Your foot slips off the brake and hits gas pedal, and you can feel it in your bones. The rpm’s jump up to a mere three thousand, but it makes that sound, the revving of the engine, and your heart skips a beat. You look left, and right, to be sure you are clear. Nothing is coming, and the decision has been made. You rev the engine up, it’s hitting five thousand rpms and then you pop the clutch. The tires wail, they spin hard as the majority of the torque in your engine has just been transfered to them. Blue smoke wisps up, then the tires catch and you lunge forward. You accelerate from 0 to 25 in a quarter of a second, the violence of the power throws you back in the seat, you grip the wheel tighter, and the engine begins to scream, you’ve just redlined, 6,500 revolutions per minute. Your foot hits the clutch, you drop it down into second, rev the gas and pop the clutch, the wheel squeal again, the instant boost of power causing them to lose grip, to spin again, but they catch quickly, and you jump forward again, the wind begins to howl through the windows, and the sound alerts you again, the engine is screaming for you, redline. You go through the routine again, smashing that clutch to the floor, you shift hard and quick, taking only a faction of a second to clutch, slam the shifter into place, and pop it one last time, the wheels scream on the pavement, the car jerks hard as they regain grip, and your body is shoved harder against the seat. You look down at the speedometer, it’s reading 65 and you are only in third gear. The engie revs up, loud and screaming, redline. You press the clutch hard, already shifting from third to fourth before you’ve got it a quarter of the way down, you can feel the engine so well that you can shift without the clutch…speedshifting. You aren’t thinking about it though, the speedometer is reading 85, and the engine is almost there, you drop it into fifth, shifting without even realizing. You look up, you’ve only gone a quarter of a mile, it’s only been seven seconds since you were sitting at that stop sign, but your heart is racing as if you just ran a mile. You’re commited now though, you are moving down that road at 85-90 miles an hour, and as you push down it the music is cranked against the wind that is blowing at gale force through your windows. Your hair is messed up, anything loose in the vehicle is flying around. Who cares. You come to that first curve, it’s a sharp one, you drop down on the clutch, kick the shifter into fourth, pop the clutch and hit the brake just enough to bury the front of the car. It jerks forward enough, you hit the curve and the power shifts to the inside wheel, you crank the wheel, feeling the road pull through it. Right there, with that feeling pulling on your hand, you pop the clutch again, upshift, and stomp the gas. The car leans into the curve, whipping around it at breakneck speeds. You hit the straightaway next, and all bets are off. The gas pedal is on the floor, and the engine is climbing faster and faster. 95, 100, 105, 110…the car begins to push lower to the ground as the wind flies all around it. You drop off the gas at 115 and just ride the car back down to 90. Your heart is racing, you can feel the blood surging through your body. Your breath catches, and you’ve felt it…freedom.
I do believe that this is one of the best feelings in the world. One of the sad moments in my life is I have yet to find someone who can enjoy things like this with me. I guess that is why my search continues. It is a funny thing about dreams. You can try your hardest to forget about something, to change the way you feel, and then you go to sleep at night, and you dream the impossible. I recently attended a production of Don Quixote, and one of the scences shows Aldonza, aka Dulcinea, finally understanding what Alonso sees. She sings the words, “Dream the impossible dream.” While this version is an interpretation of the director, it touched me. We deam that dreams are achiveable, so when I fall asleep at night and I dream what seems to be impossible, is it not achiveable? Perhaps our minds know more than we give them credit, and they have to guide us in a way that we don’t understand. But then, perhaps I’m crazy, like Alonso, who saw hismelf as a Knight Errant. Or was Alonso crazy, or was the rest of the world?
