"Gripping the wheel, his knuckles went white with desire..."

"...the wheels of his Mustang exploding on the highway like a slug from a .45. True death: 400 horsepower of maximum performance piercing the night...this is black sunshine."

Okay, so Saturday I went off to Sandia Motor Speedway with my uncle to watch some races. Like Katy, I was waiting for some fun flaming wreckage, so long as it didn't happen to the two people I knew who were racing.

I had never been to one of these races before, or any race for that matter. It was a lot of fun. We drank on the way down, drank before in the parking lot, drank during the race, drank in the pits after the races, and drank on the way home. As for the races, we sat right at the front of the fence and really took in the entire sensory experience of it: the burning rubber, the rocks and tire bits spraying the crowd, the sounds of the cars passing. I can understand the whole allure of NASCAR a little more now.

There were five different types of races: the factory fours (nearly stock four-cylinder; lots of Hondas and Nissans), the hobby stock (which are more the Impalas and such), the legends (which looked like a race full of Ed Roth hotrods), and the midgets (souped-up gokarts). The night finished with the powderpuffs, where the wives/girlfriends of the factory fours raced.

There were some awesome mullets, lots of obesity, and I had a talk about the recent cool weather with a guy who spoke some odd combination of pidgen, english, and hillbilly. Lots of nodding and smiling in that conversation.

But in all, I really enjoyed the night. In fact, if I wasn't planning on leaving the ABQ in May, I would go in on a car with my uncle and race next summer. But alas, my need for speed will have to wait to be unleashed another day.