Royal Rumble in South Georgia.......

Are you ready to ruuuuuuummmmmbllllleee............ Boy this is gonna get worse before it gets better. Well as you can guess, the new engine block for the procharger didnt come in. We are screwed, blued, and tattooed. We stuck with the old worn out hog leg nitrous motor. How are we gonna get this thing down the track on radials? And whats worse is that orsca only lets us run two stages. Well we rolled into carolina dragway thursday night looking like some chickens with our heads cut off. After 4 test passes, all we got for our efforts was a 5.40. Im thinking we are toast. I mean nothing was even close to being fast. We left at lunchtime friday for Cecil, Ga. The place was slap packed out when we rolled in at 7 pm. All the big dogs of everything were there. And Man this place was a nice. We unloaded and dragged the old girl to staging. First pass i hit the throttle, smoked the tires, pedalled, then wheel stand. in that order. I was as lost as a florida gator fan. Next three passes equalled a bunch of slow times and bent up header tubes. I couldnt keep the front end down. Now i have balls of steel, but 300 ft wheelstands dont win races. i went to bed at 5 am. Unable sleep at the thought of getting obliterated all weekend. Saturday morning we did a couple wheelstands, to get ready for first round qualifying. All the boys seemed pretty confident in my ability to tear shit up. Then all of the sudden the clouds parted. The stars aligned and first round qualifying we went a 5.11 @146. Holy Smokes. The orange car had its mojo back. Or so we thought. Second rnd we went a 5.22. Everyone was getting faster and we were slowing down like the South Carolina Gamecocks hope for a winning season. Well last round of qualifying i decided that we were going or blowing. We loaded the hot rod for bear, and up up and away she went. We actually drug orange paint off the bumper. It really smashed down hard. My header tubes were flat as a pancake. We had to heat them up with a torch and beat a jack handle through them just to get them half ass opened up. We were qualified 7th. The number one qualifier ran a 4.96. So that put us a tenth and a half off the pace. I hate being slow. I barely slept all night. Talk about being screwed. we had the 2nd and 3rd qualifiers on our side of the ladder. if we were gonna win this race, we were gonna earn it. After much thought and argueing with Brian and Johnson about what to do first round ( i wanted to get gangsta nasty and put 46's in both foggers) We decided to play it safe and slowly chip away at the mountain of fast cars ahead of us. First round we blasted off another 5.11. which got us the win. But still slow. Second round was to be a showdown for the ages. We had Nick Yarber, the number two qualifier and the guy trailing me by 5 points in the chase to the championship. He just went a 5.05 in the first round and i knew he would step it up. I turned the wick up on the hotrod as well. We bumped in and off we went. he had me by .005 at halftrack and then i tossed my nitrous lasso out there and reeled him in, getting the win by .020 and running a 5.05. by golly we finally had a race car to work with. But there was a super fast yellow turbocharged speed bump in the way in the semis. Mr Elam went a 4.96 first round and had that thing on a mission. I knew i had to wind the old rubber band a little tighter, but how much before it snapped? We both staged. I knew i had to go. As soon as i saw amber i let the ponies gallop and damn they were moving It was so close at the stripe i couldnt tell who won. My light came on and i wa so excited i almost forgot to stop. I was even more excited when i saw the times. We went a 5.02 to his 4.95. Thats right, I won on a holeshot. My first ever holeshot win. I was feeling like the invincible man. We had my old buddy Chad Henderson in the finals. Who by the way qualified 1st with a 4.96. Well no amount of reason would convince me to not put the screws to the hot rod now. We were under dogs and were going to the finals. I was going for it all. We burned in with long smokey burnouts.Brian had the nitrous pressure high so i had to purge off like ten thousands lbs of nos. We clicked the bulbs on and Bam i was off and running like Forrest Gump. It was a side by side slug fest to the stripe. I nipped him on the big end running a 4.97 to his 5.02. Man the party was started now. I was hugging everybody and jumping around like a maniac. When the heat was on we turned up the oven. I was interviewed by horsepower tv and they must have never seen Steve Jackson unplugged after a race win. I had those guys laughing like crazy. What an incredible weekend. As i sit in the passenger seat in Johnson's motorhome, heading north on I 75. i realize how lucky i am to have friends who share my crazy backwoods passion for this way of life we call drag racing. Thanks to Brian, Chris, Jason and Cheri for all you guys help this weekend. More goods things are to come.