by Aaron Polburn

Dream a Little

You might wonder what happens to washed up drag racing presidents. In my case you create a bucket list and the first thing on my list was to somehow get involved in the golf business. Actually, the indoor golf business. There is little need to compete against the 27 courses that beat the crap out of each other in the spring and summer when I can be the only store in town from October to March. Go to www.caddyshackindoorgolf.com and you will see my next great adventure.

There is one course you can get called the Infamous 18. It is a recreation of sports artist Hoyle Chapman’s vivid imagination. You might play from one Manhattan skyscraper to another. You might play over Victoria Falls or an ice shelf in Antarctica. That brings me to drag racing.

So if you could create a drag strip anywhere on earth where would it be? Here is my short list.

Wall Street - How much fun would it be to launch a fuel car and bring every venture capitalist on earth to their knees? The noise off the buildings would be beyond imagination.

Mt. Vesuvius - Fire out the header pipes and an active volcano. What a show!

Any Large Dairy Farm (2,000 cow minimum) - One good rap of the throttle should produce about 1,000 pounds of cottage cheese.

Eldora Speedway - Nitro on Dirt. What a concept.

Paris, France - A finish line under the Eiffel Tower or Arc De Triumph would be breathtaking.

Aircraft Carrier - If a jet can land on it, a fuel funny car can race on it.

Any track that is a mile long - This would give the term “Blow Sh-t Up” a whole new meaning.

WHEN THE COWS CAME HOME

It was the morning of a big Pro Stock event at Thompson and I arrived on the scene ready to prep the track. When I got to the track I was shocked to see about a dozen cows standing on the starting line. Obviously they were huge Ronnie Sox fans and wanted to get a good seat. I was not amused, since I had little experience in cow herding. I will tell you that phrases such as, “Hey, cows, move it” had little effect. So I resorted to what every young drag strip manager would do. I got a chain and swung it around like Conan the Barbarian while spewing forth every known F-bomb in the English language.

Apparently the F-bomb is loosely translated in cow talk to mean let’s run and poop at the same time. And that they did, leaving a massive amount of bovine butt bombs all the way down the track. I was beyond unhappy.

I made a panic call to the Thompson Fire Department thinking they could be my power-wash cure. They did an excellent job and all was good in the world.

Bill Jenkins came in after the race to get paid and in his best Grumpy dialect said, “Hey, Polburn, anyone ever tell you this place smells like cow sh-t?”

It was a long day.

QUESTIONS

- Has trying to make Pro Mod a legitimate class been the biggest money pit in the history of drag racing?

- Do US 131 Motorsports Park and Maryland International have the nicest restrooms in drag racing?

- Are there at least 50 other tracks that could compete for worst restrooms honor?

- Why don’t driver contracts have fan interaction clauses?

- Could drag racing on TV become any more boring?

- Does anyone really watch all 500 laps of a cup race?

- If you could attend one motorsport event outside of drag racing, what would it be? Mine would be the Formula 1 event in Monaco.

RACE SAFE. GOD SPEED.