After beating a hasty retreat from West Palm Beach on Sunday morning, I needed a day or two to totally collect my thoughts from a jam packed two days in the Florida sun. It certainly felt great to be away from the glaciers up here in New England, and when the first cloud of spent nitro engulfed my head, all the other troubles of the world literally melted away. In my estimation Saturday’s broadcast was the best technical broadcast we have ever done. We’re already gearing up for the next one coming from Las Vegas in a couple weeks.

As has become somewhat of a tradition, here are some thoughts and ruminations on Chad, Brian, and AV Kid Dustin’s big Florida adventure.

• West Palm Beach has an inordinate number of gentleman’s clubs and all have their own unique names. Probably the oddest strip club name we saw was the “Spearmint Rhino”. None of us could work backwards and figure out how in the hell the owners of that place came up with that name. I will say that we did not investigate any closer than simply driving by.

• AV Kid Dustin’s skills with the camera are pretty freaking impressive. I hamfistedly tried to operate our main camera on a couple of passes during Saturday morning testing and if anyone weas watching and experienced vertigo, dizziness, or vomiting, I really apologize. The kid is a ninja or something. I honestly don’t know how he does it.

• Seeing the professional level NHRA teams during the end of their “spring training week” and interacting with most of the drivers was interesting. Typically I have seen them in full race mode at NHRA national events and it was very refreshing to see them far less buttoned down and at ease. They were all focused and ready to haul the mail, but to a person, they were all more chatty and relaxed than they’ll be when the tour starts in Pomona.

• Sometimes you have to be careful what you ask for. Our day on Friday was alot more stressful than we had hoped it would be, so once it was time to get some dinner, I was in the mood for a drink…or 10. I asked our waitress jokingly for “the most Jack Daniels” you can serve me. Imagine my surprise when she returned with three glasses of the stuff and plunked them down in front of me.

• Our rental dookie-box was a Dodge Caravan, which wasn’t much fun during Chad’s redline tests. Typically Chad conducts some scientific testing by matting the throttle in neutral to see how long the rental car will bounce off the rev limited before the computer pulls the throttle back electronically. The record so far is in a little Toyota thing that sat at eight grand for about 10 seconds. This time, the van only went to four grand and then backed down seconds later. The thing was loaded up pretty well though, with electric doors on the sides and rear, along with enough room to haul the German army and their gear around.

• Don Schumacher’s Mercedes SLS AMG is one bad ass car. It was even cooler than the Bentley with plates indicating that it might have belonged to Roger Burgess. Those guys have their financial acts together!

• There were live alligators floating in the swamp area around the outside of the pits. I’d guess the ones we saw were between six and eight feet long. Dustin and I happened upon John Force peering into the murky depths to see some gator action. He quickly rode off when one of the reptiles spotted him.

• We all munched on fried gator tail on Saturday night. Mixed with nitro, it is pretty damned good. No telling if the food was grown at the track or not.

• PBIR is one hell of a facility. While we were there, the strip was running, their karting track was going full tilt, and the road course was hosting a Skip Barber school. The back straight of the road course runs parallel to the drag strip and sits about sixty feet away from the wall of the strip. The guys driving the little open wheel cars and Mazda Miatas were standing and getting instruction when some of the fuel cars lit off. Some of those guys appeared to have ruined their driving suits.

• Chad and Dustin are really helpful guys. My entire face was spattered with rubber and junk from shooting photos and video on the wall all day. Neither of them decided to let me know about that until long after I had done some interviews with the drivers, a couple of which who looked at me like I had just stumbled in from a coal mine. Thanks guys!

• There’s lots of controversey and turmoil in the world of drag racing (like there ever isn’t!) these days and it is really easy to get wrapped up into it during the off season. Sitting down there in Florida and watching the most powerful piston driven race cars lay down lap after lap near the national record did a lot to get me back in the groove mentally. There’s literally nothing like it in the world. I’d tell anyone, even the person with little interest in drag racing, that they just need to experience the violent, visceral, experience that modern fuel drag racing brings to the table. It really is awesome.

• Oh, and the stressful omlette? Well, Chad and I found ourselves inside a Denny’s at about 4am on Sunday trying to get some grub before heading for the airport and our too early flights home. After being greeted by a patron passed out on the floor, several others clearly under the influence of heavy duty drugs, and a couple of groups of people who appeared to be preparing for a gun fight, we whalloped down our eggs and juice in world record time. There was also a crazy accident outside of the place, but that’s another story for another time.

• It is always an adventure striking out with Chad and Dustin, that’s for sure. Despite the hijinx, we still bust our ass to bring you the best content and video we can from these things. We hope you enjoy it!

    Thanks for reading,

            Lohnes