Over Thanksgiving weekend I was in California, enjoying a weekend holiday
and working on, of all things, a Morris Traveler, a way fetchin' cool
woody wagon in about 3/4 scale. Did you replace those plug wires yet Chris?
Anyway, the drive from Palo Alto back to Salt Lake, across Nevada desert and
Utah salt flats got me thinking once again about a writing project I have
tucked away, basically about Triumphs making runs on the Salt Flats. Does
anyone on this list have any comments, useful leads or whatever about this
topic? Below is a short bit I wrote up once about the start of this whole
idea.
mjb.
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In simple terms, one could describe life as a sequence of events which
seperate the first event, our birth, from death, our last event. But we as
human beings are inclined to offer so many opinions, interpretations, and other
possible explainations that life itself is often obscured in the fantasies we
build around what really happened, what could have been, what should have
been.
For example, there I sit in the shop, with a cool brew in one hand, looking at
the wisps of curly black fuzz seemingly growing from the palm of my other
hand. Now, the good nuns of my parochial school years at Corpus Christi and
such other institutions might have one interpretation of hair growing in one's
palms, but rest assured, it involves nothing more than a can or two of 3M
spray adhesive and a new carpet set for Killer. Just another event in a
sequence by which my progression through the cycles of existence are marked.
Like the time spent at the Chevrolet dealer's window on Division street,
pressed hard against the glass and staring at a sinfully red '63 split
window. Late for class again, the nuns and I would have a chat.
Or the time spent crammed in the back of an MGB-GT with a
pile of siblings, doing laps around the 3/8 oval at Indianapolis Raceway
Park. Or the first test drive of Melvin's TR3, the one with the "racing
head" and rotting carpet, rattling around the streets of the Broad Ripple
district of Indianapolis.
Or the shuttle bus ride to the airport, after a particularly notable
VTR convention. Notable in that most of the time was spent melting into the
asphalt under a red TR3, watching the ankles of convention attendees pass
by, on their way to or from *fun* activities. Just another sequence of
events to mark the passage of time.
But it is the shuttle bus ride that bubbles to the top of my life's kettle
at the moment, chatting with a middle aged man named Paul, and his father
Ken. They were on their way back to England, I was heading for Salt Lake.
During the mundane chit chat, Ken found out I was from Salt Lake City, and he
went on a bit about Triumphs on the Salt Flats, and some record run attempts.
Of course I remember no details, and now it is too late to write that letter
and ask. I wanted not only to know of some of the past efforts, and who was
involved, and when, so that I could work up an article for the VTR magazine,
but also just to tuck away in my memory, in case some poor fellow stricken
with an incurable Triumph affinity had the notion of tackling endless acres
of useless flatness in his own life.
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