Search For Speed

SEARCH FOR SPEED

UNDER THE PAINT AND ON THE GAS

I AM STREAKING ACROSS EL MIRAGE AT 235 FEET PER second, my concentration so fiercely directed to the task at hand I'm unsure, afterward, whether my ride lasted 30 seconds or 30 minutes. On my left is the line of traffic cones which demarks our course. A tenth-mile apart when we laid the course out, they now pour past in an unbroken orange line.

My chin is planted on the fuel tank of the Vance & Hines GSX-R and the needle on the tach in front of me indicates 9600 rpm. I’m concentrating on the feedback filtering up through the seat and handlebars as the bike twitches and hunts for traction as it screams across the dry lake bed’s cobby surface. I'm focused on the timing lights, approaching through the Suzuki’s windscreen as though in slow motion. I whistle through the lights, roll slowly out of the throttle, sit up and exhale. At about 50 miles an hour, I downshift, turn, and head back for the timing stand. Then, and only then, does the exhilaration hit me: / have just made a top-speed pass. I whoop inside my helmet and punch the air in excitement.

Timer Gary Cagle tells me my speed was 162.279 miles per hour. Slow! I need more. I'm told that I could perhaps perfect my tuck, so I loop back to the start line, dirt-track the Suzuki onto the course in third gear, and make another pass. Tuck or no tuck, at my size—6-foot-4 and 220 pounds—there’s an excess of frontal area. There’s also an abundance of powerthieving heat on the desert lake bed, and this pass is slower, 160.628 miles per hour. There'll be no 175mph clocking for me today.

But I have seen how speed seems to warp time, causing it to slow. I've seen that fast is never fast enough and I've felt the incredible loneliness of the land-speed rider, under the paint and on the gas beneath a cobalt canopy of desert sky. Mostly, though, I’m completely seduced by the promise of speed and I understand a little better why men come here for it in spite of its incredible costs. They—we—return, I think, not only because of the potential for another mile per hour, but also because of the intense and intoxicating concentration required to make a top-speed run, during which, time seemingly stands still, lengthening the ecstasy you feel as you ride a motorcycle faster than you’ve ever done before. — Jon F. Thompson