It was the warmest afternoon of traveling we had experienced on Drag Week 2015, and the water temp gauge that Aaron had payed little grief to over the last fifty miles, now held his rapt attention. He tried 2600 rpm, then 2800, and finally 3K.
"It doesn't seem to matter! It just won't drop below 220 no matter what", he breathed in nervous exasperation.
"Do I need to throw a rag over it?" I teased, "here's what I can tell you, when you try three grand, John and Rachael disappear off our back bumper and we start pulling away. He's got an electric water pump on that big block and his temp gauge doubles as his speedometer, so let's back off and try to keep the gang all together."

Our nice little countryside two lane jaunt turned into stop light, and city street driving as we traversed the town of Macomb Il., population 21,000. We cleared the town on US136, then we were required to make a right to get back onto US67 again. Aaron had clicked the 904 into low, and eased onto the narrower, shoulderless two lane, which was empty in front of us. He applied no more throttle than it took to move the tach needle, and immediately shifted into second as soon as the 428 gained 500 rpm.
"Show this thing some love, she ain't no show poodle!" I had turned my head to face him, both for affect as well as to gauge his reaction.
He shot me a sidelong glance, "What?"
"Show her some love", I repeated.
He rolled the power on, with the torque coming on faster than the rpm.
"This throttle pedal goes on forever!" He exclaimed, grabbing drive as the needle swung past 6.
As a point of fact the throttle has a very short throw from idle to wide open, but as I mentioned earlier the light action requires keen attention, and therefore provides more feel than one is accustomed to...much like the trigger pull on a double barrel 12 gauge.
He lifted shortly after the shift, but didn't look over or address me until after we had settled back into cruising speed.
"I'm thinking you are going to cause me to spend a bunch of money when I get home", he laughed, "this is too much fun!"

An hour later, I called Boone for an update.
"Well...the good news is that we managed to get Dale's shocks adjusted, and the brackets welded up, so we were back on the road", he explained.
"Were? That sounds ominous, what's the bad news?"
"We are on the shoulder right now with the Aussies, the 1320 Video guys, some of the Hot Rod camera crew and probably 10 other Drag Week cars!"
"What is going on? I didn't see any shoulders on this road that would support a crowd like that!"
"You know Mike in the old Firebird, that has been traveling with Daryl in the Chevelle?" He questioned, then paused.
"Yeah, yeah...I've been calling them the 'Drag Week Odd Couple'. What happened?"
"Well...some gal in a lifted truck ran him off the road! He went into the ditch on the right side, fought it back onto the asphalt, shot across the two lane and ended up in the ditch on the opposite side."
"Oh boy, did it tear the car up very bad?"
"Don't have a clue. You see, the left ditch is really more of a ravine, with a marsh at the bottom...the Firebird is ten feet below us in high grass and mud to the door handles!"
"So...all of you stopped?"
"No, just Dad and I. Dale and Darren kept going, and I think Robert is ahead of them."