was at a friends house, and he said "you hear that? that's my next door neighbor's nova."

went over to check it out, a black 63-64 chevy II, tubbed, slicks and a 454, (that's all i know about it).

friend said, "mickey has the road runner out there."

"you want to run it?"

"sure, but it won't be much of a run against this!"

this thing sounded nice! serious suspension set up, lots of traction, if he had the power, but what the hell!

long story short, we end up on an expressway, no cars in sight, and go for it at about 10mph. end of first he has me by about 1/2 a car length, going into third about a car, and going into 4th, when we shut it down, he was 1 1/2 -2 lengths in front of me, (but novas are short cars ).

we slow down and he nails it again, which i wasn't expecting. i was in 3rd, and should have gone to 2nd, but i just nailed it. i was at 3000 or so, and he started leaving me behind but once it got above 4000 we were moving pretty even. light coming up in the distance, so we shut it down.

not bad at all, thinks i. i expected to get whooped a lot worse than that! can't imagine what that car weighs, but with the work he's done i wouldn't be surprised if it was many hundreds of lbs less than the road runner. i don't know what he's done to the engine, but if it as mean as the car looks and sounds, it should be pretty nasty!

he is off to a friends, and i have to turn and find my way back to where we came from. so we wave and head off.

my 8 year old son came with me, and was as giddy as he could be, his first drag race, he loved it!

so i'm happy thinking i did well against a car that should have walked over me a hell of a lot worse than that.

then i talked to my neighbor, and he said, "i think i know that car, it's a 9.50 car!"

" i don't know", says i, "i did pretty well against him!".

"yeah, unless he was just playing with you..."

hmmm.... hadn't thought of that!

but damn that was fun! i love this stuff!