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One of America's favorite pastimes is
cooking with gas, Pinchin' some ass, Drivin' too
fast.
The Flying Burrito
Brothers
And a burrito that flies never lies. There are
no two ways about it: Driving Too Fast is either
one of our most genocidal social problems or an
exhilerating heritage of American youth.
The problem is: What, exactly constitutes "Too
Fast"? Well, Einstein might not have been a Flying
Burrito, but he pretty much pegged the speed of
light as being Too Fast. And he knew his onions.
But there are other people who cling to the
outmoded theory that Too Fast merely means "at a
greater velocity than the officially posted speed
limits". People from a demographic cross-section
known as "Weenies".
Speed limits, once you strip them of their
cultural significance and punch them up with a few
well placed .357 sized holes, are essentially just
laws. And laws are made...why? Exactly, to be
broken: it's the American way. This country was
founded by breaking, avoiding taxes, brandishing
firearms and heading West in a hurry. If you have
any doubts at all, ask yourself this leading
question: If the speed limits really are The
Limits, why do they sell radar detectors? And why
do you have all those 3 digit numbers on your
speedometer?
So should we consider safety as the border of
Too Fast? That Driving Too Fast would be driving at
speeds unsafe given the vehicle and road
conditions? That seems like a good place to start.
The act of taking your life and others' into your
hands. Those are the table stakes, all right. If
you're too stupid to know that stick to bumper cars
and roller coasters, sport.
Which underscores the importance of selecting
the proper vehicle to Drive Too Fast. It might
seem, to the naive, that a fast car would be the
way to go--but it ain't necessarily so. Doing two
hundred is no big when you're low slung, sweet
swung and expensively sprung in a Lambourghini or
Mostachioli or some such On the other hand, I've
owned cars in which doing fifty five was an
exercise in flash-frozen terror. Just let fear be
your speedometer, if not co-pilot. It's all
relative, according to such diverse thinkers as
Einstein and Jerry Lee Lewis. I was scared stupid
doing forty down the block in my first drive in my
old man's hotwired '58 dodge. Note carefully that,
since I wasn't allowed to drive at all, even one
measly mph was Driving Too Fast. The ideal to
strive for was put forth by (of all people) Ralph
Nader, when he ranted the motto: "Unsafe at any
speed." Which naturally brings us to the discussion
of motorcycles.
What motorcycles offer is purity; everything
simple and one-tracked. And a very clean definition
of Too Fast--namely, when you have just killed
yourself. They offer instant death, none of that
lingering, "Love Story" crap...you just vaporize
like in an arcade game, and find out how many lives
you've got left. In that crouched over defecatory
position favored by Cafe racers, meet death doggie
style, humping like Pluto until the last thing that
goes through your mind is Uranus. And all this
without killing an unacceptable number of innocent
bystanders.
From the Humongoose 1500, ideal for racing jets
on the airstrip, to tiny, pipey dirtbikes like the
Fastazz Sunbichi 125, perfect for wedding reception
slaloms and indoor work, there is a size of bike
just right for your personal aspirations. It's
interesting to note that the Japanese, who make all
these Kamakazis, Yomamas, SuziQ's and such,
prohibit bikes over 500 ccs displacement in Japan.
Which lets you know what's going on. It's like,
"Enjoy your motorcycle, Lound Eye. Lemember
Nagasaki."
Which brings geography in to the question. You
have to pick your location. It's difficult to Drive
Too Fast on an interstate highway. But extremely
easy on a day care playground, for instance. Or
perhaps a bar mitsvah in a place with a lot of big
windows. The more people around, the easier it is
to Drive Too Fast.
To be fari, we should mention a whole different
slant on Driving Too Fast, which is that it is
impossible. Just as Masters and Johnson said that
the only unnatural would be the impossible act, it
could be argued (and probably is by any
sufficiently venal defense attorney) that there is
no such thing as DTF--an interesting hypothesis
that begs for experimentation. So let's experiment.
Or rather, let's YOU experiment. Try this: mash
your accelerator down as hard as you can for as
long as you can. What did the car do? The limit
right? You took it to the limit, like the Eagles.
Not over the limit, right? Need I say more? Except
to ask; did you survive this experience? In one
piece, or a number of pieces that can be expressed
by a single digit? I rest my case.
Here's an even more conclusive experiment. Find
somebody who has never seen or driven a car in his
life. Loan him a car (I won't patronise you by
adding, "Somebody else's car...") and stand well
back to watch what he does. Almost instantly he
will be driving way Too Fast. It could be said that
humans learn to Drive Too Fast before we even learn
how to drive. It's probably hard-wired in like
language and drinking until we puke.
Which reminds us that alcohol and drugs are
generally cited as aids to Driving Too Fast.
Especially amphetamines, also known as "speed"
(fancy that). But then, depressants like beer and
seconal seem to work equally well at producing the
dramatic results we associtate with Driving Too
Fast. The only possible conclusion is that driving
LESS than Too Fast is only possible within a fairly
narrow window of the psychopharmaceutical spectrum,
and could thus be considered an aberration of
nature. Of course, drunk drivers are homicidal
scrotes and all that. But then, who isn't, in this
day of overpopulation, pollution, and mass
extinction? And it's all between consenting adults,
right. It's like, hey, You don't wanna get aids,
then walk the line, don't pull the twine, right?
Same way, you don't want to be a highway fatality,
don't take the highway. Remember; cars don't kill
people, uncontrolled deceleration kills people.
Aside from intoxicants, overpopulation areas,
and faulty equipment, there is no better aid to
Driving Too Fast than having a woman present in
your vehicle. The aphrodisiac qualities of speed
are justifiably legendary, of course. But the vice
works versa, too. Not to mention that sex at high
speeds is instructive in and of itself. There is
just nothing to put a fine edge on careening around
a corner on two wheels like having a curly little
head bobbing around in your lap at the time.
If anything can heighten the danger of slamming
a slalom through the trees on some idiot golf
course, it's feeling teeth being whipped back and
forth against your driveshaft by those sudden
changes in direction. We're talking big stakes
here, sport; fates worse than death. Somebody
putting their mouth where your money is. You've got
life, death, birth control and infinity all in one
sweet package, baby driver. Yo, Thunder Road.
So is there a maximum speed for having sex while
driving? If that figure can be determined (and I
would volunteer to perform experiments in that
direction if suitable volunteers and grants could
be finagled) then one can easily move it out
another notch. Sex is another thing that is unsafe
at any speed. You might actually be safer doing
someone en passant, as it were, than home in bed.
For one thing, at 100 mph, it is unlikely that
anyone's significant other is suddenly going to
walk in at a significant moment and blow you into
insignificant rubble. On the other hand, one wrong
spasm and you're history. But then that's the name
of the game, isn't it? Snuffed in mid-orgasm. But
what a way to go! And who, other than your
graveside elegist, is going to say you went Too
Fast?
Probably Bruce Springsteen put it best, in his
immortal words:
Wrap your legs around my velvet rims And
strap your arms cross my engine
Well that one might actually be too kinky to
even visualize, but you can tell the Boss had his
head in the right place. Or maybe you can't.
Somewhere down around her turbocharger, sounds
like. But that by the way. The important thing is,
keep the gin in your generator, the "mo" in your
motor, and the piss in your pistons and all will be
well as long as you keep reading the Weekend
Warrior. Preferably at excessively high speeds.
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THE WEEKEND WARRIOR
SAMPLE TEXTS
by Linton Robinson
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