Late winter in my flip-flops, I get a call from Chicago. An entrepreneur friend just bought a car over the phone. A year old Porsche Turbo, six speed transmission, all wheel drive, one radar detector out the front, and one at the rear, an awesome radar scrambler, anti-lock brakes, leather seats… He bragged. He wondered if I would help him drive it back to Chicago. I considered. He offered a plane ticket back to Miami Beach. I considered...hmmmm let's go!
Chicago Man flew in. The artist got out of bed. We commenced the cross-country road trip at dawn. A bit of a delay, got supplies and some good gas; we blast off fairly early 9:40am. North from Miami Beach into the bottom-of-the-state freeway snarl. Ah Fort Lauderdale. Hectic thru Palm Beach. Up into the dangerous Florida rurality. Good-looking agriculture also nature. Remarkable roads for very high speed driving. Outstanding visibility: clear air, long flat straight.
copyright Brian Miller
This suped-up Mitsubishi gave us trouble.
Forcing us to race many miles.
I don’t know our speed but tachometer shows 6300rpm.
Pass the Georgia border with no incident.
Merely good natured law breaking.
Peach trees are damn nice things.
With those giant tight and pliable tires,
one can feel the stripes painted on the road center.
With the all wheel drive and anti lock brakes
I determine that this car is uncrashable.
In most conditions.
The bugs were really slowing us down, the speedometer says only 140mph. This car can go 180mph. Soon we were traveling 155mph. Incidentally, the breath-taking part of going 155mph is not that the rear bumpers of cars are coming toward at100mph, or the time it takes to get that fast. Going from 140mph to 155mph doesn’t really take long. However accelerating to that speed does cover a great deal of ground.