Speed Demons : The Terror and Euphoria of--Heaven Help Us--Learning to Drag Race

Bernie Longjohn teaches speed.

The kind that brings a sense of euphoria--and a sense that your nose is collapsing inside your face and will soon hang out the back of your head like some sort of aerodynamic tail fin.

His class is now in session.

The self-proclaimed Ph.D. of acceleration sidles to the front of a makeshift classroom and admonishes his pupils to pay attention. What he’s about to instruct us to do, he says, is thrilling, addictive and illegal on the streets of Los Angeles and is as good as sex.

It could also get us killed.

Longjohn is about to teach us to-- Lord help us --drag race.

That’s what he does for a living. He teaches ordinary people--housewives, doctors, hair stylists, plumbers, trash collectors--at least those willing to pay a $995 fee, the art of hurtling down a track in a gas-powered dragster with a 600-horsepower engine at speeds relatively few humans have ever experienced. On the ground, at least.

In two days, Longjohn says, students at California Drag Racing School at L.A. County Raceway in Palmdale can learn to burn through a quarter-mile in eight or nine seconds--at around 150 m.p.h.

“We get a lot of people here who have never been in a race car in their life,” says Longjohn, a 52-year-old grandfather who has piloted dragsters for 35 years. “We get guys who drive their BMWs to work every day at 60 m.p.h. who want the thrill of speed.

“Probably 30% of our students are women. A lot of them think there’s no way they can drive a car that fast after just two days. A quarter-mile in eight or nine seconds? But, if we had a third day, they would be wanting to run at 190 m.p.h. in six seconds. And with 200 more horsepower, they could do it, too.”

To fully appreciate such eye-blurring numbers, Longjohn offers this comparison: A typical family car--at full throttle--would require about 18 seconds to go a quarter-mile.

“A very fast street car goes from 0 to 60 in six seconds,” he adds. “The car we use for the school will accelerate to 60 in 1.2 seconds. That’s exciting. It’s not a dream, it’s reality.”

Some might categorize it as insanity. Like me, for example.

The totality of my drag racing experience up to this point comes from flooring it on freeway on-ramps. I admit to having felt a certain rush darting in front of a 20-ton Peterbuilt once. But smoking down an asphalt track in a pencil-shaped rocket, pulling three Gs, with my body lying practically flat and my head bouncing around inside a roll cage like a towel in a clothes dryer is not my reason for living.

In the first moments of class, Longjohn gives fellow students Alan Carey, a 41-year-old owner of a trucking company in Fallon, Nev., and Mike Poulin, 40, of Tacoma, Wash., and me, 35, (classes normally are limited to three) his speech on the exhilaration of drag racing. He then recounts in detail a handful of gruesome stories about amateur and professional drivers who failed to follow proper safety precautions and ended up maimed, dead or miraculously lucky.

None of us misses Longjohn’s pointed message: Follow instructions, don’t get goofy with the race car and then soar to speed’s glory.

At this juncture, I feel the need to soar to the men’s room. I am a little nervous and, in truth, feel like throwing up. Carey and Poulin are apprehensive, too. Longjohn must sense this because he quickly reassures us that, when done correctly, drag racing is safer than driving on L.A. freeways. “You’ve got a better chance of driving home from here today and being hit by some dummy than you do of being hurt out on the track,” he says. “I could never live with myself if I let you go down the race track in a car that will kill you.”

I remember, however, that Longjohn had me and the other students sign a waiver, in effect, agreeing that our families would not sue the school if we happen to die while participating.

“Aah, forget about it; this is a safe sport,” says Jimi Lee, a racer who teaches with Longjohn. “You’re strapped in with arm restraints, neck braces, a helmet, fire gear, everything.”

The worst injury suffered by anyone in the school’s two years of operation, Longjohn says, occurred when an excited student bumped her head getting out of the dragster after a quick run.

Thus emboldened, we suit up in our puffy, flame-resistant outfits and gloves and waddle over to the track, a mere 20 steps from the classroom’s door.

Poulin is first to settle into the cocoon-like cockpit of the long, white dragster. As Longjohn and Lee bolt him into the car with numerous straps and belts, they explain the rudiments of steering and shifting. The car features a power-glide transmission with two forward gears, neutral and reverse. The gearshift is between the driver’s legs. The parachute latch is on the left. Clearly, this thing is not a Honda Accord.

They tow the car down the asphalt straightaway, allowing Poulin to get the feel of the skinny bicycle tires in front, the fat-balloon slicks in back and surface of the track underneath. After arriving back at the starting line, the student is asked to go it alone--at his own pace.

Poulin fires up the engine--the very loud engine--and sputters on his way.

When he returns, Longjohn asks him how fast he thinks he was going.

“I’d say 50 or 60 m.p.h.,” Poulin answers.

“Nah, it was more like 20 or 25,” Longjohn says. “You could’ve been going through a school zone.”

The teacher looks at Carey and me and whispers, “When you’re in a strange vehicle with your butt only two or three inches off the ground, it really messes over your mind.”

As Poulin climbs out of the cockpit, unfortunately, it is now my turn to have my mind messed over.

I rev down the track in top form, forgetting only to shift out of first gear. Traveling at low speed, the combined feel and sound of the experience can be compared to driving a narrow, elongated bathtub on wheels down a runway with a 747 landing over your head.

Next, we begin practicing burn-outs--the pre-run warming of the rear tires that result in impressive amounts of smoke erupting all over creation--and starts. Each driver floors it for a few seconds and then coasts to the finish line, about 1,300 feet away.

Articulating this three-second burst of acceleration up to 90 m.p.h. is a complicated proposition. “If you haven’t done it,” says Carey, a licensed airplane pilot who moments earlier experienced the sensation for the first time, “you probably can’t understand it. It must be similar to a jet fighter shoving off an aircraft carrier.

“There’s so much adrenaline going and, like that, you’re gone.”

Someone suggests it’s like being pushed off a building from behind by the Terminator. Hasta la vista, baby. That’s pretty much the essence of the first seconds of drag racing.

We discover what the last few seconds are like the second day when we make full-speed quarter-mile passes.

The desert-bound L.A. County Raceway is cruelly sandwiched between Palmdale, a cement company and the San Andreas Fault. Picture a drag strip on the surface of the moon. A huge conveyor belt runs up and down one side of the speedway; stacks of large cement pipes, rocks, telephone poles and small stands of seats are on the other.

All of it becomes a beige blur at 150 m.p.h.

Crossing the finish line at that speed, your adrenal glands do the mambo while your brain screams for the parachute.

One of the keys to running full-bore through the quarter-mile, we discover, is having a relentless nerve to stomp on the accelerator. To adopt an aggressive Dirty Harry attitude from start to finish.

“Being shot back that quickly at the beginning and then keeping your foot all the way down on the floor is hard,” Carey says. “You instinctively want to let up.”

Nonetheless, Carey, with his wife, Mary Lou, videotaping his performance, doesn’t. He eventually completes the quarter-mile in 8.89 seconds, a mark even Longjohn seems impressed with. Poulin’s best time is 8.96 with a top speed of 149 m.p.h.

I rocketed through at 9.23 seconds. Still, Longjohn says it’s a decent clocking. “At sea level, 9.2 is the equivalent of 8.9, so don’t be too critical of yourself,” he offers.

Critical? I feel like Big Daddy Don Garlits, the godfather of drag racing himself, having scorched the surface of the Earth. Never mind that professional top-fuel racers cover the quarter-mile in five seconds.

At the end of the joyous second day, Longjohn, Lee, Carey, Poulin and I walk back to the classroom for what amounts to a poor man’s convocation. Longjohn hands out T-shirts displaying the school’s logo and diplomas, declaring that we are drag racing school graduates. We have qualified to apply for our National Hot Rod Assn. super-comp class licenses.

It is a stirring moment for me and my newfound brothers in speed.

“I don’t know about anyone else,” Carey says as the ceremony winds down, “but I feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of this. I’m going home completely satisfied.”

“Me too,” Poulin adds.

Surmises Longjohn: “Well, you all seemed to have fun and if you didn’t, you faked it well. I think you discovered the fun, the thrill of going fast. And the fun, the thrill of doing it safely.”

Then the Ph.D. of speed turns to me, the biggest moto-chicken in the group, and says, “You did 148 m.p.h. in nine seconds. That’s pretty damned good. And, best of all, you survived.”

Amen, brother, we soared to speed’s glory and survived.