Street Racing.

I could hear and feel the excitement in that race. I will tell you a little secret though; if you had found Leo and raced him you would have lost. He had an advantage no one new about. First was the little red button that stuck out of the left handle bar near his hand, it was about the size of a match head, I don’t think anybody ever notice it. (He had one on his drag bike too; he worked that one differently than the one on the street.) It was a kill button for shifting. The other was the fuel tank, he had separated it some how and had 10 % nitro in one side, he could shift it just before the race and you never knew it. You never seen him ride the bike very much before the race because it was set up for fuel, one side was sometimes Alky, the other side was the mix. This was on the street race bike that had the large Sportster tank, the one he took out to ride just to make money, I never seen it but he told me about it and showed me some pictures, said he usually trailer it to where the racing was.
Ah, Danny. One year at the Super Nationals in Ontario CA. during qualifying our old friend Danny was also there and every time I went to the rollers to fire Danny was in the other lane. I use to like the right side of the track, no matter where I was and the first race I was on the right side, we fired and staged, got the tree and I won, the next round, there was Danny, him left side me right side, fired, staged, got the tree and I won. The side of the track Danny kept getting was the side with less traction at Ontario. You know how Danny was a little hot headed and always let you know how he felt. He came over to where I was pitted and tells me he wants the right side next time, I told him, so do I and if we come up together the next time we would flip a coin, that or stay out of my race. Well, sure enough we were going to race one another again, we flipped a coin and he lost so I took the right side. When we fired Danny right away moves forward and takes the right side, there was nothing I could do but take the left. Some of the guys in the pits knew what was going on and there was a pretty big crowd of racers behind us watching. Big burn out this time, staged, got the tree and I won again, when I got back to the pits, Danny was lying in the grass on his back, I walk up to him and he says “just get away from me”. I really liked Danny but we seem to always be at a distant from each other, I think there was just too much “racer” in our blood. We always talked but you could feel something in the air around us. Bless Danny; he always made my day at the races exciting.