Stu Jenks: Fezziwig Photography, Music, and Writing

"Nitro-Menthane Fuel-Altered at SIR" (c) 2007

"Nitro-Methane Fuel-Altered at the Southwestern International Raceway" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

     Cathy's been here for about 20 minutes. I just got here. We both walked in looking like we simply belonged. Wish we had credentials though. I should have stopped and gotten us crew passes at the front gate, when we arrived at the strip tonight. (Five minutes later, we get kicked out for not having proper papers.)

     Cathy's seem very excited. Watching her from the stands, a few minutes ago, she looked calm as can be, just a professional photographer doing her job. But now, close up, you can tell her blood is really pumping. Hmm. It is pretty cool to be this close to the action, I guess.

     The next Nitro Methane Fuel Altered dragster comes to the line. An all black race car. He does his burnout. It shakes my body. Holy smokes! I'm standing a good number of feet away from a waist-high concrete barrier. I'm maybe twenty, thirty feet from the dragster. Oh my.

     Cathy and I position ourselves for the launch, leaning against the barrier. A safety man tells us we can't lean on the concrete. We take a couple steps back from the barrier. Cathy and I focus in with our long lens, waiting for the black monster to come off the line. I have my camera set at 1600 ASA, F/5.6, auto shutter speed, fast shutter drive, no flash. I find the shot. I pull my elbows in. I steady myself. I wait.

     The tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck of the black Fuel Altered car changes to a very high hum, signaling the launch is eminent. Then a sound occurs, like hundreds of thousands of very loud bees, extremely loud, angry Africanized bees. I push the shutter and hold it down. Pow, pow, pow goes the shutter. I try and pan with the car, but something happens. Being only about ten feet away now as the dragster speeds by, I begin to vibrate. First I feel the hair on my arms vibrate, then my chest, then my entire body, then I get hit by the jet-blast of the exhaust from the engine. I involuntarily back away from the explosions, the noise, the vibrations. I think I jumped a bit too, finger still on the shutter. I look down the track. 5 seconds later, the Nitro Methane behemoth crosses the finish line. Under 7 seconds, over 200 miles an hour. The crowd cheers.

     I look toward Cathy. Our eyes meet. I walk slowly up to her, lean over and haltingly say into her ear-plugged left ear.

     "Holy Fucking Shit!!!"

     Cathy smiles.

     "I'm so happy you were able to experience that," she says.

     It feels like my aura has just been blown west, into the next county.

     [Postscript: My heart didn't stop racing for thirty minutes. After we got booted, Cathy went to see if we could get credentials but they had already closed the office. Next time. I stood in line to get a couple of sodas for us while Cathy was away. It was a long line. I didn't care. I was still waiting for my aura to make its way back from Yuma County.]

     [PS #2: Top two photos by Stu Jenks. Third photo by Cathy Spann]

"Howard Gerstel and his 1975 Ford Pinto" (c) 2007

"Howard Gerstel and his 1975 Ford Pinto" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

     Howard is the Buddha of mechanics. Actually sometimes places his hands on a car when he is stumped, which isn't very often. He's been working on my Nissan Pathfinder for years, out of Micro Imports. Mic owns the shop. Dan and Nathan run the front desk. Susan orders the parts. Seth works on cars there as well.

     Mic got me free tickets to the Fuel Altered Nationals last Saturday (Read the "Nitro-Methane, Fuel-Altered" post). Besides the Nitros, the Fuel Altered and the other big rails, Super Pros, Pro Stocks, Box and No-Boxes, and a motorcycle or two also raced that night. Howard was simply amazing to watch, a 'killer' as Dan said. Made it all the way to the finals of the Box Racing Class. Red-lighted by .001 of a second at the launch in the finals and came in second. Fourth second-place finish for Howard. No wins yet and he really hungers for a win. But he is still a wonderful man in defeat, if you can call it that, as is his wife and crew chief Donna and his boy Joe, who are also very intimately involved in the racing.

     When the announcer said before Howard's semi-final run, 'That's Howard Gerstel and the Gerstel Racing Family from Sahuarita, Arizona', it made me smile. Donna philosophically said, after the final race that Howard lost, 'That's just racing' but you could see the disappointment in her and Howard's eyes.

     Second biggest highlight of the evening, after watching Howard's amazing semi-final run in which he clocked 9.602 with his break time of 9.60, was watching Howard's wife, Donna, meditate after the first run of the evening, on what Howard's new breakout time should be. For the first run she chose 9.62 seconds. She paused, thought, paused again, thought a little more and then wrote '9.60' on the windshield. Howard smiled and crooked his head a bit, as if to say, 'OK, honey, I hope the track is that fast.' With a 9.602 in the semis, it obviously was. And so was Howard. By the way, that's 139.67 miles per hour at the 1/4 mile.

     Howard races a 1975 Ford Pinto with a 434 cubic inch small block, that runs on alcohol fuel, grape-flavored alcohol as a matter of fact. Seems they have to put in an additive to keep the alcohol cooler, and while they're at it, they put in fruit flavoring. Grape and Strawberry are available. Howard runs Grape. I'll remember for a long time, Howard starting up his Pinto, car number 746M, backing it out of his pit, driving toward the staging area, and I'm standing there, watching him pull away, smelling the strong intoxicate of Racing Alcohol & Grape Kool-Aid.

[Top & bottom photos, of the portrait of Howard, & of his final run by Stu Jenks; the middle photo of the Gerstel Racing Team during a burnout by Cathy Spann]