HeadRUSH

Ever won­der how Neil Peart got the idea for his songs?

http://​www​.bmwbmw​.org/​f​o​r​u​m​s​/​v​i​e​w​t​o​p​i​c​.​p​h​p​?​f​=​2​2​&​a​m​p​;​t​=​8​6​9​3​&​a​m​p​;​h​i​l​i​t​=​d​r​u​m​mer

[Fic­tion piece from Road & Track — Novem­ber 1973, pp.148 – 150]

It was a fine morn­ing in March 1982. The warm weather and clear sky gave promise of an early spring. Buzz had arisen early that morn­ing, impa­tiently eaten break­fast and gone to the garage. Open­ing the door, he saw the sun­shine bounce off the gleam­ing hood of his 15-year-old MGB road­ster. After care­fully check­ing the fluid lev­els, tire pres­sures and igni­tion wires, Buzz slid behind the wheel and cranked the engine, which imme­di­ately fired to life. He thought hap­pily of the next few hours he would spend with the car, but his hap­pi­ness was clouded — it was not as easy as it used to be.

A dozen years ago things had begun chang­ing. First there were a few mod­est safety and emis­sion improve­ments required on new cars; grad­u­ally these became more com­pre­hen­sive. The gov­ern­men­tal require­ments reached an ade­quate level, but they didn’t stop; they con­tin­ued and became more and more strin­gent. Now there were very few of the older mod­els left, through nat­ural dete­ri­o­ra­tion and … other reasons.

The MG was warmed up now and Buzz left the garage, hop­ing that this early in the morn­ing there would be no trou­ble. He kept an eye on the instru­ments as he made his way down into the val­ley. The val­ley roads were no longer used very much: the small farms were all owned by doc­tors and the roads were some­what nar­row for the MSVs (Mod­ern Safety Vehicles).

The safety cru­sade had been well done at first. The few hare­brained schemes were quickly ruled out and a sense of ratio­nal­ity devel­oped. But in the late Sev­en­ties, with no major wars, can­cer cured and social wel­fare straight­ened out, the politi­cians needed a new cause and once again they turned toward the auto­mo­bile. The reg­u­la­tions con­cern­ing safety became tougher. Cars became larger, heav­ier, less effi­cient. They con­sumed gaso­line so vora­ciously that the United States had had to become a major ally with the Ara­bian coun­tries. The new cars were hard to stop or maneu­ver quickly, but they would save your life (usu­ally) in a 50-mph crash. With 200 mil­lion cars on the road, how­ever, few peo­ple ever drove that fast anymore.

Buzz zipped quickly to the val­ley floor, dodg­ing the fre­quent pot­holes which had devel­oped from neglect of the seldom-used roads. The engine sounded spot-on and the entire car had a tight, good feel­ing about it. He nego­ti­ated sev­eral quick S-curves and reached 6000 in third gear before back­ing off for the next turn. He didn’t worry about the police down here. No, not the cops …

Despite the extent of the safety pro­gram, it was essen­tially a good idea. But unfore­seen com­pli­ca­tions had arisen. Peo­ple became accus­tomed to cars which went undam­aged in 10-mph col­li­sions. They gave even less thought than before to the pos­si­bil­ity of being injured in a crash. As a result, they tended to worry less about clear­ances and rights-of-way, so that the acci­dent rate went up a steady six per­cent every year. But the dam­ages and injuries actu­ally decreased, so the gov­ern­ment was happy, the insur­ance indus­try was happy and most of the car own­ers were happy. Most of the car own­ers — the own­ers of the non-MSV cars — were kept busy dodg­ing the less care­ful MSV dri­vers, and the result of this mis­match left very few of the older cars in exis­tence. If they weren’t crushed between two 6000-pound sleds on the high­way they were qui­etly priced into the junk­yard by the insur­ance ped­dlers. And worst of all, they became targets …

Buzz was well into his act now, speed­ing through the twist­ing val­ley roads with all the skill he could muster, to the extent that he had for­got­ten his ear­lier wor­ries. Where the road was unbro­ken he would power around the turns in well con­trolled over­steer, and where the sec­tions were pot­holed he saw them as devi­ous chi­canes to be mas­tered. He left the ground briefly going over one of the old wooden bridges and later ascer­tained that the MG would still hit 110 on the long stretch between the old Han­lin and Grove farms. He was just begin­ning to wind down when he saw it, there in his mir­ror, a late-model MSV with hand-painted designs cov­er­ing most of its body (one of the few mod­i­fi­ca­tions allowed on post-1980 cars). Buzz hoped it was a tourist or a way­ward dri­ver who got lost look­ing for a gas sta­tion. But now the MSV dri­ver had spot­ted the MG, and with a whoosh of a well muf­fled, well cleansed exhaust he started the chase …

It hadn’t taken long for the less respon­si­ble ele­ment among dri­vers to dis­cover that their new MSVs could inflict great dam­age on an older car and go unscathed them­selves. As a result some dri­vers would go look­ing for the older cars in secluded areas, bounce them off the road or into a bridge abut­ment, and then speed off undam­aged, relieved of what­ever frus­tra­tions cause this kind of behav­ior. Police sel­dom patrolled these out-of-the-way places, their atten­tions being required more urgently else­where, and so it became a great sport for some drivers.

Buzz wasn’t too wor­ried yet. This had hap­pened a few times before, and unless the MSV dri­ver was an excep­tion­ally good one, the MG could be called upon to elude the other dri­ver with­out too much dif­fi­culty. Yet some­thing both­ered him about this gaudy MSV in his mir­ror, but what was it? Plan­ning care­fully, Buzz let the other dri­ver catch up to within a dozen yards or so, and then sud­denly shot off down a road to the right. The MSV dri­ver stood on his brakes, skid­ding 400 feet down the road, made a lum­ber­ing U-turn and set off once again after the road­ster. The MG had gained a quar­ter mile in this man­ner and Buzz was thank­ful for the radial tires and front and rear anti-roll bars he had put on the car a few years back. He was fly­ing along the twist­ing road, down­shift­ing, cor­ner­ing, accel­er­at­ing and all the while plan­ning his route ahead. He was con­fi­dent that if he couldn’t out­run the MSV then he could at least hold it off for another hour or more, at which time the MSV would be quite low on gas. But what was it that kept both­er­ing him about the other car?

The Author with Neil Peart

They reached a straight sec­tion of the road and Buzz opened it up all the way and held it. The MSV was quite a way back but not so far that Buzz couldn’t dis­tin­guish the tall antenna stand­ing up from the back bumper. Antenna! Not police, but per­haps a Citizen’s Band radio in the MSV? He quaked slightly and hoped it was not. The straight stretch was com­ing to an end now and Buzz put off brak­ing to the last frac­tion of a sec­ond and then sped through a 75-mph right-hander, gain­ing ten more yards on the MSV. But less than a quar­ter mile ahead another huge MSV was slowly pulling across the road and to a stop. It was a CB set. The other dri­ver had a cohort in the chase. Now Buzz was in trou­ble. He stayed on the gas until within a few hun­dred feet when he banked hard and feinted pass­ing to the left. The MSV crawled in that direc­tion and Buzz slipped by on the right, bounc­ing heav­ily over a stone on the shoul­der. The two MSVs set off in hot pur­suit, almost col­lid­ing in the process. Buzz turned right at the first cross­road and then made a quick left, hop­ing to be out of sight of his pur­suers, and in fact he trav­eled sev­eral min­utes before spot­ting one of them on the main road par­al­lel to his lane. At the same time the other appeared in the mir­ror from around the last comer. By now they were begin­ning to climb the hills on the far side of the val­ley and Buzz pressed on for all he was worth, pray­ing that the strain­ing engine would stand up. He lost track of one MSV when the main road turned away, but could see the other one behind him on occa­sion. Climb­ing the old Mon­u­ment Road, Buzz hoped to have time to get over the top and down the old dirt road to the right, which would be too nar­row for his pur­suers. Climb­ing, strain­ing, the water tem­per­a­ture ris­ing, using the entire road, flail­ing the shift lever back and forth from 3^rd to 4^th, not touch­ing the brakes but scrub­bing off the nec­es­sary speed in the cor­ners, reach­ing the peak of the moun­tain where the lane to the old fire tower went off to the left … but com­ing up the other side of the hill was the sec­ond MSV he had lost track of! No time to get to his dirt road. He made a pan­icked turn left onto the fire tower road but spun on some loose gravel and struck a tree a glanc­ing blow with his right fender. He came to a stop on the oppo­site side of the road. the engine stalled. Hur­riedly he pushed the starter while the over­heated engine slowly came back into life. He engaged 1^st gear and sped off up the road, just as the first MSV turned the cor­ner. Dazed though he was, Buzz had the advan­tage of a very nar­row road lined on both sides with trees, and he made the most of it. The road twisted con­stantly and he stayed in 2^nd with the engine between 5000 and 5500. The crash hadn’t seemed to hurt any­thing and he was pulling away from the MSV. But to where? It hit him sud­denly that the road dead-ended at the fire tower, no place to go but back …

Still he pushed on and at the top of the hill drove quickly to the far end of the clear­ing, turned the MG around and waited. The first MSV came fly­ing into the clear­ing and aimed itself at the sit­ting MG. Buzz grabbed reverse gear, backed up slightly to feint, stopped, and then backed up at full speed. The MSV, expect­ing the MG to change direc­tion, veered the wrong way and slid to a stop up against a tree. Buzz was off again, down the fire tower road, and the undam­aged MSV set off in pur­suit. Buzz’s predica­ment was unen­vi­able. He was going full tilt down the twist­ing black­top with a solid MSV com­ing up at him. and an equally solid MSV com­ing down after him. On he went, how­ever, brak­ing hard before each turn and then accel­er­at­ing back up to 45 in between. Com­ing down to a par­tic­u­larly tight turn, he saw the MSV com­ing around it from the other direc­tion and stood on the brakes. The sud­den extreme pres­sure in the brake lines was too much for the rear brake line which had been twisted some­what in his spin, and it broke, rob­bing Buzz of his brakes. In sheer des­per­a­tion he pulled the hand­brake as tightly as it would go and rammed the gear lever into 1^st, pop­ping the clutch as he did so. The back end locked solid and broke away, spin­ning him off the side of the road and mirac­u­lously into some bushes, which brought the car to a halt. As he was col­lect­ing his senses, Buzz saw the two MSVs, unable to stop in time, ram each other head on at over 40 mph.

It was a long time before Buzz had the MG rebuilt to its orig­i­nal pris­tine con­di­tion of before the chase. It was an even longer time before he went back into the val­ley for a drive. Now it was only in the very early hours of the day when most peo­ple were still sleep­ing off the effects of the good life. And when he saw in the papers that the gov­ern­ment would soon be requir­ing cars to be capa­ble of with­stand­ing 75-mph headon col­li­sions, he stopped dri­ving the MG altogether.

Arti­cle writ­ten by Richard Foster.