Since last year sometime, a friend of my girlfriend’s family, Brent, has invited me to watch him drag race outside of Dresden, Tennessee. I’ve really wanted to go for awhile now, as I’ve always enjoyed motor-sports of all kinds. I’m not much of a gear-head, but I have always watched racing live and on television, ever since I was a young chap. So, this weekend when I had some free time and found out that they would be racing, my girlfriend’s brother, Andrew, and I went down to check it out at what they call “The Playground of Power”.

Arriving, I was a bit thrown off at how open everything was. Basically, we could just stroll down through the pit area where drivers were getting their cars ready to race. When we first got there, we didn’t know where Brent was so Andrew and I basically wandered around, staring in awe at some of the cars we saw. Every muscle car that you can think of, we saw some form of it there in the pits. While most were heavily modified with lighter bodies and huge engines, there were a few that were basically restored muscle cars without a lot of modification, which looked great.

After a bit of walking, we found Brent:

When we found him, he was preparing for time trials. Not only preparing his car, but his son’s also. Even at a relatively young age (way before they can get a driver’s license), there are kids there racing in these cars with engines that are basically overhauled lawnmower engines. Some of these small cars hit speeds close to 90 mph, which was impressive given the size.

Although I enjoyed myself, I spent most of the night trying to figure out exactly how their races worked, especially since I am relatively new to drag racing. Eventually I understood it. In their system, you guess what you can run your 1/8th mile in. Whoever is closest to that time wins. Unfortunately on this night, it was just not meant to be for Brent as he went down in the third round. He ran really well, but unfortunately he guessed the wrong time and was off his 1/8th mile time by .02 seconds, while the guy he was racing was spot on his guessed time.

Now I just hope this school semester ends quickly so that I can get back down to “The Playground of Power” again.

P.S. I apologize for the picture quality. Once again I forgot my camera and had to rely on the iPhone’s built in camera for these pictures. Although they aren’t terrible, they could have been much better.