Word: truck
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...padded helmet encases my head, and four thick safety belts intersect in a bulbous metal codpiece. As my two-ton Chevy Silverado truck edges toward the starting line, all I can feel is the plastic barf bag stuffed in the pocket of my flame-resistant jumpsuit. Behind the wheel sits Walker Evans, 36, a general contractor from Riverside, Calif, who has won 14 of his past 17 off-road races. As the green flag rises, the final spectator salute of uplifted cups of Coors reminds me of a well-wisher's warning: "Walker won't stop...
...desert mountains glow golden in the morning sun. But soon the drive will become a spastic, three-hour Cinerama focused on 100 miles of lifeless mesquite moonscape-beginning in Laughlin and running across sand washes, over mountains, around canyons and back. "Howdy doody!" Evans yells, skipping the yellow truck over a 5-ft. ravine. "I can't stay away. Racing off-road is like narcotics to a dope addict...
Flood Ravines. The nearly 10,000 spectators are a largely blue-collar crowd from small Southwestern towns. Dressed in DIESEL POWER T shirts and Peterbilt trailer-truck caps, they revel in the dust and noise. For some, off-road racing is an egalitarian country gathering. "My husband is a mechanic and I'm just a small-town housewife," says Loretta Pipkin from El Centre, Calif. "But out here everyone is equal...
...truck picks up speed to 115 m.p.h. along a telephone service road. The pitted road seems almost smooth at this speed. Evans knows the route well. After six "pre-runs," he is ready for the angle of every curve. With $60,000 invested in a single-seat Blazer and the two-seat truck, Evans and his partner, Parnelli Jones, onetime Indianapolis 500 winner, cannot afford mistakes. "A race is like a razor in a barbershop," shouts Evans above the wind. "It'll cut your throat in a minute, but you always keep honing...
...cities become greater, too, in Virginia, and it's possible to engage in elaborate highway strategy aimed at avoiding speeding tickets. A friend of mine subscribes to the Radar Screen theory, which says that police radar machines can't detect a smallish car if it's near a big truck. My friend finds trucks that are going fast, and follows them close begind for hundreds of miles. There are disadvantages to this close behind a truck, you get spewed by exhaust and can't see the road ahead, and for me it's too much of a price...