Well, I was back home in Hopewell (damn, I need to change my location bad - that's NJ for those who don't know) turning wrenches on my firebird, working on swapping the 3.23 for a 3.73 when I hear the oh-so-familiar sound of a rice-burner.

I hear a couple of down-shifts, and then the car comes to a stop - I grab my 40mm box-end, just in case this person wants trouble, and turn around to see a kid, maybe a couple years younger than me, getting out. We start with the regular chit-chat, and he then asks what kind of car that is, pointing at the firebird. I laugh a little (damn... I don't think I'm that old that kids wouldn't know about cars roughly as old as I am) and then tell him it's a 3rd gen firebird.

At that point in time, he blurts out "I'll smoke you." I tried to hold back from laughing, and asked him to repeat himself. This time, he didn't hint at it or nothing - challenged me to a race. I told him that I'm working on a rebuild and other work, and right now he'd beat that simply because it has no means of getting going (hell, I have no diff, trans is apart, and I'm swapping on built iron heads). But, I gave him a timeslip - 14.10 - and told him to go to the track, run his car, and if he can even come within a half-second of that time or beat that light (a pretty bad one by my standards, 0.084), I'll give him a run.

Sure enough, after a week went by (Friday) he came driving on up ... "Damn, that car must be fast! I could only get a 17.30" and hands me a timeslip with a r/t of a 0.233.

Now next week at Etown (Sport Compact Fall Nat'l) I'm gonna start teaching him all the in-and-outs of bracket racing, how to cut a good light, adjusting pressures and staging and dial based on conditions, avoiding the break-out, what to do when the opponent breaks out, etc. Who knows, he might turn into a regular 3rd rounder pretty soon.