Hello, I go by five five, although people who know me call me fiver. I've posted regularly on the Two Lane Blacktop site for years, and was an original floater over on Duck's site (Duckus Crapus, a cool place to hang). I'd like to say that I appreciate the rules being put in straight language and so that you know exactly what to do and not do. Very cool, makes posting here and talking about cars pretty up-front, I'm betting. I always build my own cars, 100%. I do not think I know it all, and I've been called on stuff many times by guys who've done it more or longer than me. You think you know your stuff when you graduate from training only to get out to the fleet and find out you don't know anything at all. Like that. Right now I'm still having withdrawals from the shutdown of our two best local tracks, Lion's and OCIR. Since it has been 36 years for the one and heading towards the third decade since for the other, it's a fair guess that I'm probably never going to get over it. I genuinely believe that our hot rod and hands-on culture is one of the greatest treasures our nation has, even while we are often ignored or insulted or even belittled by others, like the V-12 BMW moron I just pasted tonight in my Elco. Taught him a real lesson about the difference between a tool box and a payment book. To me the burger joint is where you go to arrange the dough for the race, not where you have a styrofoam cup of coffee and stand around admiring silent machines. I'm a veteran of rubber-coated hot dogs. That's what would happen at Lion's if you stood by the line when a fast rail or /FX'er or Funny would leave. They had these little pink onions, and when the cars would blast outta the hole the rubber would be all over your 'dog, making it black and pink. If it was a fuel car you could feel your eardrums continue to move even after your ears quit hearing. Ahh, Goodyear Blue Streak Hot Dog Specials. The thing I'm proudest of in hot rodding is that I made the absolute last-ever pass down the Lion's quarter mile. It was a high ten-second run in light drizzle, with an open-header tunnel-rammed LS-7 making the goodbye speech, complete with a 3-pedal performance. five five