"Hot dog, 16-ounce beer, and a bag of Cracker Jack? Okay!"

"And that's how much? $12.00!? Oh, ho ho, you devil you. I take it the contraband is in the hot dog wrapper, right?

"You don't know what I'm talking about?"

However, you guys, meaning the readers, do. When we overthrow the current drag racing superstructure, the first beheading will be those gougers who run the concessions.

Imagine the future.

"Let's see ... four beers, four hot dogs, two nachos, three bags of cracker jacks, three cokes ... annnnd that comes to $751.26. Hit the hip, amigo."

Anyway, you will read elsewhere in DRO the highlights of the test runs and there were many. Obviously, Team Force can run 4.70s in Siberia, Robert Hight is a definite asset to the team, and Whit Bazemore, Ron Capps, Gary Scelzi, Tommy Johnson Jr., the Worshams, are hardly what you would call far behind. Top Fuelers stayed away with the only headliner-type name being Joe Amato's rig with Morgan Lucas reading the dash, and that did take a bit of the edge off.

The hero of the show? Well, Hight certainly has to figure in it, but I'm going to scope in on Steph Papadakis and the AEM Honda Civic, a seemingly puny six-cylinder rocket that with the aid of two toadstool-sized turbochargers (a bit of an exaggeration) shot to e.t.s of 6.52, 6.55, and 6.61. I have not paid attention to these atomic imports, but that's going to change. The AEM car looks like a Pro Stocker, just a little more stock than pro, and runs e.t.s that momentarily make you question your sanity. Did I really see 6.52, 215.88 on the scoreboards?

If you're familiar with the doings at Firebird or, as in this case, Las Vegas, there's lots of scuttlebutt going on other than what appears on the scoreboards.

Fer instance ... at some point, Hot Rod Magazine is going to run a feature on a very deserving Ashley Force, John's Indy Alcohol Dragster-winning daughter. The article has a saucy (no, not that saucy) looking spread that capitalizes on Ashley's attractive young adult looks, and knowing the family-oriented Force, this has gotta rev his engine a tad. I'm the uncle of four girls and there isn't a bark on the block. I'm like any other somewhat experienced male involved in this sport, when one of your daughters has IT, you tend to get a little protective. As if Force needed any more pressure…

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Two fuel companies were reported to me as being very competitive at the Vegas confab. Well, maybe so and maybe not, but when Burk, Darr and I left the track, all three of us saw two separate columns of black smoke rise from the pits. Baghdad, Nevada?

Some yak-yak about photographers who bird-dog their fellow shutter clickers. Photojournalist A gets an assignment to shoot a car feature, and sets up the locale, and goes through all the rigamarole. The appointed time is arrived at and he begins the various jobs of how to set up the lighting, position of the car and driver, etc., and the filling out of tech forms that detail for the reader what's in the ride. ALL OF A SUDDEN, Photojournalist B shows up and skirts the edge taking pictures that may or not be used in a photo feature that will serve his interests. In TWO words, "Bad form." Two more, "cease" and "desist." Talk about a rep-killer.

We ran into a pro golfer named Jay Don Blake, who has raced at tracks in his home state of Utah, and he was perfectly cool. Good guy. It occurred to us that here would be a good guy from another pro sport whose participation might tie in well with any outreach projects for drag racing. From what we heard, the powers-that-be gave that a "Naw, we'll pass." Man oh man, another glimmering example of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing ...