Birth of the Blue Missile

Here is another chunck for those of you who may still be reading.
Andrew

Since a good portion of this story is about road trips I have to at least tell you of a way not to take a road trip. First its not in a mopar, secondly its in a VW beetle, thirdly its from Miami to Queens New York and back. And then don’t try to make it one way in one day. I made this trip with Larry in the fall of 74.It was an fun but uneventful trip, I all I remember is that we were well adjusted the entire way and had to stop just south of the Chesapeake bay and crash. We got up the very early the next morning in hopes of seeing a beautiful sunrise and had breakfast at a restaurant either on the bridge or at the southern end of the bridge. Because the fog was like pea soup we never got to see the sunrise over the bay.

After talking to Larry today he told me a small story of just how crazy Will the valet was. We didn’t discuss exactly when this occurred but we were all still hanging out at the condo.

Let me set this up first.
The condo had an underground parking garage with an entrance ramp at one end of the building and an exit ramp at the other end of the building. The building is about one hundred and twenty feet wide and fifty feet deep. The ramps extend about thirty of those feet to the other side in one incline from the street to the parking level. Facing the building the ramp on the left was the entrance and the one on the right was the exit.
Larry said that one day Will backed a Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham against the base of the entrance ramp facing the other end of the building. He power braked it and spun the tires until the entire parking garage was so full of smoke you could not see your hand in front of your face. Larry said the smoke was billowing out of both the entrance and exit ramps in huge quantities. He said after the event they all went down to survey the scene and found bits of molten rubber on the floor and the walls.
So do you still think its really worth a five dollar tip?

Back to the Duster:
The car now had enough miles on it to be considered broken in. This chick I was hanging with had some friends going to the University of Florida in Gainsville that she wanted to visit. One day while dashing around town she suggested the visit, and all those in the car said ‘ROAD TRIP!’, sounded good to me. There were four of us in the car; Francy, Brian the lead player from the band I was in and his girlfriend Lori, and myself. We left right then and there and headed up the turnpike. We got outside of the greater Miami area and joined up with a line of vehicles going north. This ‘convoy’ was traveling about eighty miles an hour. The trip would be about three hundred miles long.

The current thinking at that time was that, if a trooper saw us from the other side it would not look suspicious because we were all traveling together. You know there could not be that many people speeding all at once. Radar units were around but not that common yet. At that time the turnpike was relatively empty the further north you went. So after about a half an hour of this I decided to break from the pack and open the Duster up. About this time we saw a state trooper going south on the other side. After the last person in the convoy could no longer see him I got on the radio and told everyone I was leaving and headed up north. I got over in the passing lane, got to the front of the line and bid my farewell to all. I centered the car on the stripe and brought it up to one hundred and ten cruised there for a little while and then brought it to one fifteen. After only a few minutes the front end started to get a bit floaty on me and I backed it down to around one ten. During the course of this I did pass a couple of cars. One of which was a VW bug filled with chicks. They were probably going seventy and I was doing one hundred and ten. They did not take kindly to this. After about a half hour of this the oil pressure dropped a couple of pounds so I backed it down to around fifty five maybe sixty, until I could get to the rest stop just up the road to check things out (the current speed limit was 55). Oh yes, I had put a real oil pressure gauge under the dash but I never installed a tack.

Just about that time the Florida State Trooper (you know the one who was headed south) came over the hill in his tan and black Dodge Interceptor with his lights flashing. He was going so fast that when he came over the hill he left the ground momentarily. Obviously he had also been listening to the eleven-meter band when I decided to leave the group and open the Duster up, and he wanted a piece of me. He pulled along side of me did a rolling speed check and pulled me over. Let me try to convey a proper picture here. He caught up to me and ‘stuck’ along side of me so suddenly it was startling. I looked over at him in his tan Stetson, all the troopers wore them at that time, with a very stern look on his face he then hand signaled me over to the side of the road. You know he could have been chasing someone else; I was just doing the speed limit! ;-)

He stepped out of his car and asked for my license, registration and insurance. Keep in mind he only caught me doing roughly the speed limit. He asked me to step out of the car, and this was of concern because I had no shoes on. At that time in Florida you could get a ticket for driving without shoes, don’t ask me why. It was obvious that the occupants of my car were convinced all of us were going to jail, and they freely told me so before I got out of the car.

The trooper asked me if I had been speeding? I said “yes”. He said “like like how fast?” I was up to the consequences of getting caught say, doing eighty, so that’s what I told him. He said “Bullshit, I just chased you for a half an hour doing one hundred and forty five!” I had nothing to say, knowing he was only able to clock me maybe doing sixty. He said “Son let me tell you, I have a Charger with a 440 in it. My wife and I take it out on this road at three o’clock in the morning and do that kind of speed, but this is my road. You are not allowed to do that. Do you understand?” “YES SIR” I replied. He then said “Lets see what you have under the hood.” As we walked to the front of the car and I popped the hood the VW full of chicks passed us and yelled “Yaaaaa they caught him—they caught him!” as they passed. All I could do was bow my head. He looked at the 340 said it all looked great but wanted me to remember this encounter so he wrote me a warning for doing sixty! We went our separate ways, I to the rest stop a couple miles up the road and he to the south.
When I got back into the car the gang could not believe all I got was a warning! Of course as would be the case, we bumped into the chicks at the rest stop where I had to explain to them that all I got was a warning. Mopars rule!
By the way, the trip took about three and one half hours, even with the interruption and the rest stop. J
I will say that at this time the Duster was getting about twelve MPG in the city and eighteen to twenty MPG on the highway. On that trip it got a little less!!!
After we arrived at the University we partied for a couple of days we met lots of people, including a couple of guys trying to steal the M-50s off the back of the car. All I can say is thank God for the McGuards I had on at the time. Because we caught them in the middle of the act, when they ran off they also left the other lug nuts on the ground, which we were able to put back on. We went back home the next day.