Long Beach

Ariel View

   It had been a long cold winter in Chicago. Made longer by the deep cold weekends. Negative 26 one Friday night. Walked past the intricately carved oak of my friend's Sliders & Lager bar toward the phone in the back. The laughter and loud voiced conversations just a muffled roar echoing down the track-lit art poster lined hall when I reach for the phone and called the familiar number in Honolulu.
   By way of hello I asked into the unusually clear connection, "What's the temperature there?"
   The reply was delivered by amused feminine sarcasm, "Why it's seventy five right now."
   "Well, with wind chill it's a hundred and twenty degrees colder where I am."
   "Well you must be in hell…or Chicago."
   Hell was given the somber vocal tone required, Chicago was said with the brightness that carried a local's smile across the Pacific, the great southwest and right up north here to Schuba's bar at two am on a Friday night, oh right, Saturday morning.
   The amused memory made the softly embracing spring morning in Southern California all that much more comfortable.    It wasn't a silent sea side morning, with palm fronds shushing humanity amidst the quiet of granular sand under foot and whispering surf. No this was the low angled light of blue morning shadows between the buildings of Long Beach, roaring with the sequential Doppler effect sound of near-on six hundred horsepower coming at you, then away, then again, and again, as Villeneuve, Patrese, and Andretti look for purchase and pace on the confines of this mid town circuit of fenced concrete.
   Standing here behind the pits, at the end of Ocean Avenue took me back a few years to the first race attended here. I was standing right at this spot. It was 1977. I had just watched Niki Lauda come through this corner in his 312 T2 Ferrari. It was like watching science. He came down Ocean avenue at full chat, down shifted once, twice, a third time to get on cam.       Then I watched him diagram the apex of that corner with drafting table precision. The perfection of his simplicity of motion and the 312's terminal velocity was art. Then I turned and here came Jody Scheckter in the black Wolf Ford. Here was a car that had only a passing relationship between chassis and suspension, the engine's torque merely adding imbalance. Scheckter fought this wallowing, sliding, drifting vaudeville act through the corner. But he did it damn fast.
   As I was laughing to myself about all of this, and in comparison, my eye had caught a flash of light peripherally up the building on the far side of this ninety degree corner. It was a rather run down art deco apartment building of about 16 stories. Probably vertical low income housing then. What had attracted my eyes was a window going up on about the sixth floor. The window lifter was a guy of about fifty with a face that looked like a thousand miles of road traveled hard. The look on that face was one of complete horror at the intensity of sound that Lauda and Scheckter had hammered into his hang over. He looked like his hair was on fire as he leaned far out of that window to find the face of his audio torment. Realizing the state of things in his neighborhood during pre-race practice, he vanished into the shadows of his apartment. He was back with surprising speed. His motion implied he had pulled up a chair. He lifted an amber glass and drank deeply in a medicinal manner. That one finished, he reached down and poured freely from a bottle of Canadian Club, and topped it off with some Seven Up. After a little Seven and Seven therapy as Andretti in his Lotus, Laffite in the mystical sounding Matra and James Hunt in the McLaren roared by, he was up and toasting John Watson in the Brabham Alfa and Reutermann in his Ferrari through the corner below his superb seat for the Grand Prix.
    "What? Are you day dreaming?"
    Mark's voice had brought me back to 1981, same corner, same sounds, just the players had changed and the cars turbo charged.
   "I was. Bet the old man doesn't live there any more." The building was now completely renovated. Upscale.
   "The old man?"
   "Nothing, thoughts of mornings past."
   "Yeah, 'nother one of our long nights." Mark said sarcastically, looking at me quizzically through his thick black framed glasses. "Say, what do you say we use the Indy Corner grandstand tickets for the start. Should be a lot of action through there and the hair pin in the first laps."
   "Sounds good."
   We were already walking down the hill from the now named Cook's Corner.
   When I had flown out from Chicago a week or so earlier Mark and I had gotten together. I had spent the first few days riding my old Laverda SFII over the tight twisting two lane coastal roads of western Marin. Then flown out to Mark's in Modesto. He and the Cruz family, late of Newport Beach, now sat atop the Wendys empire of Central California. Don't remember how many Mark had built as director of, well, VP, of construction, but there were at least a half dozen. While sitting on his wooded deck over the Modesto River below, we had decided to come down for the GP. Mark, as standing member of the business community, had solid relationships with all the movers and shakers, a couple of whom were major car dealers in the Modesto area. Seems one of them had offered him a couple of full access race passes, that included pits and hospitality as well as a half dozen different grandstand seats. So we had been circulating around the track for the qualifying yesterday, and expected to do the same today.
   The grandstand across from the Indy Corner was a good observation post for the opening laps; could see the start behind us in the distance, then the jostling field on descent from Ocean Ave, making the full turn through the broad expanse of    Indy, then tightening up for Le Gasomet hair pin, then onto the long dog-leg straight of Shoreline Drive.
After a few laps it was time for a beer. Then Mark and I decided we'd check out different vantages, and report back here to this grandstand in about 40 minutes.
   I started roaming kind of aimlessly down toward the raw earth of the infield. Looked like they were getting ready for the new hotel complex, but were just in the grading stage. With the roar of engines circling me at varying degrees of sound fading distance, I looked off down the hill and saw something I thought incredible. It was a sign: Helicopter rides. Beyond it I could see a Hughes two seat and Bell Jet Ranger. Think Apocalypse Now in civvies. Their rotors were spinning in that warming up mode. Didn't take me long to get down there.
   "How much?" I asked the pilot of the little Hughey, the sound of the rotors stirring the air behind engine noise.
   His reply sounded like a whisper amidst the mechanical cacophony.
   "Sounds good. How 'bout for the day?" I yelled into the deafening silence.
   His eyebrows went up. "I'll make you a rate. Climb in."
   It wasn't hard getting up and in; the doors had been removed.
   After he made certain my five point harness was tight, and I mean tight, he ran the engine and rotors up and we sprang into the air. We were above the track, the crowd, the cars in thirty seconds. We reached altitude at the beginning of the    Shoreline straight, and he, with the slightest ease of movement, banked the Hughey hard right, my side down, and took off above Shoreline. We were right over, and not far above, Villeneuve's Ferrari. I could read his bloody tach! We stayed right with him until the Ferrari out ran the Hughey and we had to pull up sharp to navigate the Queen's Corner and follow the action up Pine Avenue, just above, felt like between, the buildings to Ocean Avenue. All the time sideways, my side down. Either angled down, or hard over. We banked into another curve and followed a tight group of Alfa, Lotus, Tyrrell, up the straight and through the decent toward Indy and Le Gasomet, then hard over again for Shoreline.
   After another intense lap looking down into the cockpits, all action and speed, he casually pulled up for Queen's. We seemed to be taking a breather and I leaned over and yelled, "How many tours of Vietnam?"
   "Three." was the response with a knowing, and appreciative look.
   That was all we said for another twenty minutes of the most intense Grand Prix experience I had ever had, and was every likely to have. It was all an other worldly melding of mechanical intent and action between the high performance actions of cars and drivers, pilot and helicopter. Superb intensity.
During another breather I leaned over. "Can we set it down? I have to get my buddy. I can't keep this all to myself, gotta share…"
   He looked over, smiled and nodded.
   When we were on the ground, I said, "I'll just go and get him and we can go back up."
   "I'll get the Bell ready. By the time you get back I should have another couple ready to go up. Don't want you to pay the full freight for five seats."
   I jogged up to the grandstand across from Indy and Mark was just coming down.
   I grabbed his arm and started explaining as we jogged back.
   "No Shit?!"
   My new friend Jack, I believe his name was, had indeed gotten another couple to fill out the Bell's five seats. They were straight out of LA Magazine. She had the perfect 1980s big hair and gold lamay accents on her form fitting light fabric outfit. He was all fit and tanned and bespoke tailored resort ware. Jack smiled Buddha like behind them as I came up with Mark.
   "You guys ready?" He asked the two of us.
   Then turning to the LA Magazine couple, "Here let me help you up." he said offering his hand to the bejeweled fingers of LA Gal and helped her in.
   There were no doors on the Bell. The entire side of the aircraft was open. LA Gal settled into the middle seat in back, her husband on her right, me on her left. Mark was up front with Jack. After Jack once again made certain everyone was very securely fastened in, he looked over his shoulder at me and winked. I knew what was coming.
With experience and grace he lifted the Bell JR off the ground, took us to his chosen altitude, then rolled it hard to the right.    I was on the up side of LA Gal, her husband down below. At that second she hooked my arm with an absolute death grip as she looked passed her husband at the ground, which was now moving by at about 80 miles an hour or so. Her elbow would have been planted firmly in my ribs, but gravity had comfortably separated it by an inch or so, but the left side of her body, the upper side, from thigh to shoulder was firmly pressed against mine. LA Gal had some serious anti-gravity chops. After a couple of seconds she realized she wasn't going to plunge out the side of the Jet Ranger, following her husband down in free fall. I felt her relax with a intense sense of embarrassment as we leveled off to a slight angle. I gently took her hand and placed it on her lap. She shyly looked over at me, a single nod of gratitude said it all. I smiled back.
   The Bell was no less a performer. After a few laps, and the fifteen minutes of their hired flight time, Jack set us back down on the graded dirt of the infield.
   The LA couple did everything but kiss the ground, but the guy manned up well and she gracefully as they found their sea legs walking into the distance.
   The three of us smiled with a polite intensity so as not to laugh.
   "Back up Scott?" Jack asked sweeping his arm toward the Hughey.
   "Mark?"
   "I need a drink. That was an incredible experience. Man!"
   "That's saying something for Mark, he raced motorcycles in the seventies and runs a Super Modified now."
   "Thanks for that." Jack replied.
   We shook hands all around and smiled gratefully into the afternoon's lengthening shadows.
   Alan Jones and Carlos Reutermann brought Williams a one, two finish. Nelson Piquet came in third for Brabham. Was glad to see Mario bring the Alfa team a fourth, less than a third of a lap back. But to be honest, I barely remembered the podium on the drive back in Mark's Alpina prepared 5 series BMW. Seems all we talked about was reading Villeneuve's tach up Shoreline.

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