When I lived and worked in St. Louis, my then-wife and I would drive down some weekends to visit her family in Memphis.
As far as I was concerned, the object of the game was to get there as fast as possible. Driving straight down I55, it was 273 miles from our driveway to her parent's.
Every time we made the trip, I would try to better my best time, which was 3 hours and 7 minutes. That's blistering fast, especially considering that traffic was pretty heavy leaving St. Louis on a Friday evening at rush hour and the years-long construction in West Memphis, AR.
You had to take every single opportunity to pass the car ahead in order to carve a few seconds here, a few more there. My dad a former stock car driver who taught me how to drive, coupled with high performance driving school and my tricked-out Dinan BMW 535, I was determined to make the trip in 3 hours flat.
It was a cold, dry evening--perfect conditions for any internal combustion engine--and we got out of the city quickly and made pretty good time through the heavily traveled segment of I55 through Jefferson County.
The terrain of the first 100 miles south of St. Louis is fairly wrinkled with frequent bends for an expressway, so I was cruising at a relatively sane 110 - 115 MPH; still, that's nearly 2 miles a minute.
Driving fast requires total concentration--no talking, music, or any distractions--and it was just me, the car, and the road in a Zen-like oneness. The last thing I would do is look over at another vehicle as I screamed past it.
It was pitch black that night, so I noticed right away in the rear-view mirror that there were headlights behind that seemed to be getting gradually closer. What kind of fool would be driving that fast, I thought to myself, noting the irony.
Passing a familiar landmark, a rock which looked like an alligator, I checked the time and was dead even with my best time, so I squeezed the accelerator down a bit, boosting my speed to about 125. At that speed in such topography, I necessarily had to apex the turns by going deep into the emergency lane part of the pavement to avoid upsetting the car's balance. Going twice the speed limit requires such maneuvers.
I checked my rear-view again and noticed those headlights were actually keeping up with me. Who the hell was that back there, anyway, Mario Andretti?
Two semis, driving evenly abreast, were up ahead, so I downshifted to engine-brake, hoping one would pass the other and get out of the way before I got to them, which happened, but I had to slow down to a snail-like 85 anyway before the tank truck got all the way over.
That gave the car tailing me time to catch up. It was very similar to mine, a black 1989 535i, and I wondered if it, too, was a 5-speed manual. I downshifted into 3rd, got over in the right lane, and mashed the go pedal to the floor, pushing the engine to redline before upshifting into 4th.
The other Bimmer pulled up right along side me in the passing lane. At the outrageous speeds we were going, I dared not take my eyes off the road to glance directly over at him, but I could see the car, as well as some movement within it, out of my peripheral vision.