The Fast Money
In Bikers' Grudge Races, Eight Seconds Can Take a Guy a Very Long Way

By Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 9, 2006

MECHANICSVILLE, Md.

Leave the Harley at home, Ed.

This is Saturday night motorcycle drag racing, where nothing matters but speed, sweet outrageous speed, G-forces that peel your eyelids back and push your retinas back against your skull, the smoke of burning rubber drifting over the empty grandstands at the Maryland International Raceway, bikes exploding from 0 to 190 mph in seven seconds, your feet four inches off the asphalt.

It's all about adrenaline, nature's narcotic. It's so thick down at the starting line, down there in the eardrum-scraping engine noise, you can inhale it right out of the smoke and feel it slide around the back of your brain.

But why stop there? Why, man? Why do one drug when you can mainline two? How about speed speed speed and cash cash cash?

Oh, yes, back there in the shadows of the trailers in the parking lot, where guys are working on their modified Suzuki Hayabusas, their Kawasaki Ninjas, hip-hop busting from a boom box, corn dogs with mustard and a cold can of Bud, bets are shaping up. The midnight races tonight are all "grudge matches," guys taking each other on for -- officially unknown to the track staff -- lots of scratch. Rumpled wads of $100 bills are pulled from front pockets of jeans, from jackets of racing leathers. The quarter-mile under nine seconds with six gear shifts, baby. It is to speed what pornography is to sex.

"The driver's cut is usually 10 to 20 percent of the bet," says Richard Gadson, his surname emblazoned across the back of his black riding leathers, standing beside a black Hayabusa with "Godzilla" stenciled on the side. "So if the bet is three grand, you get like $300, $600."

Let's see: $600 for eight seconds work. You think this isn't a skill? That works out to a billing rate of $270,000 per hour. Try that, Mr. K Street lawyer.

Gadson is from Philly. He's in the center of a knot of bikers, guys with arms folded across their chests, talking loud in the parking lot behind the race tower. It's 11:30 p.m. Gadson is 20 years old, maybe 5 feet 5, 135 pounds, a legend in the making. He's like a jockey -- he rides other people's bikes in one-on-one showdowns, one taking the inside lane, the other the outside. He's a hired gun, an "assassin," in the words of one bike owner, because "he takes everybody down." Most others call him Little Richie. The man reeks of star quality, the megawatt smile, the personality to burn. He's Richard Petty on two wheels.

He's down here tonight, way out in the country darkness, for the money. He'll take as many races as he can get, piling that cash up. His day job is working as a laborer at a landscape company. Left his girlfriend back home; got to have something to show for it come Monday.

Now here he goes, zipping up, strapping the helmet on, straddling the bike. It sounds like a jet engine. Takes his place in the line of guys waiting to go, side by side. Through the awning directly behind the strip, waved forward by the guy with the headphones covering his ears, beckoning the next two racers forward with arm motions like a guy directing airplanes on the tarmac.

Richie is running the outside lane.

Excitement twitches through the crowd, maybe 70 guys crowded around the starting line. Money flows here, too.

"That Richie out there?"

"Gimme $10 on Richie, man."

"Taking $5 on the inside."

"$20 more, looking for $20."

The Christmas tree of starting lights goes yellow. The engines screaming, the clutch pulled in tight with the fingers of the left hand. Both riders crouch low over the gas tank, elbows arched up high, bracing to release the clutch and have first gear instantly engage at more than 10,000 rpm. (Got a manual shift car? Depress the clutch, run the gear into first, rev the engine past 10,000, then pop the clutch to see what this feels like. Then imagine stripping 90 percent of the weight of the car away, two of the wheels and balance on top of what's left.)

Yellow, the lights go, descending.

Yellow.

Green.

Godzilla rears into the air like a bronco. The front wheel slams down, the bike bucks again on the shift into second. Little Richie's running behind.

"The inside! The inside!" Arms in the crowd wave to the right, toward the inside lane. They think the inside rider has him beat.

Four seconds later, way, way, way down in the distance, the red "Win" light flashes -- on the left side of the track, the outside lane.

The Assassin. Why doubt?

"Got him in the last 100."

"Be damned."

"Richie, man."

Mark Taylor picks up a few bucks. He's 44, retired from the Marines a few years ago, now works as a foreman at the Blue Plains sewage plant. Loves this stuff.

"Never bet against Richie," he says.

Summer is cycle riding's nirvana, and professional drag races, the summit of speed, go on all summer long all over the country. So do their illegal street counterparts -- seen locally on Route 50, guys blowing by you at 140 mph.

Tonight's races are showdowns designed to get blasters to blow out their testosterone on a track instead. It works, to a point. At least 384 bikes from all over the East Coast are registered for the weekend of events, 75 or 80 more in the grudge matches only. You see bikes tooling up and down Route 5 all weekend, bikes lined up at little country motels.

Maybe one or two Harleys parked out at the track. No Buells, no Ducatis and, for heaven's sake, no BMWs. Everything out here is Japanese speed bikes, stock bikes that start out at maybe 130 horsepower, then are modified in search of ever more juice. The wheelbase can be lengthened, the engine reworked for greater torque, the wheels changed for traction. You use 98 octane racing fuel, it can add 2 or 3 mph on the top end.

All this to outrun some guy you meet in the parking lot, straddling his bike, running off at the mouth. Or maybe talking smack on one of the Web sites like Psychobike.com and you agree to meet out here.

It might go something like:

-- You putting that piece of [expletive] on the track?

-- You don't even know what you talking.

-- I'm talking 'bout $500, that's what I'm talking about.

-- $500? I don't shut up for less than a grand.

"The grudge matches have their own psychology," says Chris Miller, operations director at the raceway. "These aren't professional racers on the circuit. These are working guys out for ego, pride, bragging rights."

Winning out here requires being part pool shark, part poker player.

You know how they have the results boards at drag strips that show the racer's time and top speed?

The racers demand that track officials turn that off for grudge runs. See, if everybody sees your bike is really fast, nobody will race you. You can't get any bets. You can't make any money.

Charles Kay, a car mechanic from Clinton and a bike owner, explains: Let's say you're way ahead in your quarter-mile blast. What do you do? You slow down. Make it look close. Get some chump back in the pits to think you were just lucky off the line. You draw him in, take that money.

This kind of hustle is serious. The results are so closely guarded that at the time shack, Chris Colvin cuts the computerized race tickets in half -- to keep the losing rider from seeing what time the winner posted.

Then there's the goading, the smack talking, that drives up the bets.

"[Expletive] it, [expletive], bet what you wanna bet," a rider snaps at one would-be gambler.

O'L Skool pulls a fat roll of hundreds and twenties from a front pocket. O'L Skool is the riding name of Melvin Slappy, a car salesman from Wallington, N.J. He's down here with Beat Dog and the Sleeper (Bernard Thompson and Windsor Davis, respectively).

"We don't come this far naked," O'L Skool says. "You come down here, you got to bring some cheese." They brought about $3,000.

The races keep going, one after another, bets flying. Little Richie is adding to his legend, going 3-0.

Gary Purnell, black baseball cap flipped around backward, sits on a barrier at the starting line. He's up from Raleigh, N.C., wad of cash in hand. How to bet: "It's 25 percent bike, 25 percent rider, 25 percent setup and 25 percent luck."

Now the track announcer is shouting, "LAST CALL!" above the engines. It's 1 a.m. Little Richie and Keith Thompson, a biker from Upper Marlboro, are talking, the owners talking, guys standing around them, looking on.

"TEN SECONDS! TEN SECONDS AND WE ARE CLOSING!" says the announcer.

Richie smiles, moves away from Thompson, runs over to a copper-colored Suzuki.

"FIVE SECONDS!"

Both riders get their bikes under the tent a second later, the tape is pulled behind them. Last race of the night. The chatter goes up along the starting line.

"Go ahead, Keith; tear his [expletive expletive] up!"

"Give me $20 on Richie."

"Man, a whole row of naked women could walk through here right now and nobody would know."

That's June Jones talking. He's a car painter from Triangle, Va. He's up $60 for the night and he bets it all on Thompson. Since Thompson is riding his own bike, and Little Richie a loaner, he figures Thompson will pull off the upset.

The riders hold the bikes in neutral, tach up the engines, burn rubber off the back tires. Guys put fingers in their ears, squint against the noise, yell for bets.

Green.

The bikes rocket forward. Fifty feet into the race, it's all over.

"NNNOOOOOO!!!" screams Jones.

Far away, disappearing into the darkness, flies the legend of Little Richie, 4-0 on the night, a cult figure at 150 mph and still gaining.