I've had a few drag racing small world experiences. Used to get to have lunch with Frank, Tony, and Carmen Pisano when I ran to the west coast and back in the early 90s. Got to watch Dick Lahaie's grandson while Jeff was going for his super comp license at 131 when I lived in Grand Rapids.
Met Jim Barillaro at a Dairy Queen in the middle of nowhere on I-40 in TN. We're watching pre-inauguration ceremonies on TV and start chatting out of the blue. We get around to asking what each other did. He says "I build and restore something called funny cars."
He was in the process of moving his stuff to a shop that was less than 10 miles from where I grew up.
My current loads of cabinets often have stops where I'll end a day less than two miles from friends' houses who are building nostalgia funny cars and one who's building an IHRA nitro funny car.
A year or so ago, I was having lunch for the first time with one of those friends in CT. I was telling him about how, a week earlier, I'd unhooked from my trailer and was bobtailing to an ice cream place. I passed where I was going because the entrance was too small and turned around in a parking lot to go back. It turns out that where I turned around was the parking lot for his real estate office! What are the odds of THAT???
