Having not grown up in the US, I don't suppose you know the game of Chicken. Well let me tell you how it works: Two guys who have a grudge to settle meet somewhere on the edge of town, out of harms way. They get about 1320 feet away from each other in their respective automobiles (those of you who were raised here might be familiar with that number as it equates to a ¼ mile)
After some testosterone sabre rattling via high engine revs, a neutral party drops a flag. At that instant, the game is afoot:; the respective drivers step on the gas and drive directly towards each other at ever increasing velocities. Simply put, the first person who veers away from dead center is "Chicken."
Well guess what? Here's what's going on: You're driving a '74 AMC Pacer with a leaky gas tank that has seen better days and gets very poor mileage. Everyone can see inside those big fish bowl glass windows and they know what you are up to. The mechanic (read lawyers) are making a mint off of you. You've got some mass as the Pacer is not light and you've got some velocity, but not much acceleration since the darn car came with a 4 cylinder engine from AMC. In other words, you've got some Momentum (oh, I forgot, you're going to spin that division out).
So you're moving along at some kind of a clip, but then you hear sirens and see off in the distance all kinds of colored lights in coming towards you. Drat you say, it's the cops (read SEC, FBI, Interpol et al), you're not supposed to be doing some of the things with your car and you'd rather they not pull you over just now.
Simultaneously, you remember that your reputation is at stake and you are playing a serious game of Chicken. And the other guy in the game is now more than a speck on the horizon. In fact, you can now barely discern the make and model of the car thundering at you. It's a '55 Chevy Bel Air Business Coupe and like the model, this guy means business. This two-ton beast is moving and it's clear that the guy is running a big block Chevy engine and the exhaust system is loud. In fact it is so loud, you're not sure which makes more noise: the cop's sirens or this guy's uncapped headers. And that guy in the Chevy clearly has his petal to the metal as evidenced by the scream of that engine. Heck with the overlap on that cam, the dude must be running high test av gas.
Time is passing rapidly now, yet it seems like things are moving in slow motion. You know this whole thing is going to end badly, the question now is how do you control the damage without wrecking everything. There's a road veering off to the right and it's not that sharp of an angle that you can't make the turn at this speed even if you are driving a complete heap.
Adrenaline racing, you must think quickly, the mechanic and the body shop guy are gonna really run you a bill when this is over. And then you think to yourself: heck this is some serious stuff, I'm not even from this town, nobody will follow me if I veer off to the right on that frontage road. I ought to just do it. That way I can save what left of my car and help my odds of surviving by a huge margin. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do and heck, I'll go back to my hometown and no one will have a clue where I've been and it's not like they're gonna follow me, heck the cops are on the other side of the median, it'll take 'em a long time to find me even if they wanted to.
Right then, you wake up from your split second day dream and you look straight ahead and that '55 is so close you could look into the other guy's eyes if the windshield wasn't tinted black. And then, the engine pitch turns up an even higher notch. This guy just switched on his Nitrous!
And what's that bouncing across the road? Oh my god, the guy has just pitched the steering wheel out the window! He is, in no uncertain terms, committed.
Q1: Do you "Chicken" out and take the side road into the night or do you grit your teeth and wait for impact?
Q2: Do ya feel lucky? Well do ya? |
