NASCAR, All Is Forgiven

It wasn't until I sat down with a friend of mine and actually watched a NASCAR race that I understood accelerating through the curve.

I'd heard vague rumors of this move in my thirty-plus years of driving: "Slow down on the approach, accelerate as you exit."

The trick is in assessing when you are actually exiting the curve. Watching NASCAR made it graphic and understandable.

I enter a curve from as wide an angle as possible--if the near-left lane is empty I'll swing over the dotted line--and hug the outside until I spot a point to move across and follow the inside stripe, until the curve flattens out under me and I'm floating to the outside again.

"The point" is where I can draw a straight line to the end, cutting across the top of the curve instead of following it. Or something like that. I don't know exactly what the rule is, but, like the judge said, I know it when I see it.

Every curve is different. Interstate 270 south gives a wide and tipped-up curve onto I-44 east. No brakes needed if you can swing in wide under 50 mph and float left. It's good to vroom out past the Watson Road exit onto 44 while the brake-touchy are still getting going.

Another good one is northbound I-270 onto westbound US 40, a downsloping gentle curl; like a good girdle, one feels held by the banked curve, cupped in safety while rolling under the legs of the overpasses.

Then there's the curve that takes off US 40 west onto North Outer 40 and then under the highway to South Outer 40--essentially a 180-degree turn in a hairpin-plus-J curve. A sharp curve to the right down an exit ramp that immediately swings a tight left and doesn't let up until you're near the Yield sign, lurking under the skirt of US 40, watching for the cars shooting past on the protected green at 141 South.

If I make onto South Outer 40 without using the brakes more than twice (once is ideal) . . . then I win.

The Beautiful Ballas Bypass

The stretch of Interstate 270 around the west side of St. Louis frequently slows just before Manchester Road, and you don't get back up to speed until after the Dougherty Ferry bridge construction is well behind you.

I hate being in constipated traffic, nudging along at 15 mph and hypervigilant front and back.

So I've cut off to Ballas Road south of Interstate 64, a blissfully quiet two-lane that parallels 270 on the east through Sugar Creek Valley (Please Help Preserve Its Beauty) past the tricky stoplight on on a hilltop curve at Dougherty Ferry, climbing hills and coasting valleys on smooth shaded asphalt striped clean as a snake.

Ballas Road presents you with a left fork to Adams Street and downtown Kirkwood, or a tail end of Ballas that reaches Big Bend in Webster, where you can rejoin the Highway 44 at Berry Road, or lose yourself in the shady streets of Shrewsbury. During the worst times of bridge construction it was faster to take Ballas and much less hectic.

I saw a white F-150 with a cross-and-lilies and "In Loving Memory of My Wife and Mother" on the cab's rear window. The driver was a somewhat senior white man.

Was the truck purchased with proceeds from his wife and mother's demise? Does he drive to honor them? I have not seen anything like it before.