OUCH! MAN, OH MAN, THAT CURVATURE

by Reg Green

Thinking of William Shatner’s exemplary comment that he hoped he would never get over his wonder at seeing our globe from space, I remembered that Noel Coward once said that the bar of the pre-World War II Shanghai Club was so long that if you laid your cheek on it you could see the curvature of the earth.

Both comments gave me a little shiver. I handled publicity for the Blue Flame car that set a land speed world record of 622 mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats race track in 1970 and seized the opportunity to do a small man’s version of that heroic event by driving a rental car at its absolute maximum speed on the same track. In this vast white empty wilderness I had the unnerving feeling that hidden by the earth’s curvature another rental car was hurtling toward me at its absolute maximum speed.