Single-second ride off to slow start

ANDREW GLAZER

FAIRGROUNDS -- The ride billed by Orange County Fair organizers as

this year’s hottest ticket received a cool reception Friday on opening

day.

Craig Lindell, 42, who invented the Speed Track Drag Racing ride and

several other adrenaline stimulators, perspired as he stood in the

blazing afternoon sun.

“There just aren’t too many riders yet,” he said. “But they’ll come.”

Perhaps it was the cost: $10 for a one-second ride. But the speed is

what makes it a tooth-gnashing, eye-popping, “whooooa!” kind of thrill.

Daring riders mount golf cart-sized buggies hitched to 60 feet of

track two at a time. The ride operates like a lateral bungee jump.

A coil of thousands of tiny, flat rubber cables is attached to each

car. The cars are pulled to one end of the track, creating tension in the

giant rubber band.

The riders, cued by a green light, kick the gas pedal, launching them

to the other end of the track in just one second.

“You really don’t expect it to go so fast,” said Steve Robertson, 48.

“It was really fun. I could see it being addictive.”

Lindell has made a living off adrenaline. He started as a carnival

diver, scaling 60-foot diving boards and somersaulting into a tiny tank.

He moved on to cliff-diving competitions in Acapulco and became the U.S.

champion.

In 1992, while he was earning a master’s degree in leisure business,

he became the U.S. champion of acrobatic bungee-jumping at the X-Games.

When bungee-jumping from construction cranes became a fair attraction

in the early 1990s, Lindell saw a business opportunity.

“Those cranes looked so tacky,” he said.

So he designed a more permanent bungee-jumping platform, which became

a hit. And then he designed a reverse bungee jump, where riders start

with their feet on the ground and are yanked high into the air.

Two years ago, he came up with the idea for the Speed Track Drag

Racing ride.

“We’d done up and down, so there was only one way to go,” he said.

The speed track appeals to people craving the sensation of flying

through the air at unnatural speeds, but are afraid of heights, Lindell

said.

“I wouldn’t touch the other ride,” said his wife, Chris, 47, who met

Craig at the Los Angeles County Fair two years ago. “This one, I can’t

get enough of.”