When I was about 15 years old, I built the loudest stereo in the neighborhood. I used some parts from my dad’s old stereo to build it. And I blasted it off around the street till the speaker got busted inside out. But this did not happen until it had made me popular with the folks in the community. They started to call me ‘Loud’ at the time.
One other time I was pulled over by the police for doing a 100 in a 40 zone, blasting the stereo at the highest volume in my dad’s car. The police said I would be fined for driving too fast and loud. And that’s how the name stuck: Fast and Loud.
But that was some 20 something years ago. I am now a jet boat mechanic and a racer. I have won some race over the years that I had been in the business, and I have taken a lot of things as rewards. I have also built some very fast boats too. One of them is the JH 164h double throttle speed used by the Mayor himself.
Some few weeks ago I was informed that a race was coming to town and the race would involve a huge reward. Now that kind of things that make my palate wet.
“What did they say was going to be the reward?” I asked the young man who just gave me the information.
“They say a rich man from Connecticut is looking for the fastest jet boat to acquire and he is organizing a competition to determine that.”
“Is he buying a boat or organizing a competition?” I felt I needed to ask again because I could not understand the whole business of buying a fast boat and determining which was fast with a competition.
“He is doing both I heard. I guess he wanted a fast boat and some entertainment while he does that. I gathered he was going to give the reward for winning the race to the winner and buy the boat from the winner.”
“Okay,” I said uninterestingly. And that’s because I wasn’t interested in real.
“You should get in for this competition and build a new boat,” the young man said after he sensed my lack of interest.
“Well I don’t think I will be participating in this one,” I told him.
“Okay, I guess Jonas is just going to win this one even before it started.”
For this young man to say this, he must have known that Jonas and I had a long history of competitiveness.
Jonas was my best friend back in high school. He was always by my side, helping me out with my inventions because we shared the same kind of passion for electronics.
Jonas once stole my work in school to get a huge score for himself, but I forgave him at the time.
When we were older, he did the same thing with my work, and when I confronted him, he turned it into a fight with me. Since then I have decided to avoid him and always to beat him at his own game.
“He’s making a new jet boat for the competition.” Although I knew he added that information to galvanize me the more, I was still less interested in the competition.
The next day, after sleeping on it, I decided that I was interested. I registered for the competition and bought a few equipments I would need for the jet boat I wanted to build.
I drew the plan of a jet boat with a super slick body and a powerful engine that could go as fast as 285 mph. I know it was crazy to build a boat that could go at that speed, but I wanted to do everything it took to beat Jonas.
The competition was in two weeks. So I had less than 14 days to build the jet boat and present it for the exhibition. I knew it was going to be a huge work, but I felt up to the task. Challenge was one thing that I never run away from.
When I told a friend about my plan to build a jet boat with so much speed, he said he always knew I was crazy, but he was still going to help me out because I asked him to and because he owed me.
We set to work the second day and achieved a lot even on the first day of building the boat. By the 4th day, we had finished the, and then we focused on the engine.
Although we had a little set back with the engine, we were still able to finish it on time for the exhibition. Everybody thought it was brilliant inside out. Only Jonas had a negative word for it. He had brought a jet boat to match the speed of my boat when he heard what I was making. Typical Jonas.
Most of the spectators at the exhibition thought it was crazy to build a boat as high with speed as the one we had built.
When it was time to showcase my work, I asked the DJ to stop his music. I turned the ignition, and the boat spurred to life. “FL!” People screamed.
On the day of the competition, all of us eight competitors got on our boat and got ready for the gun to go off for us to begin.
The gun went off, and the race began.
In a short time, I was going at a very fast speed and loud too.
Jonas who had only built a boat that could match the speed of mine tried to match me at my going speed. However, he had only copied my boat speed, and he didn’t build the engine from scratch to handle the speed.
The engine of his boat gave a loud spark at a point and went dead.
I won the race even without getting to top speed, claimed the price and sold the jet boat to the organizer for a good price.