Oldfield's Colorful Description of Speed

This article originally appeared in Hampton's Magazine in the spring of 1910. This is only a small portion of a larger article, but it focuses on Barney Oldfield's description of his 131.720 mph world land speed record run on March 16, 1910 on Daytona Beach. For perspective, the point I like to consider is that at this time Oldfield's speed  was faster than anyone or anything had ever traveled on Earth. Airplanes could not travel with such velocity, nor trains. Certainly no living creature possessed such power. Indeed, Barney Oldfield sat atop the world as indisputably the fastest. Period.
 
A sample of Oldfield's own words: "I was going faster than scientific automobile engineers figured could be attained without the tires being thrown off the wheels by centrifugal force. The loss of traction was startling. Fully a third of the distance the wheels were off the ground."