Every year in Orlando for the past two the Performance Racing Industry’s brought their Ringling Brothers behemoth of a trade show circus to the Orange County Convention Center. The exhibits stretch from wall to wall, north to south, east to west. Over five miles — MILES!, thank you — of aisles lined with every imaginable product and service dedicated to the science/hunch of speed.

This year, in somewhat timid defiance of the rather inane prohibition on photos and videos, I snapped a few pix which will show up in a web site combo roundup of SEMA and PRI. But as usual, even more so, visuals alone don’t bring home the total experience of walking row after row of automated grinders and state-of-the-art cncs, booths dedicated to the art of forced induction, endless tables of the latest in valve technology, and the race trailers. Oh the trailers. Yeah boy, if I only had a spare half-mil or three laying around.

I came away with a clear understanding of the importance of linear suspension measurement. A handful of really useful Oil-Dri mats that decorate the delicate space under my Shovel. And an eye-opening education in how the mundane task of header fabrication can be transformed into a predictable, repeatable and accurate process by using a brand new product from icengineworks that looks like Legos and works like a million bucks. See it to believe it — and say so long to coat hanger templates.

It was a great three days of basking in Mickey’s shadow, learning new twists on old technologies and taking in the latest and greatest on the performance scene. Attending both SEMA shines in the desert and PRI back-to-back is an experience to be savored leisurely. Until next year.