THE WRITING ON (AND OFF) THE WALL THE LOVE BUG FINDS THIS COUPLE ON A FAST TRACK.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH

If it's on the right stretch of Arizona desert, Tommy Johnson Jr. can top out his $500,000 42-foot Monaco Signature motor home at about 80 miles an hour.

His wife, Melanie Troxel, would rather he didn't.

Which makes sense, except Tommy admits he's the one who's most neurotic about playing the role of backseat driver.

Which is also kind of ironic, since Melanie is the real adrenalin junkie of the two.

Which is cool with Tommy, because he'd rather hold the family title of being the detail-orientated perfectionist.

Which makes Melanie grin, because when it comes to titles, she's known around the NHRA circuit these days as the fastest female in drag racing history, having gone 330.31 mph on a 4.458-second sprint in her Top Fuel dragster for Don Schumacher's racing team.

Which Tommy can appreciate, since he now holds the family speed record, having taken his Funny Car for the rival Don Prudhomme Racing team to 331.45 mph on a 4.698-second run about a month ago.

``It's just one mile an hour faster,'' Melanie says, hardly impressed.

``It's tougher to get a Funny Car to go that much faster than a Top Fuel,'' Tommy replies. ``She had me for a while, so when I did finally get past her, I had to let her have it.''

Which, as you may have surmised by now, is another playful argument that only helps define the Johnson-Troxel marital bliss.

Tommy, 37, and Melanie, 33, admit they're a fast-track, career-focused couple who wheeled the 8-mile-per-gallon Monaco over to the Pomona Raceway for this weekend's season- ending Auto Club NHRA Finals. Both survived the early rounds of time trials to make it into today's final qualifying.

In the family-oriented drag racing world, this marriage is past the novelty stage. Both have parents and relatives who've been around and raced on the same tracks they do now for years.

That's where Melanie first met Tommy, when she was 13 and was a friend of his sister, Wendy. She admits to having a big crush on the 17-year-old Tommy, but he hardly noticed.

Once they became a couple, they've learned to do a lot of things fast. Even their wedding, on New Year's Eve in 2003, was a quickie, which Tommy calls a ``real drag racer's kind of ceremony - we said our stuff, we were done.''

They eat fast. They shop fast. They roll out of bed and try to race each other to the bathroom first.

``It just goes back to getting what we need to do out of the way so we can be ready for something else when it comes up,'' Tommy said.

And that's the secret to a successful land-speed-record kind of marriage?

``I just have a very short attention span,'' Tommy admits. ``I get bored fast.''

``I'm the big project planner,'' Melanie interjects. ``If we have four days off at home, I'm getting the patio refinished and the landscaping done, and getting a retaining wall built. Just normal couple stuff.''

``We were single for so many years before we got married, we got set in our ways and it's not like we're going to change real easily,'' Tommy adds.

``The surprise is how much we can actually do together,'' Melanie says. ``We both want control so often but we get it done and no one's bleeding.''

Back home in Avon, Ind. - a home that's not on wheels - they tool around like any normal couple in their Yukon Denali and Infiniti G35, hardly in the mood to rack up a speeding ticket.

``Once you've gone 300 mph-plus, nothing really compares,'' Melanie explains.

``We're doing something that's so radically different,'' Tommy adds. ``A street car can never give you the same rush as a drag racer. It's more about acceleration than true speed. We're going from 0 to 100 mph in less than a second. That's the constant fact about it that I love.''

It kinda takes Tommy's breath away, he admits. Just like Melanie does these days.

Just as long as they're both wearing seat belts. It could be a bumpy ride.

CAPTION(S):

5 photos

Photo:

(1) Top Fuel racer Melanie Troxel, left, and Funny Car driver Tommy Johnson Jr., are coming up on their second wedding anniversary, but have a date in Pomona this weekend.

Dave Kommel/Auto Imagery, Inc.

(2) SMUSH PARKER 

(3) ALEX RODRIGUEZ 

(4) TOM BENSON 

(5) - Kobe Bryant, on Dan Patrick's ESPN Radio show, talking about whether Lakers coach Phil Jackson makes his players give book reports after making reading suggestions to them.