My mother tells me that ever since I could speak I would beg whoever was driving to go “FASTER!” and to go around corners harder and all around make the car ride as exciting as possible. Of course they never went as far as I wanted them to, being responsible parents and all. This created some sort of deep-rooted desire to make the most of every bicycle or skateboard or car or tractor that I’ve ever had access to, anything with wheels really.
I was a natural born adrenaline junky.
I was a cautious adrenaline junky though because somehow I haven’t broken a bone [yet]. The worst injury I’ve suffered was road rash all over my left leg after a fall at the bottom of a steep hill near my house, with rollerblades attached to my feet and a school bag on my back. I lived 0.1 miles short of the bus ride limit, which would have sent me to a school across town instead of the one up the hill, and I was entirely OK with taking myself to school and back, climbing those hills in the morning knowing that I would get to enjoy flying down them in the afternoon on my bicycle or my rollerblades or a land luge board that I would sometimes lug around.
That road rash was an awful couple of weeks of recovery but it turned into a tough lesson that I desperately needed: there is a limit and I should keep myself barely under that limit so that I don’t waste time in recovery or majorly hurt myself or worse.
Fast forward to adulthood, I am your typical story of balancing forward progression in life with extra cash going into the two and four wheeled machines. I became a proper track junky with thousands of laps spread out across every closed road course in California and a few beyond. On top of this, throw in a bunch of LeMons and Chump car racing as well as working my way up the car club ranks to becoming a track instructor.
Every car guy has their story and this is a short version of mine. I love talking to other car people to hear their stories and inspirations—it is really quite amazing when you are in the same place with someone yet they ended up there because of completely unique reasons.
