Got nineteen laps in this morning before things went bad.
This morning, I convinced our car owner, Greg Smith, to let me start the race despite the fact that I’d been in a post-race confrontation the night before. (Postscript to that: I’m all square with the #908 team and everybody’s friends now.) At the start, I shoved us up to third place and held position between 2 and 3 seconds off the leader for the first 18 laps. Although we didn’t have the power of the two cars ahead of us, I was highly motivated to turn in a solid performance for the team. On the twentieth lap, the second-place BMW of TBR (seen above, ahead of me, on lap 18) lost control on the very fast downhill Turn Nine, caught traction while sideways, and hit me in the right rear quarter panel, breaking the right control arm and snapping our fuel pump in half.
This left me incapacitated in the middle of the track and I was subsequently struck at reasonably high speed by the TBR car a second time. Thankfully the driver was able to avoid hitting me in the door. I was spun 540 degrees into traffic that was not stopping or slowing so I fled the car and jumped over the tires to safety.
After five hours and 40 minutes of repair including significant cannibalization of TWO other Neons that were on the track, our car made it on track for the final twelve laps of the race. It’s pretty bent, to put it mildly. Some of the tools that they used were completely unknown to me. There’s a hydraulic “spreader” that shoves body panels back into place and another ram-type thing that can bend the unibody. Neat stuff.
The TBR BMW required an engine swap and a new front end which was completed late tonight.
The TBR driver broke his foot (but not too badly) which was on the brake when he hit me the second time. I took a shot to the collarbone (from my HANS device, which probably saved me from a neck fracture for the second time in just seven years), my neck really hurts, my back hurts, my kidney hurts. Although I’d like to be back in Columbus sleeping on my foam mattress, I feel generally okay and I declined a ride to the hospital.
Why do this? Why risk your life to race a Neon against an old BMW? Why not just stay at home and watch television or play Call Of Duty? I’ll quote Eliot, not for the first time and likely not the last:
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms.
I’ve seen those hydraulic tools in action. Also some of the others tools of the trade. I remember a shop where they made straight cars that are unrepairable write-offs in 1st world countries.
Doing something like racing is far better than criar panza in front of the TV/intertubeZ. Hope you get better.
Glad you made it out OK. Sorry about the car (both of them).
So happy you’re okay! *big hugs*
You do it because you _can_ Jack ~ sooner or later you won’t be able to so do it as much as possible now .
I took my old Mercedes out on a Road Rally with old British Sports cars and was able to keep up with the faster guys although they gapped the hell out of me in the twisty bits of course .
The slower guys in their $40,000.00 restored MG’s grumbled when I left them behind ~ IMO any of them could have passed me like a rabbit in a thicket .
-Nate
? Anyone want to tell me how to change my avatar here ? I went to the home page and clicked everything , couldn’t figure it out .
TIA ,
-Nate
I’m not sure myself. I’ll take a look and let you know.
Thank you Jack .
Being a Computer Dummy isn’t fun these days .
-Nate
“Why do this? ”
For the same reason you ride motorcycles fast, hang out in less than reputable pubs, date many women.
Because it’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
Dingus,
It is a legendary tale of journalism schools and j-school profs and students. A cub reporter is sent to interview an elderly gentleman who has just turned 100. In his inexperience, the reporter begins with a line of leading questions about how he must have led a healthy life to have lived so long.
Instead, the centenarian shocked the cub reporter with tales of ribaldry, the likes of which can only be found in such sources as Chaucer. A cigar a day, two stiff shots of bourbon every night before bedtime, more on his nights out, of which there was at least one or two a week…juggling of girlfriends in order to enjoy the company of as many women as possible. Reckless helling around on both two-wheeled and four-wheeled vehicles…there was virtually nothing dangerous, outrageous or on the edges of propriety at best, that this old gentleman had not indulged in for his entire life.
Desperate to still try to salvage some unique point of view for this cliched story of longevity, the flustered cub reporter finally asked “Well, weren’t you afraid when you were younger that all those things might shorten your life?”
And the old man answered “I made up my mind a long time ago, sonny, that I would rather go into old age regretting the things that I had done, than regretting the things that I hadn’t done.”
Some of the best and most interesting people I know and have met live by this philosophy.
When I was a young kid we used to joke around about old age and death, saying that we wanted to “live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse” which I believe was originally the philosophy of one of the early 20th century bandits.
Now that I have lived far too long to be able to successfully execute that strategy, instead my motto has become “If I had known I would live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.” Though deep in my heart, I doubt that I really would have. Instead, I suspect I still would have worked under the idea of trying to make sure that I would have to regret what I had done, rather than having to regret what I hadn’t done.
As much of a cliche as it is, you really do only live once, so you might as well make the most of it.
Ok, I may be a tad tipsy, but I can’t find a way to contact Jack directly, so I shall try it here. Have you seen this? I realize it has nothing to do with this article, but I can’t figure out another way.
http://www.grindtv.com/bike/godfather-bmx-scot-breithaupt-found-dead/#z0SGQXGdUJwawYcg.97
That sux .
Those who candle burns brighter , also burns so much faster .
He will surely be missed ~ I care nothing about BMX but even I knew who he was .
-Nate
Oh no. The OM himself.
After watching the in-car video, I typed up a summary of the situation for the Chumpcar forum: http://forum.chumpcar.com/index.php?/topic/13070-laguna-chumpa-grad-prix/page-5
I suppose that I should add a center net, maybe a containment seat and get rid of the clutch safety switch so that the car can be moved off the track on the starter. oops.
For the last three days I’ve been looking for a time machine so I could put my LaJoie Daytona Prototype seat from my Neon into your Neon. That has the padded halo very close.
With a halo seat, I’d have been able to move my neck and might have been able to at least hold a wrench or something afterwards. As it is, today is the first day that I’ve been able to turn my head. 🙂
Be careful here Jack ~
Once your neck is kaput , life becomes very painful indeed .
I have three hand made cervical vertibrae and a titanium plate with 8 screws , I still have nerve pains and can’t really ride my Motos much anymore =8-( .
At least no more back and neck braces ! .
Chicks dig my cane , I’m settled now but that would have been fun to run with some years back .
-Nate
Funny your comment about the cane, Nate. Had a similar experience a good while back.
Slipped on some ice on the steps on my way into a Brooklyn subway station. Tried a desperate breakfall manuever by reaching out laterally with one arm as my feet slide forward and down. Managed to grab the railing, and tried to do a one-armed version of a gymnast doing an iron cross on the rings. Not really successful as a maneuver, except for the fact that it kept my back from cracking on the edge of one or more stairs.
For weeks and months afterward, several times a day I would get these brief incredibly painful shooting sensations down the outer side of my right leg. Took several trips to several different chiropractors before I finally got that settled.
But in the interim, I had found, and used, a very nice walking stick made of ash, with a nice inch and half or so diameter ball on the top…sort of debonair, and would have made a hell of a good self-defense weapon, if needed. The ball could come around like a mace on a selfie-stick. Or the long shaft could make slashing movements on a par with Zatoichi the blind swordsman.
But you mention the attention it got you…same thing. Lived in NYC for ten years in my late twenties to late thirties, single most of it. Met my fair share of women, but never had any luck just chatting up an interesting looking woman on a subway platform or a street corner in Manhattan.
But once I started rocking the walking stick, women, really nice looking, very classy acting women, would come up to me to commiserate about what kind of injury I must have suffered, how it occurred, did it still trouble me much…ample opportunity to get a good chat going, and to likely end up with a phone number, a date, or something…but as luck would have it, I was in an intensely monogamous relationship at the time, indeed, in one that was too good to risk throwig away, at least while it lasted.
But I never before or after had so many out of the blue, on the city streets, opportunities as during my time with my walking stick. I even considered continuing to use it after my body had healed, but somehow it offended my sense of rightness to use it as an affectation. I just didn’t feel like I could lie my ass off about my need for it, and then be able to connect as a “genuine” guy.
But I sure as hell did consider it. Near as I can tell, it was something about perceived vulnerability, the chicks’ ability to provide nurture, but whatever it was, it was certainly an effective “chick magnet”. The fact that it also had a bit of an appearance as a serious bit of legal weaponry may also have played into the total effect.
And I suspect that if my life had become too plagued by a drought, I might have decided to pull it out of my closet and start using it again.
It got lost in all my travels, but I’d love to find one again. Used to be made by retired pool cue craftsmen, or some such, and sold in a shop on the Upper East Side around the Seventies, that also sold among other things, a lot of backgammon sets. But I have been unable to find them anymore. Cost about thirty or fifty bucks in the mid-seventies. Would love to have one again, now that I am old enough and banged up enough to be able to merit one legitimately again.
I had a great cane made after my January 2014 crash. I’m *almost* sad that I don’t have to use it any more!
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Now that I have lived far too long to be able to successfully execute that strategy, instead my motto has become “If I had known I would live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”
Volando ;
Although I was an idiot when I was a young man , I did try to mediate some of my behaviours when out motoring , I often heard ” Nate , if you don’t slow down you’re going to die ” ~ Imagine my distress when I was run over and catapulted through the windshield of that damn gypsy cab when _sitting_still_at_a_red_light_ .
I landed in the front seat whereupon the damn fool dragged me out and laid me nice and straight on the side walk , pretty much a recipe to paralyze or kill a Motocycle rider after a crash .
Anyays , I too have a cane like that , it’s called a ” BUBBA STICK ” (TM) and is made in Texas , you can order them up with your name in them or just slide by the local Boot barn store , they’ll have them in stock , $35 .
I got so many comments and offers with it it’s embarrassing (I’m just another old fat guy after all) plus , I can’t hook it over my arm when I’m opening the door locks etc. so I prefer the old fashioned steamed wood kind .
Carry on then ~ ever faster , onwards =8-) .
-Nate
Nate, Thanks for the tip on the Bubba stick. Don’t hit the Western stores much here in the Northeast, at least not like I could and did when it was easier, in the South. So now I can go check it out.
I definitely preferred, and still prefer, the straight stick…when the brass ball was in your palm, with your fingers over the wood next to it (this isn’t sounding right for a conversation between two men, but you know what I mean), then the length of the walking stick could be whipped about like a rapier or a samurai sword…lightning fast due to the balance. A definite deterrent to people with thoughts of wrong-doing.
On the other hand, literally, when the other hand grasped the center of the stick, and the first hand was quickly shifted to the tip (the ground part), it was possible to bring the brass ball around at close to light speed, with the possibility of inflicting at least unconsciousness on an attacker, and although I never had occasion to try it, I do believe it would have been possible to deliver a severe concussion as well.
Nobody ever tried to rob me while walking with it, even late nights in Brooklyn, walking four blocks from the underground garage to my apartment. And it seemed to be some kind of “chick magnet” for lack of a better term, drawing attention and favorable, solicitous comments with a frequency I have never experienced before or since.
These days I would mostly just use it to brace myself when I get an intermittent sharp intense pain in my back from one of my several mishaps, both automotive and otherwise. That, and to protect and defend my lovely wife (“with whom I am well acquainted” as Jon Lovitz used to say), and my only son, who is six foot two of basketball muscle, but never took an interest in the martial arts the way his dad did. Still, he has natural “peaceful warrior” instincts, if you know what I mean, and I wouldn’t want to let the side down in case of emergency.
But the thing just felt right in my hand, when walking with it…unpretentious but totally streamlined to its purposes. In many ways, sort of a Huracán of canes and walking sticks. One of the few possessions that have fallen along the wayside of my life that I wish I still had.
So I will definitely check out the Bubba stick…sounds like it might be a reasonable near equivalent.
Thanks Nate.
And I can sympathize with your life in the fast lane lifestyle in your younger days. People used to tell those same types of warnings to me and to my doppelganger, who turned out to be like a long lost brother. People thought either that we were the same person, or that we were twins, not just any twins, but identical twins.
And decades later, we both have one and only one child, a son in his twenties, and have been with the same woman for decades now. Wish I’d made book on that one happening, years ago. I would have been voted “Most Likely to Never Settle Down” and so would my spiritual brother. As the saying goes, truth is truly stranger than fiction…
Everyone thought we ran too fast and too hard in too many ways. Yet both of us have not only survived but thrived into our so-called “golden years”…don’t know about the gold, but for me, they are even better than my younger years, and those weren’t bad.
Thanks for the tip on the walking stick. If you ever get over Philly way, shoot me some contact info, and we can go out for “cookies and milk”, as another friend used to put it, on me.
You’re welcome and you’re right ~
That heavy brass knob is ever so handy , I like to think I’m a nice guy bot some folks (kids mostly) in the area I live just saw another old cripple , I had to dissuade them from that thought .
Truly , it changes position and moves faster than most realize before it’s too late .
I have been telling folks that no fiction could ever match the strange things people decide to do on their own , not many understand this as do you and I .
I’m also having far more fun now than back when , who knew ? .
Maybe those old guys who tried to tell me in the 1960’s .
I just left the East Coast and don’t expect to return for the rest of this year, thank you for your kind invite .
-Nate
Holler back when and if you do, Nate.
I hang here a lot and a bit at TTAC, and now more at R&T also, since Jack has gone there.
My “brother from another mother” lives in the SF Bay area half the year, on a great surf break in Baja the other half of each year.
My favorite story of people underestimating a “helpless old man” was a Japanese man in his 80’s who was a revered friend of my sensei. Some of the senior students, trying to find out just who this old man, Harry, really was, besides being probably the oldest Wall Street courier in NYC, asked him once if he too had been into the martial arts, and he replied that he indeed had.
So the followup question was “did he ever have to use it when he was older?”. His reply was that once three large muggers surrounded him in Washington Square Park, and demanded that he surrender his courier bag, which might very well have contained millions of dollars of bearer bonds and/or shares held in street name. His response was that he couldn’t do that. The guy in front picked him up to try to intimidate him. He paused. Another question. “What did you do then?”.
His reply “I wanted him to put me back down, so I made sure he needed his hands for something else besides holding me up.” As he said that, he made a gesture of two forked fingers thrust forward together, the index and middle finger of the same hand. A classic hand attack in some styles. Without saying so, it was obvious he had done some damage to the mugger’s face.
And the final question was “what happened then?” And Harry replied, “He decided that he should leave to attend to his eyesight, and his two friends decided to leave with him.” End of story.
Sort of a cross between a real life Dirty Harry and a real life Clint Eastwood character in “Gran Torino”, minus any fatalities. But certainly a clear showing that my sensei’s friend, in his eighties, and not weighing a whole lot more than that, was anything but a feeble old man.
While I believe concealed carry would prevent crimes, it is too much hassle most of the time to obtain it, and in NJ it is virtually impossible.
But a nice inconspicuous but clearly well-suited stick in one’s hand, can have a therapeutic effect on the evil intent of certain miscreants.
And as I can see from your subsequent comments, you fully grasp the concept of how the walking stick with a brass ball end can be deployed.
I can’t wait to try to track one down again.
So long for now…
Well, after seeing Jack’s comment about his cane, I’m beginning to think we may be on the verge of starting a new trend, or fad: Gentlemen Who Speak Softly and Carry Big Sticks.
I refuse to parse that one any further, however. 😉
And Jack, I’m glad to hear that not only did you give the guys who sneak-lapped you hell, but that after you and they played out your hands, both sides let it go, and friendship of a sort was created.
I suspect such an outcome is usually the result of two strong-willed and opinionated “sides” or groups calming down after a while, with enough introspection and self-awareness to be able to recognize that if they had been on the other side of the fence, they might well have acted the way the other group or person had.
Which in turn can lead to mutual respect and a bit of camaraderie, as they become able to laugh a bit about how intense they were in the heat of battle.
The best men are always hot in the heat of battle, and the very best of them are also capable of recognizing that when their “dog” wears off a bit, that they need to try to go beyond that heat of the moment reaction.
And I can see why some people think you are a bit of a dick. To me, that has always been the classic beta male response to an unabashedly alpha male, playing his hand to full effect, without shame or guilt.
A dying breed? Perhaps, though I wouldn’t bet too heavily on it. More like the spice in the dish of life…
It was the bold ones who made this country what it was, keep it what it is (at its best), and will help to make corrective adjustments in the future, wherever most needed.
I do not fear that my son will live his life out, past the end of mine, in a world with too many alpha males, but rather that he may end up living in one with too few. But it never was a job or an occupation or an avocation, or whatever, for everyone…but those of us who have a streak of it in us could never be anything other than what we are.
So in the end, I am both glad you gave those other guys hell, and that you were able to move past it quickly after it was over…a true example of the best way to handle differences, in my book.
So keep on giving them hell when they richly deserve it, and keep on looking for common ground and understanding wherever you can find it. Anything else can only sell yourself short.
But then again, that wouldn’t be you, anyway.
Always fun to read your adventures. I’m a bit too old and a bit more settled down now, so I can’t run like that anymore. But I enjoy hearing of your escapades, and am glad to hear you are going to ramp up your production at R&T, and will not be limited to engineering and performance data, coupled with vehicle impressions.
Good cars are a part of the good life. Their relationship (good cars and the good life) is a worthy part of the stories about the cars. So keep those cards and letters coming…beats television, the theatre or cinema hands down.
Agreed ;
Is it possible there will be a forthcoming article about ” big dick cars ” ? .
For me , it means when I get behind of the wheel of a really powerful car , I begin to act and drive , like a big dick .
Therefore , I tend to keep away from such things , not only because of my limited driving skills .
-Nate