Tuesday, December 7, 2010

84 hrs in a van


So last tuesday i was sufing the flat track web stuff and saw a few races for the upcoming weekend. one was 11hr away in lincoln Ne. a purdy fair drive for me and my new (1993) 750$ van. I had been telling myself all year the December would be my month off from racing. yeah right. so after work last week I did a transformer on my transvestite of a race bike; took off the knobbies and put on my low rider suspension essay. Got the word from the boss that i could take friday off in order to have plenty of time at the wheel to get to the race saterday. I woke up before the sun, loaded up a few things and left the driveway. I called the events center to make shur of the races actual happening and this is when i found out interesting point of the weekend number one: the race was last weekend. ...ok. well fuck, i saw anther race in misery (Missouri) only another four or five hours onto the trip. I called on the celly telly and some bueford t. justice fellow said o yeah we got everything in order for the weekend. cool beans. I swung through Denver to pick up my trusty ol co-pilot Aaron. best damn wop i know. He has one of those new fancy cell phones that can do anything. its like fucking star trek these days. Almost to kansas and with the help of his trusty piece of technological wonder we discover interesting point number two of the weekend: saterday is a demolition derby and sunday is "flat track racing". Thanks for the info Buefford t. Justice. Demo durby; fuckin A! that sounds good. they even advertised 'Ned Dirt the clown'. Work will understand needing monday off if im in bum fuck columbia misery (Missouri). Pitted the van behind some church in a creepy little interstate town 100 miles from our final destination and 17hrs from home. The wop likes to sleep under the stars even when its in the 20 degrees. some johny law had to come spotlight us and Aaron started thinking of easy rider beat downs and not wanting to end up like jack nicholsen he joined me and the dog in our capsule of safety. with a van you can.
We got to the boone county farigrounds about eight hours before the demo derby. i was nervous about the fact of their being a real motorcycle race. a lot of the cars parked outside had kitty cat vanity plates......? so i went inside hopeing to find some one who could assure me of a race, instead i walked through the doors only to see a whole lot of cats, not cool kats, not pussy, but feline cats. all dressed up and fancy. cat do dadds, cat judging, cat houses and cat everything. holy shit! talk about being in the wrong place. i made my way through the huge cat infestation to the arena where i found a buetifful dirt oval being prepped. wheew! so we got drunk. I found this a good time to break into my oxycoddins that i take racing for emergencies. this was necessary to help cope with our situation. it was so windy and cold in misery.
ok, indoor demo durby might work with ventilation and with out 20 oil burning lawnmowers pathetically trying to kill each other. all i really remember is a few blown radiators and sharing a one hitter with some dude in the bathroom with a canadian flag tattoo on his kneck. wtf? I am from a ranch lifestyle and i had never seen so much camo and carrharts.
woke up sunday with one of the worst headaches ever. ate a banana, bailed out of the van and barfed. Racing started at six in the pm. more van time. honestly it was time well spent catching up with my ol friend the wop. baja the dog on the other hand was starting to get pissed. this is not how racing usually works. in spit she snatched to ready to eat burritos and a whole block of chesse. jesus christ.
8 motorcycles showed up. a fucking butt load of kart racers showed up. this was my first time sharing a track with these little karters. it was here that interesting point #3 struck me. yellow flags suck. this shit went on and on and on and i decided to see if they would let me race a extra class to pass time. i won the am class. my first flattrack victory. checkerd flag victory lap. kinda cool but their were only three in the class. the pro race was so one lined that all i could do was run into the guy in front of me untill he got pushed out. i felt like slammin sammy. got third. won 30$.
woke up in some truckstop monday morning with frozen water bottles and a mean ass fucking sore throat. drove home. got in at seven last night and went straight to bed. as i right this i am sicker than shit.
I love racing.
off to work i go to see if i still have a job. i hope so because i just spent everything i have on van gas.
"when your racing your living. everthing else... is just waiting" -steve mcqueen
Hope to get some demo derby pics up soon. fuck everything i feel like shit. :)

1 comment:

Sideburn Magazine said...

Great story. You're class. G