Live fast and play dirty

The green flag went down and the low grumble of the 900 hp engines swelled to a roar as the trucks rounded the corner into the straightaway. The race was on! A dozen mean machines bounded over bumps, skidded around the corners and bashed each other's bumpers as they hurtled around the dirt track. Up in the stands, we jumped up and down as we cheered on our chosen drivers to the finish line. The once-shiny trucks got muddier and muddier, the track got more and more littered with broken-off pieces, and the competition got more and more intense until finally the chequered flag waved and the winner went into his victory spin.

We'd been downtown on a Thursday evening when Graham noticed some powerful trucks standing by the kerb, and went over to have a look. One of the drivers answered some of his questions and then produced a voucher for four free tickets to the Traxxas TORC race at the Texas Motor Speedway that weekend.

So it was that I found myself doing something completely new - sitting on a plastic seat watching five bulldozers move mud around on a Saturday night. It had rained all day and they were frantically trying to get the track in shape again for the evening's race. The time for the practice race passed, then the time for the first race. The sun went down. We'd seen the sponsor's ads about 10 times each, and could sing the jingle backwards. Finally it looked like something might be happening.

We stood, somewhat bemusedly, through a prayer thanking the Lord for the joys of dirt-track racing, and through the obligatory rendition of the National Anthem. Then came the brrrrrrmmmm that really got everyone's hearts going!

Picking a truck definitely made the races more exciting. I managed to get a winner for the first one - the driver's first win, too, so I'm sure he was a lot more excited than I was! Graham somehow managed to find the crazy ones, including a truck that executed a spectacular flip right in front of the grandstand and had to be towed out of the race.

A brief three races later and it was all over. The winners received their laurels from Miss USA 1999 and the fans poured out of the stadium - with a couple of new ones among them. BRRRRMMMM!

Comments

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions. The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?" This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them. Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone. That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of. Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died. And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was. His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...

Erewash Valley Trail: Strelley and Broxtowe

I'd had another four-week gap between walks (who invented half terms and inset days?), and was itching to get out on my explorations. The weather forecast optimistically predicted sunny spells. Unfortunately the weather hadn't got the memo; it was overcast for my entire walk, and then the sky cleared as I was driving home. Oh well. I arrived at the Nottingham Canal to find bulldozers buzzing up and down the towpath. The car park I'd intended to park in was closed for renovation, but there was a layby a little further up the road towards Cossall, so that was fine. The first part of the road had nice wide verges - easy walking - but after the canal bridge it was called Dead Lane, which felt descriptive. It was tightly hemmed in by hedges and I had to flatten myself against the hawthorn when cars passed. Cossall Road Dead Lane The bridleway to Strelley was mostly paved road, but blessedly traffic-free apart from a couple of bikes and a bin lorry performing manoeuvres. Tim Brin...

The Imitation of Christ: Spiritual Formation Book 2

"This is my hope, my only consolation, to flee unto thee in every tribulation, to trust in thee, to call upon thee from my heart, and to wait patiently for thy consolation." The second of my four books for spiritual formation is The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. The introduction to my copy starts off by saying that 21st century readers may wonder why they are bothering, which hardly seems like a recommendation! I have to admit I finished it with a certain sense of relief, but there were some hidden gems along the way. It's rather like reading the book of Proverbs. There's no story or explanation of a theme, but there are astute observations, honest prayers, the occasional flash of humour, and quite a lot of repetition. Thomas à Kempis was a priest in an Augustinian monastery in the 1400s. Presumably his life conditions favoured the silence and solitude that he advocates for in The Imitation of Christ , but also gave him opp...

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Search This Blog