Misadventures in Racing

My father-in-law's birthday was last week, so we celebrated on Saturday.  For something fun/different, we ventured into Iowa for some Go-Kart Racing.  I had no idea what to expect, but it sounded like fun.  I'm kind of competitive, so I was hoping to make a decent showing.  My goals quickly changed as the day progressed.  Originally, I wanted to win.  Then we had to sign a waiver about death and severe injuries and my new goal was "win and don't get injured/killed."  

Me, Becca, Nicole - smiling before the first race

Cecil and John before the first race

The teenager running things gave us a quick rundown of the rules and I immediately forgot about 90% of it.  I figured I could just catch on to what everyone else was doing.  Then he said I was in the first cart.  Not cool, dude!  Then he told us to tie up our hair, because it can light on fire (new goal - don't burn my hair off!)

Starting scoreboard - the last time I will be in first place.

I got off to a rocky start - I didn't realize how hard I'd have to push the gas, and how tight the steering wheel would be.  My goal quickly changed from "win" to "don't get last!"  Success!!  I got 4th out of 5th place.  Pretty sure my MIL was just being nice and didn't want to risk running into me when she tried to pass.  Just to give you an idea, the race is 16 laps.  By the time John finished, I was only on lap 14.

For the second race, I just wanted to beat my average lap time (23.66), and my fastest lap time (20.86).  I thought it would be pretty easy now that I had the hang of driving these crazy machines.  Oh, how wrong I was...

It started off pretty well.  I was going faster and thought I might not get lapped twice this time.  On my 5th lap, I don't know exactly what happened, but I somehow crashed into the barriers, like really hard.  This is pretty normal, so the guy came to rescue me, but then he realized that he couldn't, because I had crashed so hard that my go-kart actually went under the barrier and was completely stuck.  Don't worry - there were several spectators laughing at me, so that made it much better!  At least I had a helmet on so they couldn't see how completely mortified I looked!  They had to stop the race, get a few guys to free/fix my vehicle, and then I got to keep racing.  But at this point I was totally freaked out.  My average lap time for that race went down to 33.4.  I did beat my previous fastest lap time (19.02).  It's just that my 5th lap had an extra 2 minutes for the rescue.  I only finished 10 of the 16 laps that time.  So embarrassing!  

Me and Becca before the 3rd race - I'm still fairly embarrassed at this point

For the 3rd race, my new goal was to not crash.  That's all.  I tried to be quick but cautious.  This was the best race for me.  I got my average down to 22.97, and I didn't draw any embarrassing attention to myself!  I call that a win!  I mean, unless you consider that I got last place, again.  But I finished 12 laps!

So fast it's just a blur!  

Anyway, that's my go-kart story.  It was about 82% fun and 18% stressful/embarrassing.  And I felt like I had been in a legit car accident, so that wasn't good.  Probably not something I do on a regular basis!  I'm more of a mini-golf type of girl!

**Special thanks to Becca and Nicole for sharing pictures.  I'm so fired from being a blogger!