A day at the Track/ A night in Iraq.
I walked over to the technical inspection area at the racetrack. I wasn’t racing, just helping out. My friend was there for the first time with his BMW and talking to the technical inspector, agitated because the inspector and the usual group of regular car racers were crowding around, looking at his engine and insisting that his car was in a class far above where it should be.
The car should be in SPC. They were trying to put it in PC where real racing cars are classed. My friend’s is a normal street car with a really good motor. It looks fancy and it makes a lot of power, still not a PC car.
Racers are wound up in the morning. They have all of these feelings that they can’t place. Trepidation, anticipation, lots of adrenalin and anxiety coursing the body and it manifests through arguing and through dumb conversation.
My friend didn’t know what to say. When I walked over he looked at me, asking for help without having to say anything. I interjected and eventually the inspector placed him in the correct class, SPC. My friend was thankful and the barrage persisted. They recommended that he have a roll cage. This recommendation was made because the power play was still in effect, they were proven wrong by me on the classification but still wanted to give the new member difficulty.
“You should get a roll cage to run this car”
Really? Why?
“It’s safer”
and so the conversation started.
“I’ve been in a lot worse situations, trust me.”
I knew where this was headed. My friend was a soldier in Iraq. He’s now a cop in Boston.
“I don’t think so buddy” The group shook their heads at the new guy who clearly had no understanding of what high speed dangers lay ahead. They wanted to create that anxiety for him that they were feeling. It wasn’t working.
“Trust me,” he said “I have been in more dangerous situations.”
“Guys!” I interjected. I knew this was about to get out of hand. A contest of who had bigger balls and I knew my friend, even if he didn’t like racing at all had bigger balls than all of us.
They dispersed and I told my friend that they were always hard on the new guy, not to worry.
And an hour later it was over. He didn’t like racing. He did two laps and decided it was too fast, too risky for his beloved car but still something stuck with me about that discourse, and about the whole experience enough that weeks later I’m writing about it.
We all like to write about irony and there’s an irony here. Danger is very relative to our aversion to it. There is danger that we choose to be in and danger that we’re placed in. We choose to race cars. We choose our level of protection while we’re in the car, roll cage; no roll cage. If the car presents the opportunity for enough danger we mandate it through rules. What we don’t choose is driving through minefields, driving through IED’s getting shot at and of course as a direct comparison, driving without seatbelts, 4 wide in the back of an unarmored Hummer through the desert.
In Iraq my friend swapped seats in a Hummer with a fellow friend and soldier. Once they got underway they ran over a mine and his friend blew up in the seat he was supposed to be in. My friend almost lost his arm in that incendent. It was cut open from wrist to elbow leaving a huge hypertrophic scar suggesting it was wide open like a hot dog bun. He chose to be in the Army. He did not choose to have no seatbelt in the Hummer, or to have no underbody armor. He did not choose the route they took or what his mission would be on that day.
Whether we like it or not excitement we feel is based on limits that are set through prior experiences. Excitement is not synonymous with fun. Excitement can also be scary. Racing wasn’t exciting enough for him in any form to justify damaging his new car. This is something that I struggle with understanding but it makes more sense when the “high” level for excitement is set with near death.
2011
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