On Autocross

I need to get something off my chest. AUTOCROSS IS A JOKE. It is so boring I'd rather bamboo my fingernails than hang out with a bunch of people who have found a way to capture car-forum culture and replicate it perfectly in a parking lot with cones strewn about. The autocrosser has  mastered the post-experience cell-phone photo gloat session before the event is even over, talking about infinite spring rates and Ackerman angle. At the office the autocross competitor is a hero, cranking up the risk level in their weekend story to the level of a track day, then back down to console their spouse and convince them it’s for car control, and safety, for the baby.  It's a perfect metaphor, to everything on the internet; talk for 6 hours about an experience and actually DO SOMETHING for 30 seconds. There could be an autocross world championship a block from my house and I wouldn't go. I'd rather go to a car show; which isn’t saying much.

The last (and I mean that in two ways) autocross I went to required corner-work under the stewardship of a “veteran” who demanded I not touch my cell phone during the event and told me that we were on a very dangerous turn despite being on the inside-exit of a 90 degree bend and it requiring the top of 1st gear. For two hours, standing there,  I was subjected to the strangest combination of very basic questions from him on how to run a business and then statements by this person that they were opening a new shop of their own; which still hasn’t happened.

I was flagged for noise after one run, on an airstrip, at an airport, in an abandoned town. So much for bringing race cars to a car race. Rather than hang out with my new friends for 4 more hours to teach them what they were about to then re-tell me, I decided to forfeit my $20 dollars or whatever it cost and go home.

The autocross I went to before that was an even shorter event. I got into an argument over spilled coolant with a woman who turned out to be the event steward. She insisted that my car was leaking coolant onto the pavement next to her car. Upon short investigation we realized that it was actually HER car that was leaking and that my car wasn’t miraculously turning water, with which it was filled, into coolant.

2013