Greg Collier
20+ Year Contributor
- 1,258
- 14
- Mar 8, 2003
-
Diego,
California
Like anything new and different there always seems to be a mystery at the beginning of a voyage. I relate a new adventure in my life like going from the sixth grade into Jr. High school. That first day of uncertainty, all masses of people, going from being a big fish in a small pond to being shark bate in a huge ocean. We never lose that insecurity with the idea of starting something we've never done before. Twenty-five years ago I came up with the saying, "if you drop all your excuses all you can do is do." It got around until someone at "Nike" heard it and they shortened it to, "just do it." I never saw a red cent!
Road racing is on its way to becoming a huge phenomenon. There are new clubs and venues springing up from the dust all over the country. I've been fortunate over the years to have been apart of quite a few of these organizations and have found a home with NASA. If you think about it, all these people went from the sixth grade to Jr. High just like you and me. The difference is that they decided to take a chance and try something new. What seemed scary and unattainable was just their own insecurity. Some people will make up so many excuses like I don't have the money and never will, or my car is a big piece of crap belching oil all over the place. So my suggestion would to be save a couple hundred bucks and fix your frigging car! So much for my psychology of self-esteem, and the woulda, shoulda, coulda, syndrome...
Let's say you decide to go for an adventure with NASA. Find the web site for your local region. Sign up for membership at a whopping $40.00. Then sign up for the first event that you can attend. It may be at a racetrack two or three hours away. If you're a beginner, and let's face it, you are probably a beginner with absolutely no racetrack experience in your life, so sign up for HPDE 1. This can all be done online which includes confirmation of your particular event. You can sign up for one or both days of the event.
If the track you're going to is three hours away, you might want to think about reserving a hotel room for the night before. NASA usually has deals with hotels in the area so you can probably get a cheap room for the night or weekend. You most likely won't be able to sleep anyway so it's a good idea to be close to the track for that days festivities. You're gonna have to be there really early anyway, so driving three hours to the track, then to get onboard with all the information would be a real pain in the ass.
Saturday morning of your first event you'll want to be there by 7AM. There's usually a mandatory HPDE drivers meeting at 7:30, then you'll need to get your car tech-ed. You need to show that your brakes are in good working order, your tires aren't bald, you have seatbelts, you don't have a bunch of stuff laying around the car that's going to fly every which way but loose, and you have a regulation helmet.
It'll be time for your first session and you'll take your car and line up in the grid area just before the entrance of the track. At that point a bunch of driving instructors will start jumping in all the passenger seats of your HPDE group. Take their direction and have fun. You won't be starting out driving a 100mph passing everybody like Joe Racer. You'll learn car control taking a slow pace to help make you comfortable with what you're doing. If you're a more advanced driver and the instructor agrees, you can move up to the HPDE 2 group over the course of the weekend. That concept is usually Joe Racer's fallacy.
By the end of the first day you'll have actually learned something about car control and I can almost guarantee you'll make at least a half dozen new friends with the same dream as you. Oh yeah, the amount of women that are turning out for the HPDE groups is growing leaps and bounds...
By the end of the weekend you'll kick yourself for not having done this last year or the year before. You'll definitely be hooked and the next event will not be able to come quick enough.
Racers are good people willing to help anybody out. Sure you have your assholes but that's why they're called "being humans"...
Greg
Road racing is on its way to becoming a huge phenomenon. There are new clubs and venues springing up from the dust all over the country. I've been fortunate over the years to have been apart of quite a few of these organizations and have found a home with NASA. If you think about it, all these people went from the sixth grade to Jr. High just like you and me. The difference is that they decided to take a chance and try something new. What seemed scary and unattainable was just their own insecurity. Some people will make up so many excuses like I don't have the money and never will, or my car is a big piece of crap belching oil all over the place. So my suggestion would to be save a couple hundred bucks and fix your frigging car! So much for my psychology of self-esteem, and the woulda, shoulda, coulda, syndrome...
Let's say you decide to go for an adventure with NASA. Find the web site for your local region. Sign up for membership at a whopping $40.00. Then sign up for the first event that you can attend. It may be at a racetrack two or three hours away. If you're a beginner, and let's face it, you are probably a beginner with absolutely no racetrack experience in your life, so sign up for HPDE 1. This can all be done online which includes confirmation of your particular event. You can sign up for one or both days of the event.
If the track you're going to is three hours away, you might want to think about reserving a hotel room for the night before. NASA usually has deals with hotels in the area so you can probably get a cheap room for the night or weekend. You most likely won't be able to sleep anyway so it's a good idea to be close to the track for that days festivities. You're gonna have to be there really early anyway, so driving three hours to the track, then to get onboard with all the information would be a real pain in the ass.
Saturday morning of your first event you'll want to be there by 7AM. There's usually a mandatory HPDE drivers meeting at 7:30, then you'll need to get your car tech-ed. You need to show that your brakes are in good working order, your tires aren't bald, you have seatbelts, you don't have a bunch of stuff laying around the car that's going to fly every which way but loose, and you have a regulation helmet.
It'll be time for your first session and you'll take your car and line up in the grid area just before the entrance of the track. At that point a bunch of driving instructors will start jumping in all the passenger seats of your HPDE group. Take their direction and have fun. You won't be starting out driving a 100mph passing everybody like Joe Racer. You'll learn car control taking a slow pace to help make you comfortable with what you're doing. If you're a more advanced driver and the instructor agrees, you can move up to the HPDE 2 group over the course of the weekend. That concept is usually Joe Racer's fallacy.
By the end of the first day you'll have actually learned something about car control and I can almost guarantee you'll make at least a half dozen new friends with the same dream as you. Oh yeah, the amount of women that are turning out for the HPDE groups is growing leaps and bounds...
By the end of the weekend you'll kick yourself for not having done this last year or the year before. You'll definitely be hooked and the next event will not be able to come quick enough.
Racers are good people willing to help anybody out. Sure you have your assholes but that's why they're called "being humans"...
Greg
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I don't even want to visit it
