Rallycross

Yesterday I took a day off. I left home at 3:30 in the morning and didn't get back until 11:00 at night. I drove 409 miles all told. Why? All to drive ten laps, slightly over 5 miles, around a 14 acre field with a bunch of other people that all thought it sounded like fun. At it was fun. A lot of fun.
A while ago I wrote a post about autocrossing. The best explanation for this type of silliness is this: It's like drag racing, but instead of going in a straight line, it's all curvy, and instead of being on a purpose built track, the track in laid out with traffic cones in a big parking lot. There are classes for different cars, but basically the guy who drives fastest wins. Wins what? Nothing, it's all for fun. Spending a whole day driving fast (or slow in my case) cars around a parking lot for fun. This is an odd subset of the population to be sure.
However, there is a subset of this subset that is even a little bit odder. Those are rallycrossers. Rallycrossers somehow have decided that pavement is simply too boring and predictable. They prefer to run events that are basically just like autocross, but instead of parking lots, they use big dirt fields. People say that autocross is about the most fun you can have with your car. They're right. It is about the most fun. The most fun is rallycross.
So yesterday I did my first rallycross in a decade. There was one event held in Houston way back in the day, and then nothing until this year. This year there are monthly events held either west of town a couple of hours, or north of town about the same distance. It's a bit of driving, but driving to go driving seems to make sense. My street tires are incredibly inappropriate to drive in anger in the dirt, so I bought a set of agressive snow tires and had them mounted on an extra set of wheels. I loaded them up, drove to the event and switched wheels in the parking lot. My gentle daily driver was instantly transformed into a rallycross beast. Kind of.

Prouder than I probably should be. 

I had a great time. There were two of this year's rallycross national champions at the event. Everyone was friendly and helpful. It was very common for everyone to cheer when someone had a good run and beat their previous best time. The course and the facility were fantastic. I spent the day looking at cars, talking about cars, and driving cars. Also, quite surprisingly, I won. After ten runs, the times were checked, and I was the fastest two wheel drive car that drove. I don't win a whole lot when I compete at anything, but when I do, it feels really good.
It's hard to justify taking a whole day to myself. There is a house that perpetually needs things done. Things fixed, laundry washed, cleaning in general. There are four kids that need tending to lest we end up with a Lord of the Flies situation. Parenting is a team sport, and walking away from that just to have fun is a hard thing do to sometimes. It's also hard not to do it. It's hard to keep your nose to the grindstone day after day and not occasionally engage in a pastime that you love and blow off steam. Recharge if you will. My wife is awesome and understands this. I try very hard to be awesome and not abuse the privilege. It's a balance. It's working. If you ever see me in person and wonder why I'm so damn happy, this is a big part of it.