Track Instructors

[pdub]

Try getting into a car on a race track with somebody else driving who has never driven on a race track before. I can't stand to ride in a car with anybody else driving.

These guys do it all the time. I've been to three track events, and have run off the road three times, and they laugh in the passenger's seat. Balls as big as Kansas.

And they get out of my car and go out and run their own car 3 times faster.

I'm glad they do what they do, and WOW are they good at it, but they're crazy.

[Loren]

I don't have anything to directly compare...maybe someday...but when I chose to take the last two hours of my high-school driving instruction in a stick-shift car (I didn't know how to clutch yet, and with this contracted training company it was an option), the instructor had me practice a little on a hill and then took me directly to downtown Glendale CA in afternoon rush-hour traffic.

Yeah, after a few blocks of terror and lucky green lights, I hit a red and stalled it. In a totally busy intersection, of course. Then I was having a little trouble keeping my composure and took four tries to get it started. The guy behind me was pissed, and honked away the whole time while the rest of traffic skirted around me by inches, hard on their gas pedals. I eventually got the little four-cylinder, four-speed Pinto going then right away three lanes turned into two and honking-horn-guy in his huge new mid-'70s Oldsmobile got pinched off again behind me while I stumbled along at 25 or probably less, and boy was he mad. As soon as he got the chance to change lanes he went flying around me on the right...but then evidently his next turn was to the left, into a small side street. So he veered across the lanes directly in front of me, his huge barge Olds leaning over and the tires squealing, and barely made it into his street without crashing into the curb while I was hard on the brakes and now in danger of being rear-ended by the next impatient guy behind me.

Then...I didn't get hit from behind, I did get the car into a lower gear and moving along, and the honking Olds was gone up the street and I was past it all. Finally I could look over to my driving instructor in the RH seat..really I expected to see him wild-eyed, an inch off the seat and tearing up my paperwork for the mess I'd caused.

No, he was just sitting there...his hands were folded in his lap...he looked at me in this completely calm, peaceful way and in the same voice you might hear in the classroom, said..."Now, see how unpleasant people can be? Now, if you'll just move into the left turn lane at this intersection coming up, and we'll continue along (so-and-so) street..."