The Next Step. . .

           The transition from go-karts to stock cars was a big one.  Most kids were going to micro-sprints, or a small 4 cylinder cars to gain some experience.  I didn’t have the money to spend a few years in those lower classes so I went after a car in the class of pro-stock.  It’s basically a dumbed down asphalt late model, and a lot more complicated than I gave it credit for.

            I remember the day I bought my first stock car.  I thought I was going to go conquer the asphalt racing world.  One Saturday morning in June of 2002, I traveled to New Jersey and bought the car, a trailer and a whole bunch of spare parts for way to much money.  The only thing I knew at that moment, was that I had a racecar and it was coming home with me.  At the time, I didn’t have a shop, so I convinced my parents into letting me keep it in the family home’s two car garage.  I crammed it so full of parts I had absolutely no room to work.  This was also the time I realized that neighbors in a rural sub-division do not share my enthusiasm for racecars.  It was time to find my own space.

            I found a garage to rent that was close to home and convinced the landlord that I wouldn’t be loud or cause any trouble.  The costs of racing were quickly mounting, and although I was living at home still, I was starting to run out of money- and I hadn’t even been on the track yet.  To this point, I was doing most of this by myself, I had been able to line all of this up, and to this point make it happen.  This didn’t seem too hard, but I quickly learned I needed extra help.  I enlisted a buddy of mine, we were friends from high school, and more importantly his girlfriend was friends with my girlfriend.  I remember that our first race was going to be in August of that year, and we spent that summer getting the car ready to go, painting it and making it ours.

            It is important to note, at this point, the racecar was definitely taking more of our time than we thought it would.  The summer of 2002, I realized that girls might think racecars are cool, but they don’t like it when their boyfriends spend more time with a car, than they do with them.  Life is just full of lessons.

            August came and so did the Saturday that would be our first race.  Picture 2 guys, a beat up Chevy pick-up, which was completely over loaded with stuff we didn’t need, a trailer that was too heavy for the truck, and a racecar that barley fit on the trailer.  Throw it a 19 year old kid that never really towed anything and you have a recipe for disaster.  We packed the truck, with our girlfriends, and a few sandwiches, and down the road we went, not realizing what laid ahead for us, just chasing a dream of going racing.

            Check back on December 22^nd, I will have another update, and please check out my sponsors on this page, they help us out- so click them and see what they are about.