Six Speed

A group of future motorcycle rider coaches called me Six Speed for a week, because of an embarassing motorcycle story I told them.  I later quit the training program, realizing that at the time I had too few social skills to be a successful rider coach.  This has almost nothing to do with this post.

Anyway, so apparently you cannot just drive up to a racetrack, and go mess around.  They want money.  Lots of it.  And you have to undertake some "training."  The best lead I have so far is a $500 dollar one-day racing course.  I am quite hesitant to spend $500 for only one day.  Admittedly, that is the same price I ended up paying to spend a couple hours in a Cessna 172 SP, but my solution to that problem was to switch back to the 172 P.  So...I'm not sure how to break into the racing world...at least, economically.  The whole point of this was the ultimatum I gave myself to start getting some use out of my STI, or sell it, because the giant-ass lease payment I have to make every month is too much for a car that I just commute to work in, especially when every single motorcycle I see fills me with longing for Katie.  So I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the car.

I have started to become enamored with the Cannonball Run.  To my dismay, the race, and even its successor races, are no longer held, due in large part to police activity and increased traffic.  This leads me to wonder if we have the technology to do it again.  And I don't just mean radar detection.  I mean vehicular caltrops, smokescreens, rear-facing ink (paintball?) guns, etc.  Maybe even paint that changes color, or a car that can morph its shape slightly to avoid detection.

In all honesty I think smoke is the best idea--especially if you are prepared for it and they aren't.  The the worst case, maybe some kind of unbeatable road block scenario, you could fill the highway with smoke, and have like a motorcycle in the back of the car, which you could escape on.  Ah, and a taser proof jacket!  Maybe a fake license, too, for racking up the points.  In the stories I used to write, the black muscle car The Road Ninja drove was a Boss 429, and while my Subaru looks and drives quite different, it is a black sports car.  The only problem is that you can't do certain vehicular acrobatics in a lightweight, probably-fiberglass, all-wheel drive Subaru.

Todays Hero
Yeah, anyway, what I really wanted to write about was todays hero, Casey Jones.  I discovered him during the wikipedia binge that started when I read about the cannonball run.  Casey's a real stand up guy.  What did Casey do that is so heroic?  Just go read wikipedia.

While I have no plans to ever be the one to save hundreds of lives by staying and slowing a doomed train engine, reading stories of such real life heroes is strangely fascinating.  I would like to find more.  Maybe make a list.  We'll call Casey here #2.  Hero #1 is the likely-coked-up guy that tried to burn down the duck boats' base of operations.