Oddly, I’ve been told people are waiting for my next post about last weekend. Why is this odd, because I thought a grand total of 2 people actually read this site. I’ve been meaning to get this post up, but I’ve been busy this week. House hunting again and I think I may have found something actually. I guess I’ll know better tonight after 6:30. Funny thing is the house is up for sale because the couple divorced and they need to get it sold quickly. I know how that works and really, that’s a good thing for me if it was anything like when I sold the other house. Although, I’m sort of liking the whole having extra money thing, now that I’m caught up and debt free. The 46″ LCD TV fund is already up to about $650 and I started it only a few weeks ago. Although, since everyone seems to have money issues or vacation issues I guess it doesn’t do me much good to have extra money with nothing to do unless I want to do something alone. I’m about to start offering to go on random trips with random people just for the reason of doing something fun and different and experience more in life besides Lincoln, Nebraska. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up one of those breaking news stories when I take off to the mountains with a crazy person I don’t know and I never come home.

I really think I could move to the Bonner Springs area… that’s where Kansas Speedway is at. Maybe it is because of all my time spent up there and the fact I know how to get around and where all the cool places to go are. The Legends shopping center is awesome. Cabelas and Nebraska Furniture Mart plus a bunch of the normal “mall” shops. They have the biggest TJ Maxx I’ve ever seen. The restaurants are awesome. The Yard House, Athur Bryant’s, Cheeseburger in Paradise, Saddle Ranch Chop House, Jazz and Johnny Carino’s to name a few. Plus Kansas Speedway, Sandstone and T-Bones Communityamerica Park are right there too. If you want to kill a weekend, there’s no better place within 3 hours.

Suited up in my firesuit for the Jeff Gordon Racing School - 7.5.2008

Alright, so the driving. I wasn’t really sure how the day was going to go but it wasn’t too bad. I wasn’t expecting some long boring 3 hour class but really it was more like “Okay, get in and drive”. Check in was at 10:30 and got my fire suit and had some pictures taken just standing by one of their cars so they could try to sell them to me later. At 11:00 there was a drivers meeting where they went over everything. There was probably 20-25 people there for the same session we were in. Then they took a bunch of people out on the track to show you the line to drive, tell you when you should be in what gear and what to expect. They stopped this tall van with about 12 guys in it on the 15 degree banking at the Apex of 3 and 4; I seriously thought it was going to topple over if anyone shifted their weight. Next time they went through the turn at 60 and it shifted the weight out and it felt much safer. They kept saying the faster you go the more control you’ll feel like you have, and that was definitely true. After that, we got the how to get in and out of the car, shifting and pedal lesson. Then we got our helmets and luckily we were in the first group they called. It was a one-on-one instructor session. The key is staying 4 car lengths behind your instructor and shadow him. If you have to pass, he wouldn’t go down till you were clear and if you were getting passed, he wouldn’t go back up till you were clear. There were 4 instructors taking 4 drivers out at a time and then the champ ride car (this was a driver taking people for ride-alongs at full speed instead of the slower speeds we went). So up to 9 cars on the track and the whole time I passed only 2 cars. We were told you’d start slow and then move up to speed each lap. You have no communication either while you are driving, but at the flag stand you get flagged each time if you’re gap is too big or too small behind your instructor. I never got any flags so I guess I’m good at following. If you get too many flags for being to close they’d take you off the track and if you got too many for being to far behind they’d stay at the speed you were at for the rest of the laps. It was pretty interesting really, and loud. It was way easier driving the car in real life than driving in the Nascar Racing 2003 game online. I ran a 143.79 lap time and my dad a 142.29. Seems like a big gap but it is actually only 2/10s of second difference on that track. There was a lot of gas pedal left, I just wish my instructor would have gone faster but I think they had predetermined that is going to be about the speed they drive. Now for the interesting part… the pictures I mentioned you could buy after the fact for $50 for two pictures. I opted instead, which I think I some how got talked into, for the video. When you get your fire suit they give you a USB drive. Well, that goes in the car when you are getting in and plugs in to the two cameras to record everything. One camera faces out on the track and the other camera faces you while you drive. I may be crazy for paying for the video but I figure I probably wouldn’t be doing that again anytime soon… it was $139 with shipping and should be here in about 3 weeks. Hopefully it is worth the money because $139 for a video that’s probably less than 10 minutes of driving is kind of nuts!