The last time mum and dad visited us in Connecticut, we had a trip down to the indoor kart track in Wallingford. It’s a nice facility and we shelled out the cash, sat through the inane driver instruction video and got started.
Tight track, winding through tires piled five high. The first race dad just edged me out by a tenth of a second. Fair enough and only to be expected, he’s the one thats actually done motorsport from well before I was a baby, so he’s Ayrton Senna as far as I’m concerned.
The second race he got quicker taking another two-tenths off his lap time. But I was faster still and just nipped him for the win by a tenth of a second. I do remember he had a visible reaction to the lap times like he’d been given a nasty set of labwork results. When you do International Masters karting and your kid that doesn’t even have a kart beats you, it’s unpleasant.
I don’t really remember what I said to him then, but I do remember I was rude.
Last August we visited New Zealand to say goodbye to dad. He was well enough to chat with and hang out, but too sick to leave the house.
Except for the visit to the track.
Dad has been a long time motorsports guy and has done most forms of motorsport over the years… well until I came along and started eating into the budget anyway. But the last form he did was karting and he kept doing that until he was 62 and the cancer started getting a bit much.
But he’d hatched this really stupidly impossible idea to build a full international level kart track in Rotorua. Which naturally means there is now a 90% complete full international level kart track in Rotorua. There’s a few bells and whistles around the track to be completed, but the millions of dollars got raised and the track itself is all set.
Dad is a low key guy but very proud of what he’d built, so he came out to play show and tell. Karts are vicious on roads and rip them up quickly, so the track surface is essentially the same material as used on the banking at Daytona. It’s smooth as silk too. There’s no padding or suspension in a kart but you feel nothing but a smooth ride even at 60+mph.
Naturally I had to have a go. Dad was too sick of course, so he just watched from the pits. I had vaguely planned to do some sort of slowdown and salute move on the front straight as I went past on like the 3rd or 4th lap, but the track is so utterly brilliant that I just couldn’t stop pushing it. 100cc karts are not toys and there is moderate danger involved, so your mind tends to become hyper-focused once at race speed. Fastest lap of the day, but nothing amazing due to the wet surface.
Here’s a pic of me all alone on an empty track.
Anyway… dad took another four months to die after we left, and that’s why the book was five months late. We had actually cashed out my lame 401k in July last year to clear away credit card debt and have a stockpile for spending on the book… but mostly all eaten up with a non-cheap trip to New Zealand to see dad. Then the winter kicked our ass with heating costs. So that’s why there was no money for a fancy cover or website design.
Anyway.
I wish he could have read it. I also wish I wasn’t rude, about a lot of things.
Don’t wait.
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I'm sorry for you're loss, and thank you for this post, it really hit me. So much of who we are as men is tied up in our relationship with our fathers, and when things are left undone or unsaid, it wounds us in ways that are hard to heal. I think I'll go call my dad now…
hugs
My deepest condolences on the loss of your father, Athol.