If you have no good drive in you, your life will not be steered through a good direction. It will miss its destined station.
Passion or drive is what moves the vehicle of a fulfilled life. ― Israelmore Ayivor
From August 8, 1990. – JDW
I gave up childhood dreams of auto racing when Miss Harple, the substitute gym teacher, gave me an ‘F’ in Driver’s Ed. for doing fifty-five (55) in a hospital zone. So, when the BMW/Skip Barber Advanced Driving School came to town, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
“A good and therefore safe driver understands,” – we’re told at the beginning of the one-day crash course. No pun intended. – “There is more to steering than turning the steering wheel, more to braking than stepping on the brake pedal, more to accelerating than pressing on the gas.”
For $450, you should expect such insight.
“Think of it. The continued existence in its intended form of a ton-and-a-half of steel of glass, and the safety if its contents, namely you, as it hurtles down the road and around corners and brakes to a stop, depends on four small contact patches not much larger than a postcard.”
Your life hangs on just how well the rubber meets the highway.
Norm Breedlove, like all of the instructors, is a professional race car driver. Norm is teaching us how to “toss” a car to avoid an accident.
You might remember Norm’s father, Craig Breedlove, who strapped four tires and himself to a Starfighter F104 jet engine and rode across the Bonneville Salt Flats at six hundred miles per hour (600 mph). A world land speed record.
I climb into an M3, [see photo above] a forty-thousand-dollar ($40,000) Teutonic hot rod, accelerating to forty, and try to guess which one of the three lanes will get the green light. I guess wrong and wipe out a dozen orange pylons.
Nothing screeches quite like Goodyear radials.
Before I take another run, they move the lights farther back. Just in case. “Think of the cones as infants,” Norm offers. “React. Don’t anticipate.”
I wait until I know where I’m supposed to go, only by then, it’s too late to get there. (Much like our government operates.)
I improve, but mostly I’m ready to slink home and count my testosterones. Beginning to think I drive about like Rosanne Barr sings.
We move to a large circle, which a water truck has recently irrigated. Around and around we go, faster and faster, then I punch the gas. That’s so my taillights can try to pass my headlights. Amazing how out of shape your car can be and still be controlled.
Most of us never get into this situation; our daily driving doesn’t involve three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spins. So, when that once-in-a-lifetime glimpse with Your Maker occurs, the typical response is immediate panic and a photo of your vehicle in the next day’s Metro section.
Typically, we all learn to steer in the direction of a skid. Unfortunately, nobody ever says diddly about the secondary skid that follows, inevitably putting us into the weeds. “Anticipate the rebound,” Norm explains, “then counter-steer.” Correct and recover.
The key is to take your feet off the brakes. And the gas. “When in doubt, both feet out” is the Skip Barber method.
Of course, if you do screw up, nail the clutch, nail the brake. “When you spin, both feet in.”
I am thinking about a post-it note for my dashboard.
Finally, it’s time for The Race Course.
I climb into the car with Norm as he shows me what not to do.
He wears the tires down to the steel belts while I try not to wet the seat.
Weak-kneed, I climb behind the wheel, buckle my helmet, and punch the puppy into second gear. I stay there, hitting over one hundred (100) kilometers per hour on the short straightaways. Norm rides along for the first lap.
He’s saying “more gas, more gas,” like it’s a damn mantra. I’m thinking, ‘Are you talking to me?’ I’m already on the edge of the edge.
Then I’m alone. Man and machine. A lifetime’s fantasy fulfilled.
Lap after lap I go, each faster than the one before. Those orange babies are safe with me. Where the pros were running the course in twenty-eight (28) seconds, I’m running in the low thirties (30) and I know I can go faster.
I take the checkered flag and decide to go for a victory lap. Might be the last chance I ever get.
Climbing out of the driver’s seat, I shake Breedlove’s outstretched hand. He smiles. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
“Only in my dreams, Norm. Only in my dreams.”
Rare photo of me actually washing my car. About the time I wrote the story.
Epilogue. I have two speeds, statuesque and Geronimo. Unfortunately, I also have an automatic transmission with a mind of its own.
I can be amazing or a maniac. Or an amazing maniac. Sometimes it all comes together.
That’s what happened at Advanced Driving School.
No other explanation.