Cars.
Fast cars.
How I used to love them.
Sometime after my father died and my mother was still single she bought a blue Camero with rear window louvres and an eight track player.
I suspect that this is the one time in her life when my Mom indulged her inner badass.
This would have been in 1979-1980 when I was around two-ish and maybe the engine rev and style of the car stuck with me on some toddler level.
My first car was a Saturn. It was a five speed and I had to have friends teach me how to drive it because my mom didn't know how and my dad didn't approve of me having my own car at 16. I struggled with the clutch pedal especially on the Alabama hills and stalled constantly but eventually I got it.
Two of the important things that I wanted to know were how to change the tires and how to change the oil. I figured these were basic maintenance issues that every driver should know.
There was only one problem and that was my stepdad's attitude toward women and mechanical objects.
To him the most dangerous thing to moving engine parts wasn't dirt or leaking oil or rust- it was estrogen.
Put a woman next to a motor and it was bound to get destroyed.
Either the woman would break it by touching it in the wrong way or her womanly presence would cause something to go wrong.
This is a man who is an electrical engineer, a man who once took the engine out of a friend's car in college and reassembled it in his dorm room as a prank.
The know-how was there but the willingness to teach me was not.
I was constantly told not to touch his tools, not to plug my guitar into his amplifier and not attempt to fix anything on my car because he would handle it when he had the time.
When I laid down newspaper on the back deck, lined it with brick and hosed it down regularly during a freeze to make my own ice rink my dad's only response was, "you're going to pick up every last scrap of that newspaper."
The way I see it, dad missed out on a lot of quality bonding time with me because of his entrenched notions of proper gender interests and behaviors.
I could have been the son he always wanted but my being a daughter got in the way.
I truly believe growing up in a environment with this patriarchal thinking is why I took up ice hockey, joined the military, became a dj and found myself fixated on certain cars. (I would have taken up drumming too if my mother hadn't decided that the flute was a more suitable instrument for me.)
I felt a constant desire to be contrary to what everyone expected of my gender.
I had to get in there and do the things people were saying women couldn't do so I could smugly correct the dinosaurs who tried to say women just weren't made to do certain things or just couldn't handle them.
Luckily, not all men shared my father's aversion to teaching me about cars.
I had some cool guys come into my life and help me out.
My friend Lesley's dad showed me how to change a tire.
The experience was enhanced when my mate Ben let me strip, balance and replace my own tires in the garage where he worked.
William showed me how to do an oil change. He had these nice little ramps to put the car on so you could get under it comfortably and he had a very calm temperament which was also helpful.
My friend Ryan's father had a silver Porche Boxter which he was going to let Ryan an me take to Auburn for a football game but the weather was bad and he changed his mind. He did however let me sit in the driver's seat and start the engine so I could experience what it sounds like to have an engine roar to life behind my head.
Another friend of mine named Andy owned a black convertible Boxter and he let me drive it home from a bar one night. I was mildly buzzed at the time and had no business being behind the wheel. I can only guess that Andy was worse off than me and so letting me drive seemed like the solid choice at the time. What I remember about the experience was the smell of leather the precise handling of the gear shift and a voice in my head going "don't wreck it don't wreck it don't wreck it."
I dated a condescending structural engineer named Sam once and thought it would be cool to convince the guys at a local car lot to let me take their Dodge Viper out so I could pick Sam up for lunch in it.
I remember sitting in the drivers seat and chatting with the sales guy- "So, bottom feed fueling, what's that all about?" By the time I switched into my "so, I was thinking" spiel I realized what a huge liability having the car would be and that I didn't even like Sam well enough to do something like that for him.
In 2003-ish I worked for a newspaper that wanted a story on the Motorsports Hall of Fame at the Talladega Superspeedway. I could have gone to the museum, asked a few questions and written up a nice little piece but I saw an opportunity and I shamelessly went for it.
I went all wide eyed and "gosh mister that's great" with my host and let slip that I would loooove to see Speedway track.
Wish granted.
We drove through a tunnel out into the center of the speedway in his Ford Explorer.
It just so happened there was one of the those NASCAR driving classes going on that day.
It's one of those things where people who are bored and wealthy can hand over a couple of grand to get behind the wheel of racecar and zoom around the track a few times.
I will never forget the thundering roar of the cars tearing around the track. I got chill bumps on my arms and a terrible yearning to get behind the wheel.
I had never liked NASCAR before because I get panicked in large crowds of people and these crowds of people were the worst.
Imagine being stuck in a seething mob of drunken rednecks who look down on book learnin' and uppity women. They'll all be wearing wife beaters and puffy trucker hats and flicking mullet sweat on each other in their frothing enthusiasm. Beside them large women in Confederate Flag bikinis will be embracing the old Southern adage that "tanned fat is better than white fat."
I. Would. Die.
But take away the masses and give me trackside access to watch the cars and something magical happens.
We toured a workshop in the infield and I got to look under the hood of one of the cars. Every part not dedicated to making the car go faster had been removed. The headlights at the front of the car were decals.
Some of the earlier race cars in the museum had willy nilly roll bars going all over the place but this car seemed to have sorted things out.
Seeing that I couldn't hijack one of the race cars and take it around the track I asked my host if he would mind driving us around once or twice.
Wish granted.
The track has 33 degree banked turns which require a minimum speed of around 70 miles an hour to keep the cars from sliding off the track. I will always remember how the world slid sideways as we coasted into one of these turns and how I almost shat myself when the driver slowed down the car to show me how necessary speed was.
In 2005 I temped for a company in Monterey that had two warehouses full of rare motorcycles and cars, including a Shelby Cobra. They let me wander around in one of them and breathe in the rarefied air during one of my breaks.
In 2006 while I was living in Baja California I met a racing team called Dos Gringos y Muchos Mexicanos (two white guys and a lot of Mexicans).
The car they raced was an old Volkswagen Beetle and the race in question was the Baja 1000.
The Beetles run in the underdog class where the likelihood of even finishing the race in one piece is not good.
This is the class that is closest to most Mexicans' hearts because your "crew" consists of a bunch of guys with random tools who show up to help out. For their efforts they are paid in beer and goodwill.
I remember getting a small thrill as I helped the team push the car to the qualifiying inspection point.
If I recall correctly the car disintegrated somewhere in the Vizcaino desert but the drivers were unharmed.
My final badass car experience came about through meeting my friend Rami who was finishing up his PhD at Stanford University. Rami's thesis focused on what happened to a car during autonomous drift.
One magical night he took me to the University's workshop to see their show pony-an Audi TT that could be driven autonomously.
Stanford made headlines when they raced the car (nicknamed Shelley) up Pikes Peak via remote control.
Rami showed me the computers that had been neatly accommodated into the Audi's trunk, let me sit behind the wheel and called the event "When Kelly met Shelley."
Seriously, this night still ranks as one of the most awesome and unforgettable things that has ever happened to me in my entire life.
I still get a thrill from certain cars but my interest has definitely switched from speed to function.
Fast cars.
How I used to love them.
Sometime after my father died and my mother was still single she bought a blue Camero with rear window louvres and an eight track player.
 |
| Mom had one of these. Surprising. |
This would have been in 1979-1980 when I was around two-ish and maybe the engine rev and style of the car stuck with me on some toddler level.
My first car was a Saturn. It was a five speed and I had to have friends teach me how to drive it because my mom didn't know how and my dad didn't approve of me having my own car at 16. I struggled with the clutch pedal especially on the Alabama hills and stalled constantly but eventually I got it.
Two of the important things that I wanted to know were how to change the tires and how to change the oil. I figured these were basic maintenance issues that every driver should know.
There was only one problem and that was my stepdad's attitude toward women and mechanical objects.
To him the most dangerous thing to moving engine parts wasn't dirt or leaking oil or rust- it was estrogen.
Put a woman next to a motor and it was bound to get destroyed.
Either the woman would break it by touching it in the wrong way or her womanly presence would cause something to go wrong.
This is a man who is an electrical engineer, a man who once took the engine out of a friend's car in college and reassembled it in his dorm room as a prank.
The know-how was there but the willingness to teach me was not.
I was constantly told not to touch his tools, not to plug my guitar into his amplifier and not attempt to fix anything on my car because he would handle it when he had the time.
When I laid down newspaper on the back deck, lined it with brick and hosed it down regularly during a freeze to make my own ice rink my dad's only response was, "you're going to pick up every last scrap of that newspaper."
The way I see it, dad missed out on a lot of quality bonding time with me because of his entrenched notions of proper gender interests and behaviors.
I could have been the son he always wanted but my being a daughter got in the way.
I truly believe growing up in a environment with this patriarchal thinking is why I took up ice hockey, joined the military, became a dj and found myself fixated on certain cars. (I would have taken up drumming too if my mother hadn't decided that the flute was a more suitable instrument for me.)
I felt a constant desire to be contrary to what everyone expected of my gender.
I had to get in there and do the things people were saying women couldn't do so I could smugly correct the dinosaurs who tried to say women just weren't made to do certain things or just couldn't handle them.
Luckily, not all men shared my father's aversion to teaching me about cars.
I had some cool guys come into my life and help me out.
My friend Lesley's dad showed me how to change a tire.
The experience was enhanced when my mate Ben let me strip, balance and replace my own tires in the garage where he worked.
William showed me how to do an oil change. He had these nice little ramps to put the car on so you could get under it comfortably and he had a very calm temperament which was also helpful.
My friend Ryan's father had a silver Porche Boxter which he was going to let Ryan an me take to Auburn for a football game but the weather was bad and he changed his mind. He did however let me sit in the driver's seat and start the engine so I could experience what it sounds like to have an engine roar to life behind my head.
Another friend of mine named Andy owned a black convertible Boxter and he let me drive it home from a bar one night. I was mildly buzzed at the time and had no business being behind the wheel. I can only guess that Andy was worse off than me and so letting me drive seemed like the solid choice at the time. What I remember about the experience was the smell of leather the precise handling of the gear shift and a voice in my head going "don't wreck it don't wreck it don't wreck it."
 |
| She shifts well. |
 |
| A Viper in "hello officer" red. |
In 2003-ish I worked for a newspaper that wanted a story on the Motorsports Hall of Fame at the Talladega Superspeedway. I could have gone to the museum, asked a few questions and written up a nice little piece but I saw an opportunity and I shamelessly went for it.
I went all wide eyed and "gosh mister that's great" with my host and let slip that I would loooove to see Speedway track.
Wish granted.
We drove through a tunnel out into the center of the speedway in his Ford Explorer.
It just so happened there was one of the those NASCAR driving classes going on that day.
It's one of those things where people who are bored and wealthy can hand over a couple of grand to get behind the wheel of racecar and zoom around the track a few times.
I will never forget the thundering roar of the cars tearing around the track. I got chill bumps on my arms and a terrible yearning to get behind the wheel.
I had never liked NASCAR before because I get panicked in large crowds of people and these crowds of people were the worst.
Imagine being stuck in a seething mob of drunken rednecks who look down on book learnin' and uppity women. They'll all be wearing wife beaters and puffy trucker hats and flicking mullet sweat on each other in their frothing enthusiasm. Beside them large women in Confederate Flag bikinis will be embracing the old Southern adage that "tanned fat is better than white fat."
I. Would. Die.
But take away the masses and give me trackside access to watch the cars and something magical happens.
We toured a workshop in the infield and I got to look under the hood of one of the cars. Every part not dedicated to making the car go faster had been removed. The headlights at the front of the car were decals.
 |
| Steve sometimes pretended he was an inefficiently placed air filter. |
Seeing that I couldn't hijack one of the race cars and take it around the track I asked my host if he would mind driving us around once or twice.
Wish granted.
The track has 33 degree banked turns which require a minimum speed of around 70 miles an hour to keep the cars from sliding off the track. I will always remember how the world slid sideways as we coasted into one of these turns and how I almost shat myself when the driver slowed down the car to show me how necessary speed was.
In 2005 I temped for a company in Monterey that had two warehouses full of rare motorcycles and cars, including a Shelby Cobra. They let me wander around in one of them and breathe in the rarefied air during one of my breaks.
In 2006 while I was living in Baja California I met a racing team called Dos Gringos y Muchos Mexicanos (two white guys and a lot of Mexicans).
The car they raced was an old Volkswagen Beetle and the race in question was the Baja 1000.
The Beetles run in the underdog class where the likelihood of even finishing the race in one piece is not good.
 |
| God speed little bug. |
I remember getting a small thrill as I helped the team push the car to the qualifiying inspection point.
If I recall correctly the car disintegrated somewhere in the Vizcaino desert but the drivers were unharmed.
My final badass car experience came about through meeting my friend Rami who was finishing up his PhD at Stanford University. Rami's thesis focused on what happened to a car during autonomous drift.
One magical night he took me to the University's workshop to see their show pony-an Audi TT that could be driven autonomously.
Stanford made headlines when they raced the car (nicknamed Shelley) up Pikes Peak via remote control.
Rami showed me the computers that had been neatly accommodated into the Audi's trunk, let me sit behind the wheel and called the event "When Kelly met Shelley."
 |
| This is Shelley. We hung out once. |
I still get a thrill from certain cars but my interest has definitely switched from speed to function.
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