Why I race

So this past calendar year I retired from working, and (happily) from looking for jobs. Don’t get that wrong; I have been *very* fortunate, was always employed in the very competitive (read: bloodthirsty) world of corporate IT, and have been lucky to find and retain posts even as I saw colleagues drop from theirs and disappear.

The last six or seven years have found me back in racing after a long layoff, picking up the pace even more in the last two or three. When I retired I said I would be growing my flowers, brewing my beer and racing my cars; as Meat Loaf sang lo those many years back, Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad. (Make your own guesses about which two; I already gave you one. )

Retirement is often envisioned as a time to slow down, or even stop. Mint juleps on the veranda, playing chess with the other old guys in the park, reading all the free books, magazines and newspapers at the library, and the like. I even envisioned my own retirement with sunny walks to the library where I would race the other old guys to the Boston Globe. But no, the kind of racing that beckons would not be at the library, but at the speedway.

How is that? Upon reflection it turns out that it’s pretty simple. In a world full of tumult, ill will and greed, racing people are among the friendliest, most generous folks I have ever run across. If you have a problem, you find yourself surrounded by knowledgeable people willing to advise you. When something breaks, those generous folks rummage about their precious collections of stuff and offer up parts that they hope will help you. And when you wreck (which you will, trust me) they come over and grunt and groan and help you push your wounded ride back onto the trailer. And it is all of free will; there is no quid pro quo, or whatever it is, at work here. People just come to help, of their own good nature.

And that’s it. The racing environment, somehow, allows people to let their good nature show in ways that the rest of the world would deny them. Again, don’t get me wrong; outside of racing, a lot of these folks probably have to scrap and fight their way through life with the grittiness and tenacity that modern life demands, but once at the track we are all just a group of folks with like passions, there for each other.

And that, friends, is why I race. In racing, we can be generous and helpful to each other, and nobody objects. And that’s why I wish that every day could be Race Day.