Hmmm? Isn't it? Banana?

Busted.

No, not a teen band post, this refers to getting caught doing things that are illegal.

Work is slow at present. The car that we are supposed to be getting ready to race is away getting a new body put on it, and the engine and gearbox are also away being done, so we have little to do. We have painted the workshop floor (twice), cleaned out and fixed up any of the pit trolleys that need attention and generally fucked about. While getting paid.

Boring, but it could be worse.

So our task the other day was to strip and rebuild the 125cc gearbox kart (like this one), as the team owner and now driver uses it to keep in shape. They are pretty physical to drive, and it is a pretty cheap way of keeping your reactions, eye coordination and neck muscles in shape. So Travis started cleaning it up, and I wandered over and helped every now and then. After dragging it out for two days, we decided that the time had come to start it up.

Now, I have seen these things started on the preparation stands by wrapping a rope around the rear tyre and pulling on it to bump start it. But being as the thing hadn't run in over a year, we suspected that may be unlikely to be successful. So we elected to bump start it. Travis got in (my fat arse didn't fit in the seat) and I pushed him around the workshop while it failed to start. Due to the temperature in the workshop being around 95 deg F (35 degC) once was enough, especially as we were making marks on the freshly painted floor every time he let the clutch out...

Hmmm, we mused, I think we need to be going faster, but also for longer to pull the fuel through. Let's go outside. And to help the 'faster and further' bit, I'll tow you with the Golf cart...

But the temptation of the open gate was too much, you see, so within 20 seconds of tying the kart to the, er, cart, we were zipping up and down the road outside the unit while Travis experimented with choke and carb settings to try and get it started. After a few minutes, we had it fired up and Travis went zooming off past me down the street to turn around at the end. Obviously, my golf cart was hopelessly slow by comparison, so I turned around early and headed back to the workshop. Travis (quite rightly, as it happens) took that to be a challenge, and came belting up the road after me, pulling gears and accelerating as fast as he could, to try and beat me back to the workshop. He came past me doing about 50 or 60mph, I guess, and was then hard on the brakes to stop by the junction at the end, with me puttering up behind him.

However, just as he managed to stop at the end of the street, a police cruiser came around the corner, right in front of him. Oops.

"You gotta be kidding me!" Says the cop, out of his window.

"Er. Pretty much, yeah." Says Travis- trying to stop the engine and pretend he hadn't been driving the race kart up the road at double the speed limit with no suit or helmet on...

Meanwhile, I nonchalantly buzz past the front of the cop car, on my golf cart, and park just inside the fence.

By the time I got to Travis and the copper, however, it was all smiles. Apparently the guy races a dirt track car (not sure what one of those is) and understood the need to 'run things in' once in a while.

"But y'all gotta get off the street, or y'all'll get me into trouble"

(Excuse the punctuation in that last bit, but that's what he said, and I have no idea how else to write it...)

So we got away with it, shockingly. Not too often that sort of thing happens. He missed us racing the team mopeds up the street for about an hour (speed limiters removed) the week before, trying to work out which one was faster and why - again with no helmets. So we neglected to mention that. The guy came around about an hour later and we showed him around the workshop, and he left his card with us in case we needed any help at race weekends. All a bit surreal.

It did prompt suggestions (after he had gone) from the boss that if we had a cop on the team, that John should dress as a builder, Travis as a cowboy, and me as a Red indian and we could have the village people themed pit crew. This suggestion was rejected.

posted by Brock @ Sunday, August 06, 2006