24 Hours of Lemons

Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “auto racing, bullfighting and mountain climbing are the only real sports.  The rest are merely games.”  While I can speculate as to whether or not Hemmingway possessed the stones to say that to a modern day NFL linebacker (he did), he was onto something when he mentioned auto racing.  Yes, the need for speed has been in my bones long before Maverick buzzed the tower.  Sadly, a wrecked motorcycle, a haunted jet ski shipwrecked off the coast of Southern New Jersey and several bouts of license revocation would seem to indicate that perhaps I should switch to the slow lane every so often.

But great men have never listened to the clear signs that Fate sends them.  And neither do I.  That is why, for the second year in a row, I (and “esteemed” teammates) will be competing in a contest of lunacy known as the 24 Hours of Lemons.

The 24 Hours of Lemons is an auto race in which teams of maladjusted people race automobiles that must be purchased for less than $500.  The car must pass Tech inspection as well as Bullshit inspection (guys in judge robes decide if you were stupid enough to secretly drop a Corvette engine into a AMC Gremlin) and said car must then survive 24 hours of full on racing on a designated speedway with 60 or 70 other jerks trying to put you into the wall with their piece of crap they bought as well.

Wait, wait, the best part is that the winner gets $1,500 in prize money…in nickels.

In our case, Betsy, our nubile chariot of glory, is a 1995 Ford Escort LX (we paid extra for the ‘LX’) that smelled like a dead raccoon when we bought her, use of brakes actually sped the car up, and had a pile of clothes in the trunk with blood stains on them (this part is totally true).  As per regulations, we stripped her down, installed a roll cage, and removed all glass other than the windshield.  We raced her last year in New England, but sadly, her clutch blew after 6 hours and we had to retire her for the Season.

But like a bad rash, we’re back and this year, my team and I are competing in the Capitol Offense race in Summit Point Speedway in West Virginia on June 19^th & 20^th.  While I’d like to say a lot of work has gone into Betsy to get her ready for this race, I really couldn’t call myself a writer if I described our race preparation efforts as “work”.

It’s hard to describe the process of 5 grown men with little mechanical knowledge attempting to work on an automobile that should have died through assisted suicide decades ago.  But if you could image 5 retarded monkeys trying to fuck a football while covered in peanut butter, you’d be awful close.

The truth of the matter is that two of my teammates possess quite a bit of automotive mechanical knowledge.  This means that most of our weekend “work days” really consist of three of us drinking Mexican beer in folding chairs while watching the other two fight about the moral imperative to replace cylinder heads on a 15-year old hooptee.  And before you entertain any notions that this discourse is some Shakespearean debate a la Jefferson and Douglas, I assure you it’s more like watching two pantless bums fighting over a week-old chicken leg.

So given this sad state, progress on Betsey has moved forward in awkward fits and starts.  But I can proudly say that we have put aside our differences to at least pay the entrance fee, and are now fully signed up and at least financial committed to run this race.

As I mentioned, we have to drive Betsey for 24 hours straight with each of us taking hour long shifts.  Did I mention that we brilliantly removed the air conditioner to save weight on the car.  Oh I’m sorry, did I mention my team is too cheap to buy extra race suits so now 5 grown men are sharing 2 one-piece firesuits for the duration of the race?  Nelson Mandela had better hygiene conditions when he was still in prison.

More on this ill-fated adventure to follow….