Adrenaline

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My brother and I would help work the event being a flagger while my dad raced and one of the last events that I had the opportunity be a flagger at was a rather large event in my dads’ career. It was at the Metrolina Expo Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. The track used to be a dirt circle track that was revamped into a motocross track. The ATV that we used to race this was a Yamaha Banshee. It was a 350 cc, twin cylinder, two stroke engine that was bored and stroked to a 440 cc that ran 122 octane race fuel. Registering roughly 116 BHP, the quad leaves your stomach behind like a rollercoaster. So during practice, he ran the quad around the track to get a feel for the tracks relentless obstacles and figure his best hypothesized racing line. Then qualifying time came and he went to the starting line with the twenty other adrenaline fueled junkies. Not doing so bad in the first two laps, my dad goes over an eighty foot table top, comes down on the landing wrong causing the throttle to stick wide open into the next jump and sends himself and the ATV careening through the air like a midget on a trampoline. The ATV hit the top of an RV and bounced back onto the track.

Being a flagger, I watched the whole event happen. With it being the last qualifying race, there’s always down time before the main event so my brother and I helped carry the quad off the track and practically replace almost every part on the quad with the spare parts we had earlier loaded in the trailer. My dads’ class gets called to the starting gates and the four wheeler won’t start. Trying and trying and trying, it still wouldn’t start so a friend of ours said to take their four wheeler instead. As he fought through all of the dirt bikes in staging lanes, he finally made it out to the track only to have first place fly up right behind him like a fighter jet in a dog fight. Four laps had passed out of the fifteen lap main event and my dad had made his way from last place into the top five. Rounding the twelfth lap, not only had he taken first place, he lapped the field of riders up to third place and eventually he won the race and prize money. Being a flagger at the event and seeing this all first hand, up close and center of it was truly awesome. My brother and I finished our night of work, helped load everything up in the trailer and left the track to endure our three hour trip home.

Normally spent from a hard and long days work, we couldn’t sleep a wink from the overwhelming feeling of excitement and accomplishment we all felt.