Bark's Bites: I'm Afraid, But I Still Race

“You know, if it’s not fun anymore, you could just quit.”

I stared at my father as he spoke these words, confused beyond belief. He had just picked me up from a brutal three-a-day football practice in the heat of the Ohio summer. As I sat there in the passenger seat of his piano black Infiniti J30, baking in the leather interior, I couldn’t begin to comprehend why he would tell me it was okay to quit.

Sure, I’d been complaining I was in danger of being passed over for a starting wide receiver spot, for which I’d been fighting for nearly three years. And yes, the practices were hard. We didn’t know much about things like “hydration” or “concussions” in the mid-’90s. We got water breaks about once an hour. If you got your bell rung, you just sat out a play and jumped back in. Sitting out too long meant that somebody else got your reps. But I never, ever considered quitting the team. Those guys were my teammates. My brothers. I could never quit on them. Quitting was for losers.

So as I stared at him, I decided right then and there that I wasn’t a quitter. Not only that, I decided that I would never become one. And that, my friends, is why I’m racing at Watkins Glen this weekend.

You see, amateur automotive racing is decidedly unglamorous. There’s nobody there to watch. Most of your friends will think it’s about as exciting as playing basketball at the Y — probably less so, because auto racing looks incredibly easy on television. The cars don’t look like the cars that your friends see on television either. They’re older. They’re not as beautiful. They’ve got scrapes and dents and character, man.

The risk? It’s substantial. While amateur racing is getting safer all the time (well, unless it’s budget, crapcan racing), people still get badly hurt. Sometimes, people die. And for what? What’s the great prize for which we’re all literally willing to risk our lives over?

Nothing. There’s no money to be won. In fact, there’s only money to be lost. It’s like playing Blackjack, but with no chance of winning. It’s hideously expensive to build a car. It’s hideously expensive to maintain a car. And God forbid that you wreck, especially if it’s not in your car. Be ready to write a check before you leave the track — assuming that you’re not leaving in a life-flight helicopter.

And much like Blackjack, you can do everything right, and you can still lose. Through no fault of your own, you can make a trip into the wall at a neck-breaking speed thanks to a squirrelly competitor. In fact, our last trip to the Glen ended in exactly such a fashion, thanks to an E30 racing us out of class in the Boot.

It’s because of all of this that I’m afraid. I’m afraid every time that I strap into the car. In fact, I’d be pretty stupid not to be afraid, right? I mean, at Mid-Ohio last year, a bad bearing on the right-front wheel made it impossible for me to navigate left-hand turns. Luckily, it happened early in my run and I noticed it right away. But, it did cause me to have a pretty adventurous off-track excursion in the “Madness” turn. What if there had been another car next to me going through that turn? Through no fault of mine, my day could have ended very, very badly.

It’s not just me that I’m afraid for, though. I’m afraid for my kids. Listen, I know that we all gotta go sometime, and I know that it’s more dangerous for me to make the nine-hour trek to Watkins Glen than it is for me to drive at Watkins Glen. But I’ve never let the kids come to a race. I don’t want them to have a lasting memory of Dad being taken away in an ambulance. Before I go to any race, I hug them a little bit tighter. I let them know that Dad loves them as much as anybody’s ever been loved. I always expect the best, but I prepare myself — and them — for the worst.

So there’s the fear element. But there’s also the team element. For the first time in 20 years, I’m on a team. Make no mistake about it — much like high school football, I’m the slowest, least-talented guy on the team, but they still need me to pull my weight to win the trophy at the end of the day. It’s not some bullshit “cross-functional Tiger Team” at work, where you actively despise half of your “team members” and you’re only on the team because somebody is making you be on it. It’s a real team, full of real guys who want to win just as badly as I do. We don’t have a pit crew, or a team manager, or spotters. We fuel the car, we fix the car, and we drive the car. We don’t have matching uniforms. We all have real jobs, real families, real responsibilities. None of us have to be there. We each have a thousand reasons not to be there. But we’ll be there, just the same.

Undoubtedly, the safest, easiest thing to do would be to never race a car again. I don’t gain anything that you can measure by doing it. But the things that can’t be measured I gain in spades. I gain friendship. I gain confidence. I gain brotherhood. And one day, I’ll get to look my son in the eye on a day that he’s afraid, on a day that life is hard and maybe even a little unfair, and I’ll tell him that sometimes Dad is afraid, too. I’ll tell him that even though he’s afraid, he’s got a team that’s counting on him to do his job, and that even if he’s the smallest and slowest player on this team, I’ll tell him that they still need him to win.

And just like my Dad told me it was okay to quit, I’ll tell him that it’s okay for him to quit, too. But you know what? It took me nearly 20 years to figure this out, but my Dad wasn’t telling me that it was okay to quit. He was reminding me that it wasn’t. He knew that my complaining and whining was just that. By telling me that I could quit, he was holding a mirror to my face and reminding me that quitting wasn’t something that I really wanted to do. And he was right.

When I strap into the car this weekend, I will be afraid — but that’s okay. Anything worth doing in life should be a bit scary. And when I emerge from the car, hopefully unscathed, it will be another life experience from which I can draw when the going gets tough. My job might get hard. Parenting might get frustrating. Money might get tight. But I don’t quit. I won’t quit.

Instead, in the face of fear, I fight. I scrabble. I race. Sometimes, I lose. Sometimes, I even get hurt. But sometimes, I win. And standing with my team, holding that trophy? That makes it all worthwhile.