Riding in an Atom around Hallett
Photos to follow. :-)
I just had a ride around Hallett in EricHowes' Atom.
Beautiful day: mid 70's temperature, nice breeze. The sun beamed down benignly on a rainbow of Atoms, blatting fiercely around Hallett Raceway in central Oklahoma.
Hallet, near sunrise/set
It is 4:30 pm or thereabouts when EricHowe invites me to ride again in his new Atom, this time around Hallett. The gentle sun lies rather close to the tree-lined horizon. Sounds good to me!
I borrowed a helmet. They helped me strap it on.
I got in the car. Someone helped me strap into the five-point belts. I gotta to be cool now. I can't let my head even touch the headrest for a moment. As they strapped me in, if I had had an ego, I would have quipped "I feel like Lewis Hamilton about now."
No ego, no more.
You must realize that you cannot read this post as fast as the ride happened to me. somehow, you must read this post with a computer brain, which through which the words fly at near light speed. That being not the case for most of us, my slow syllables must substitute for something truly rapid.
Eric bounces his new Atom, a 300 this time, onto the false grid. A man, perhaps Hallett's stand-in for James Bond's "Q", reaches in and fiddles with Traqmate electronic whatsit on the floor in front of my seat.
Hallett's "Q"
While he does that, I give an extra tug on my shoulder belts; I am so experienced, so wise to know the belts must be tight. Hallet "Q" gives Eric the thumbs-up, which Eric returns.
Eric hits it. We blast out onto a clear circuit. 'Oh, yeah,' I think, fleetingly, as we enter the front straight, 'that was about the same as the "gentle blast" Eric gave me on the street--'
He tromps the accelerator again.
A higher supercharger scream than before: Eric ordered a Honda engine for this Atom. The lies I love to tell myself continued to sputter in my slow brain before it catches up with the truth, '--nothing to be amazed at--'
The nose of Eric's Atom sucks down the pavement at an enormous velocity. All around me, tarmac, snakey ribbons of tiremarks, the tiny ridges of the pavement get sucked up under the car and spat out behind us. A tremendous velocity. My helmet hits the back of the seat.
Some words, not allowed on this forum, escape my lips as We snake over a hill I had not seen and hurtled down to--a TURN!
BWWAAAH! BWAAAH! the enginge shrieks as Eric downshifts. The wind is a living force, pressing my helmeted pate as Eric cranks the tiny steering wheel over.
Something else smoothly, but resistlessly, pulls my head in concert with the wind. This must be g-forces, my brain now says, after the fact.
At the time, the broad ribbon of tarmac rotates around my leaning head. Somewhere behind my head, the Honda engine screams up toward redline. The sun skews from behind my head to in front of my eyes.
Into another turn. More rotating trees, sun glaring smoothly around in front of my visor, my head sliding around. How can this be happening?
Non-representative, but nice, image stolen from the Gallery
Into the turn called "Carousel." In the long, cambered left hander, the five-point belts grab my body. My body is SQUISHING against the belts and seat. I am one with a rigid metal and plastic bolide, bending the forces of physics. My body is the weak spot in this missile.
And on, ever on, engine whining, tires scrubbing, into the combination of turns affectionately "*** *****". Up and over a hill, bottoming out into a sharp left hander. How can I keep my head up to see?
And then to the final straight before the final turn, my head vibrating like a tuning fork. One more mind-bending, body-squishing turn before we re-emerge onto the front straight.
To do it all over again.
And again.
And again.
By the fifth lap, I rest my head against the seat back the entire lap round.
Eric pulls off the circuit. He putters into a long "race port," a metal structure like a carport, but with no sides, just a roof.
My head feels three times as heavy as it had been before the ride. My hands do not even have the strength to push the seatbelt release. It is a long, careful process to climb over the suddenly very tall rails of the Atom. I stand there, breathing hard.
People look hard at me, concerned: "Are you okay?" "Take deep breaths."
I stare at my frowning interlocutors. What do I say? What words are there? What verbs do I use? What adjectives? What syntax?
Trying to answer them, my voice is husky, hoarse. Like I had just finished singing a two-hour concert.
I tell them, "Wow."
Yr fthfl srvnt,
Jacob :-)