The Northward Contrail

An awful day

There are times I am thankful I'm a teacher of journalism and no longer an active journalist, because sometimes it's a heartbreaking duty.  Sunday reminded me of this.

There's a saying I share with my students, that "a good day for a journalist sometimes means a bad day for somebody else."  Sometimes those bad days come completely and cruelly out of the blue, and what happened in Las Vegas on Sunday was just such a thing.  We were tuned in when it happened, and watched the whole story as it progressed.  It was a spectacular crash, and we saw a bunch of cars flying, but we've seen a lot of those and most of the time, everybody walked away.  Because the cars and the tracks are a lot safer now, right?  The red flag was a given, because there was too much junk on the track to continue.

The first thing I do when I see a crash on television is to see if everybody's okay.  This one was scary enough that I held my breath for a little bit longer.  Details were slow in coming on the television.  I jumped online to get more information, even going to Twitter (heh...big mistake, for Twitter is the world's largest game of Telephone) to see if anybody on the scene had anything to add.  An initial report there had everybody being okay.  Yet when I looked at the television pictures, there was a car with a tarp over it.  Uh-oh.  Suddenly, memories of Daytona and 2001.

Interviews started to pop up on the screen.  A shaken Paul Tracy, outside the track care center, said his thoughts were with Dan Wheldon because (and I'm reconstructing this quote from memory) "that kind of injury will mean a long recovery." Uh-oh.  Medevac helicopter sitting there idling for what seems like a few too many minutes before finally lifting off.  Again, like the ambulance driving to Halifax Medical Center ten and a half years ago, it's all taking just a little too long for comfort.

Without anyone saying it, this was no longer a sporting event.  It was a televised vigil.  It's one of those times when I know what the reporters are having to do, and what the people in the booth are trying to do: gather information at a time when not many people have that much to say, or that much they can share - and, at the same time, trying to verify what they do find out, and trying to figure out not only what's worth sharing but what's appropriate to share.  It's a difficult thing for a journalist, especially if it's with people you know well, as motorsports journalists know the racers; you know they probably don't feel like talking, or that they can't tell you much, but it's your professional obligation to do your job.  The gifted ones are able to do this with the finesse appropriate for the moment.  Me, I'm unable, period.  I have an aversion to being in places where I'm not welcome, and talking to people about things they don't want to discuss. For that reason, I feel for those who have to do that job; it can't be easy.  But I'm also thinking, "I'm sure glad it's not me having to ask the questions."  (A selfish thing to think, I know, but entirely human.)

The longer we went without word, the more I steeled myself for what was likely to come.  When I saw Danica Patrick being consoled by her husband and a team member, something about that scene said, "They know something we don't, and it's not good news." The same was true of the broadcast team.  No matter how hopeful the words they spoke, the somber tone of their voices betrayed the cruel probability that they knew something, but couldn't say anything until it was officially confirmed.  There's this funny ache I get in the front of my head when something horrible has happened, and it started to come on - along with the same feeling I had that cold morning in February 2003 when multiple targets were reported over Texas and I knew we had lost a space shuttle.  It's wondering, "Okay, do I cry or do I go outside and throw up?"

A while later the drivers started to file out of the called meeting, and their drawn faces spoke volumes.  A close-up of a weeping Tony Kanaan told me everything.  The official announcement a few moments later -- "unsurvivable injuries" -- was but a formality.  We already knew.

There followed the five most somber laps I have ever seen on a race track. Not three hours before, Dan Wheldon had been as alive as you can be, a day or two away from announcing a well-earned new full-time ride for 2012, eager to end the season on a high note, no doubt looking forward to defending his Indy 500 title next May, and he'd just given an in-car report to ABC from down on the track before the race got underway.  Now he was dead, and the very same cars against which he'd competed three hours before, their drivers united in sudden grief, were circling the track in tribute to him. I've never heard the roar of engines sound so plaintive in my life.

I never closely followed Dan Wheldon, but I sure did like him.  He was a guy you could be happy for when he won.  For some reason his goofy smile and buoyant personality reminded me of Austin Powers, and we took to calling him "Austin Wheldon."  After he got his teeth worked on a few years ago, we called him "ol' Chompers."  Perhaps no win I'd witnessed in the series to that date made me as happy as his surprise win at this year's Indy 500.  Here was a guy who didn't have a regular ride (and that in itself was a shame), drove a smart race, and was in the right place at the right moment.  I'll never forget the pure surprise and emotion on his face and in his voice; so much had gone wrong for him up to that point, and yet he'd just won the biggest race you could win, in a very unexpected way.  It was exhilarating.

Even if you don't ever meet these people, you still get to know them through watching them on television, and it's inevitable you develop feelings for them, no matter how irrational you know it may be.  I never met Dan Wheldon, but he became a familiar presence on television and on the racetrack. We even got to see him race in person at the 24 Hours of Daytona a few times, including his team's triumph in 2006.  He had a lot more wins ahead of him.  I was looking forward to watching him for many more years to come. And now, just like that, he's gone.

I know motorsports will always be a dance with mortality.  I've always known this, because the list of racers who died in their prime is much too lengthy. 

But, damn it, it still doesn't make what happened Sunday any less cruel.

For Dan Wheldon

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

                                        -- A.E. Housman

A great weekend

There's not much to say this morning other than it was a great weekend.  It was Le Mans weekend, so we mostly stayed in, watched the race and built models, same as we do each year.  There was a break for lunch when the television network went to other events for a few hours; we drove into the nearest Really Big Town for lunch and ice cream, then came back home and got back to work on models, and spent the rest of the evening doing that and watching the race (well, watching the Indy car race from Texas until the Le Mans coverage came back on).

The fun continued yesterday.  The Le Mans race ended, but a couple hours later the Cup race from Pocono came on.  As did the Formula One race from Montreal...which was on a rain delay, but when it came back, it ended up being a dandy to watch.  Wet roads and cars driven on the edge mean compelling viewing, and closing laps that were anything but boring.  And even then, the racing wasn't done; there was a Continental Tire Challenge race on after that.

People talk about how Memorial Day weekend is a great weekend for motorsports, and that's true, with the Indy 500 and what was once called the World 600 the same day, and often the Monaco GP will be the same day too.  But this weekend gave Memorial Day weekend a run for its money, and it was a lot of fun.  I'm looking forward to doing it again next year.

Smokey gets his wish

A couple days ago there was a fire in Daytona Beach, and the last remaining section of an automotive landmark became history.  It was all that was left of Smokey Yunick's garage, and it went up in a rather spectacular blaze.

Smokey's garage was one of those places you had to seek out, especially as Daytona Beach grew up.  A few years ago, we were in town on one of our semi-regular visits and we drove up Beach Street to find it.  Smokey had been gone a couple years by that point, and we knew the garage's days were numbered anyway.  But we found it.  It was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence and stacks of old tires dotted the perimeter at intervals.  The buildings were quiet and empty.  Partly out of respect, but mainly to avoid trespassing, we didn't dare approach the fence; instead, we sat in the shopping center parking lot next door and shot a few photos. 

There's doubtless some folks who wished Smokey's garage could have remained as a museum and showcase.  But Smokey wasn't among them, and for several reasons.  He knew the land was valuable and could provide for his family after he was gone.  He didn't want to get into the museum business (according to some accounts, he'd noted the struggles Don Garlits had gone through keeping his museum afloat).  And by the 1990s, the place was getting run down, and keeping the accumulated stuff inside intact was becoming a lot of work.  In his very entertaining (and highly recommended, available here) memoir, Smokey wrote, "My goal is get rid of the stuff, get up on the roof with 20 gallons of gas, spread it around and light it.  The garage is 55 years old and it's getting in really poor shape.  We had two hurricanes in '99 and the roof looks like a chicken with most of its feathers off."

Once upon a time, I'd have been in the "preserve it" category.  But over the years, I've seen what happens to a lot of preserved structures: they lose their context with each passing generation, and become touristed-up, or get seized upon by those who want to use them as symbols for this or that, or they become pawns in larger battles, or someone buys them as expensive "look what I got!" trinkets.  Or they're not maintained properly, and either start looking utterly ridiculous because of improper restoration/conservation, or they're neglected and eventually fall apart. 

Don't get me wrong, for I am firmly in favor of preserving significant artifacts and structures.  But so little of what I see is done the right way, and so much of what has to be done to make them pay for themselves gets tawdry.  And the more of it you do, the less you preserve of what you're preserving, and the more context you lose over time.  Every once in a while I wonder if the stuff that gets demolished doesn't get the better deal, because at least they don't have to maintain their dignity and context in a world that's hell-bent on destroying that dignity and context in favor of the tawdry and the quick buck.

That's part of why, when they started tearing down Smokey's a few years ago, I couldn't get too terribly sad about it.  Because, that way, it stayed what it was until the very end.  And, more than that, it wasn't my call.  It's what Smokey wanted.  He made no secret that he wanted the property sold and the garage torn down.  No shrines.  His family wanted his wish carried out, and was prepared to fight for it.  And now it's over, and the family is relieved, justifiably so. 

Smokey, I don't know if you were serious when you wrote what you did ten years ago, but it's funny how it came to pass, exactly the way you wanted.  Here's to you, you magnificent ol' cuss.

Starstruck

I've written before about meeting famous people, and the perils that come with meeting your heroes; there's always the chance your illusion could be shattered.  It's happened to me before, and ever since I've been wary about fandom.  But there's always the line between what you want to think, and how you actually are.  (It's among the reasons I eschew hardcore ideology, because I know too well the differences between theory and the real world, and that reality will make a fool of you more often than not.)

And so it is with me.  As much as I want to say I'm not into heroes, or that I'm not that impressed by fame, there's still something that makes your head spin when right in front of you is someone whose face you know from countless television appearances or magazine pictures, or whose voice you know so well from radio or television.  And yet there they are, right in front of you, looking in your eyes and saying things directly to you.  It gets your attention, and something in you can't believe it.  It's different, all right.

Last weekend we drove to Charlotte and over to Mooresville for the Legends Helping Legends event at the Memory Lane Museum.  It's an annual benefit thrown to help motorsports figures who need assistance or have fallen on hard times.  There's usually a good turnout of racers, mechanics and others motorsports VIPs who come out for the event, and they sit at tables and sign autographs throughout the day.  We'd never been before, but some friends of ours were going to be there, and we decided to make a day of it and join them there.

I'd read on the flyer that some pretty big names were going to be there, people like Donnie Allison and Rex White, and we were excited about meeting them and some of the others.  But as we milled around the museum before joining the line in the back, we heard the master of ceremonies interviewing someone whose voice was awful familiar.  And, sure enough, it was Ned Jarrett, indeed there to sign autographs and greet fans.  When we joined up to make our way around the autograph tables, I saw a handsome gentleman with great hair taking off his jacket: Mr. September himself, Harry Gant, was there.  Another surprise.  Near him?  Waddell Wilson, legendary engine builder.  I looked around the room and it was like so many of my motorsports history books had come to life.  I could look ahead and see Harry Gant and Donnie Allison and "Little Bud" Moore.  Or I could look on the other side of the room and see Ned Jarrett and Rex White.  All these men I'd read about, and there they were.

If seeing them wasn't enough, then meeting them bowled me over.  Almost without exception, they were cordial.  The previous weekend we'd watched a recording of the 1979 Daytona 500, the one that ended with the famous crash between Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough.  Exactly one week later, there was Donnie Allison on the other side of a table, giving me an autographed card and a smile.  Handsome Harry giving me a smile and a "hello."  Jim Vandiver becoming more than just a guy in a picture with a winged car, but a living and breathing man still proud to have fought it out with the best of them.  Mitzi Moody making sure the memory of her legendary husband remains alive.  Tom Higgins, one of the writers who carved motorsports journalism out from the wilderness, thanking me when I told him how much I loved his work.  Rex White, the 1960 Grand National champion, still going strong and happy to meet the fans.  Just over from him was his successor as champion, "Gentleman Ned" -- who, I was happy to learn for myself, lives up to his nickname. 

For me the moment I came closest to making a fool of myself was meeting Elliott Forbes-Robinson, who's not only been racing forever in just about every type of car, but whom I saw race in the very first motorsports event I ever attended.  He doesn't do many of these types of events, and seemed genuinely flattered by the reception he got.  He gave that right back to those of us who were there.  I don't think I've received warmer greetings from many people in my life; although I loved the guy already, I guess you could say I just plain melted when he smiled at me.  I don't even think I could stammer out "Good morning."  Instead, as I handed him my program to sign, I heard myself saying what I really felt: "It's an honor."  He very kindly said, "Aw, thank you!" And we talked for a couple moments.  I forget what I said, other than "Thank you very much!"  It's one of those moments when I was starstruck.  (Actually, there were several that morning, but the one with EFR stands out most.)

It ended up being a great day, and an event I won't soon forget.  And as much as I try to get myself not caught up in the mythology of heroes and the famous, it was nevertheless a lot of fun to spend a couple hours in the presence of some folks who, it turns out, really did live up to their billing.

Safety

A few days ago I was reading a post on a motorsports bulletin board.  There was one thread about a race in the 1970s, remembered most for a horrific accident that killed a fairly well-known racer.  A couple of contributors to the thread were actually at that race, and one of them was nearby when the accident happened.  Just reading their recollections was horrifying enough; you'd hate to have been there to see it happen.  There are others, some of them pretty horrific just to read about, like what happened to this poor guy.  (I recommend you not watch the video that's linked at the end of that article, by the way.  Take my word for it; you don't want to see it.)

It's a sad fact that much of motorsports safety, much like automotive safety or aviation safety or any other area that involves putting a soft, fragile item (you) into something that goes really fast and can potentially go squirrely, is tombstone engineering -- it came about because somebody died.  Anybody who really knows the history of stock car racing, for instance, can tell you why window nets and fuel bladders and seat belts with crotch straps became required equipment; just look back on what a slaughter the year 1964 was in motorsport and how many great names were taken from us. 

More recently, take a look at 2000 and 2001 and notice how much changed.  Kenny Irwin and Tony Roper and Adam Petty (and, if you want to go back far enough, what happened to Rodney Orr and Neil Bonnett in 1994, and what nearly happened to Ernie Irvan) were the warning signs that something wasn't right. But it took losing an icon of the sport for the message to sink home.  If it happened to Earnhardt, it could happen to anybody (and because it happened to Earnhardt, the sanctioning body had to finally act).  And things started to change: mandatory head/neck restraints, soft walls, "capsule" seats, etc.  They were all such logical and relatively low-tech changes that should have been implemented years before. 

There was much complaining when the "new" stock car was introduced a few years back, and I'll admit it took some getting used to.  Some argue the racing isn't as exciting and that the cars look too generic and interchangeable; personally, I was no fan of the front splitter, nor did the wing work out all that well.  But for safety reasons, I gave the new car a pass.  I love exciting racing, yes.  Don't get me wrong.  But if it's a choice between a boring race or someone getting hurt or killed, there's no contest.  And the car started demonstrating its survivability, too.  Perhaps the greatest testament to the new car, and all the improvements that have been made the last few years, is what happened to Elliott Sadler (in the #19 car) in this clip.  If that had happened in 2001, he'd probably have died on the spot.  In 2010, the worst that happened was that he was sore from his belts grabbing him. 

There's still plenty of risk in motorsport these days (and I still cringe when I see accidents in open-cockpit series like IndyCar or F1; I fear that someday sooner rather than later, we're going to see a fatal head injury, as we almost did with Felipe Massa a couple years back).  But it's safer than it used to be, and I'm glad for that.  On the other hand, I think about all the great racers we lost, and all the careers that were truncated, before it became as safe as it is now.  You think about all the "what if"s, and it makes you sad. 

And every time you see a 19-year-old rookie Cup driver complain about how they're out of the race because they crashed, you want to say to them, "Kid, if that's what you're complaining about, you don't know how lucky you are to be racing in this series at this moment.  Realize just how much worse it would have been back in the day."

Ten years ago

Ten years ago today we were about to move.  We'd signed the papers on a new apartment closer to where I worked.  Oddly enough, we'd signed just after I'd been told my services were no longer required where I worked.  However, since the events had been set in motion, since money had changed hands, and since we'd given notice where we were living, we couldn't back out.  So we'd started crating things up for the big move, which was to happen the following weekend.  This last weekend in the old apartment, though, was a last weekend to relax in the first place we'd called home together.

Hubby was very much into racing at this point.  I was slowly gaining enthusiasm for it.  When we met, I couldn't stand racing, for it was a symbol of everything about my background I was trying to flee.  I remember the mild disdain I had as we watched the Daytona race that first July together.  But, over time, I came to appreciate it, came to appreciate stock car racing's storied history, and found a rooting interest in a handful of drivers -- for instance, my affection for the doughily handsome Tony Stewart was starting to take hold.  I'd even grown fond of my father's favorite driver, Dale Earnhardt.  Hubby was an Earnhardt fan from way back, and between him and my father, I guess I had no other option. 

So that last Sunday in the old apartment, we had lunch and sat down to watch the Daytona 500, the first one to air under the new television deal with Fox.  Of course, Fox had pulled out all the stops on the coverage, too.  And much hay was being made about the new aero package and the potential for "the big one."

Now, I don't know why it is, but as I watched the race that day, there was a feeling I had that something wasn't right somehow.  Something was off.  I couldn't put my finger on it, but I had the feeling something bad was going to happen.  So I watched with interest, but also with clenched innards.  It wasn't helped each time I saw another instance of high-banked slicing and dicing at 190 miles an hour.

When the threatened "big one" happened on the backstretch, and Tony Stewart's car went flying end over end, I thought, "Oh, man, this is it, isn't it?"  It was a truly scary thing to watch unfold.  Cars started flying around, pinballing off each other, creating a real mess.  I was certain someone -- Stewart, perhaps -- had been killed.  But "the big one" had been all bark and no bite.  A lot of good cars had been turned into junk, but no one had been maimed or killed.  They had to stop the race to get all the mess dealt with.  It was about that time a friend of ours called to chat.  I made some crack about Mark Martin's Viagra car "hitting something hard," and hubby found it amusing and relayed it to our friend.

Eventually the thing was again underway.  I'd kept my eye on two cars the whole race: Earnhardt's #3 car, and Michael Waltrip in the #15.  I'd come to know the story of Mikey's 0-for-462 career, and as the laps ticked down I started to think, man, wouldn't it be neat if he could do this?  Close the deal at the biggest race of the year, in his first race for Earnhardt's team?  Yeah, another Earnhardt win would have been neat, but Mikey, whose battles with futility struck a chord in me, had me in thrall as he led the closing laps.

The white flag flew, and I was relieved because this controlled crash of a race was about to end.  The #15 was still in the lead, and my eyes were on it. Darrell Waltrip, calling the race, was coaxing his little brother to the finish, and it was hard not to get caught up in that.  "Come on, Mikey!" I kept saying.  But as the freight train made its way through the fourth turn came the cry "The three car - OH!"  In the background, as the #8 and #15 shot toward the finish line, we saw a familiar black car crabbing, sliding down the track toward the infield.  As I cheered for Mikey, I could hear hubby say "It's Earnhardt!  Damn it, he's gonna end up finishing twelfth."  We didn't know we'd just seen a man get killed on live television.

What followed was perhaps the most subdued victory celebration I've ever seen, made even worse by the pictures from the infield that kept cutting in.  It didn't look like that bad of an accident, and we expected to see Earnhardt bound out of the car and talk to Schrader.  But the longer it went on, the worse things got.  I think we both knew what was going on when, in the closing moments, the Fox cameras showed the ambulance driving away.  Halifax Medical Center is not that far away from the speedway -- I know, for I've traveled past it more times than I can count -- but the ambulance was traveling at a distressingly low rate of speed. 

The race broadcast signed off with things still uncertain, and there was no further news for the moment; the best we could do was check the Internet.  We had things we needed to do, namely the weekly grocery run, so we drove up the street to the grocery store and got weekly provisions.  But what I'd seen was on my mind, and I'm certain hubby was thinking about it, too.  But we couldn't do anything about it, and we had things we needed to do, so we did them.  About 45 minutes or an hour later, we returned home.  I jumped online for an update, and there was the awful news.  Hubby was in the kitchen, right next to where my computer was set up.  "Earnhardt's dead," I said to him.  "Awww," he said.  It was one of those "awww"s that was sorrow mixed with the likely outcome of what we'd seen.  Sure, it hadn't looked that bad at first, but from Ken Schrader's shaken post-race interview, and from the way the ambulance crept toward the hospital, the inevitability had started to sink in.  By the time the word came, it wasn't that much of a surprise.  But it was still sad.  Something had changed.

The next morning we awoke.  I remember laying in bed after the alarm clock went off, and wondering if it had really happened.  The radio station was playing Sarah MacLachlan's "I Will Remember You," the live version.  When the song ended, one of the morning show people mentioned what had happened the day before.  Yep, it really had happened, and the mourning was on.  The Internet was awash in news, reactions, opinions and everything else.  That afternoon I stopped by the corner hobby shop to pick up an airplane kit, and noticed in the car section that practically everything with a "3" on it was gone.  Hubby came home that night with a copy of the local paper.  "Earnhardt Killed in Daytona Crash," the headline read above a picture of the crash. Soon the newsstands were filled with commemorative editions and all sorts of other things. 

Many people mourned, very deeply.  One of them was my father.  He never talked terribly openly about it, but it's not hard to understand why he loved Dale Earnhardt: another kid from a poor background who had worked, with hands and determination, to build a successful life.  A few weeks later I flew home to visit my family over Spring Break, and while connecting in Atlanta I found a very nice Sports Illustrated commemorative edition dedicated to Earnhardt.  I bought an extra one to bring to my dad.  My mother told me it would be best not to give it to him.  He had even taken the model of Earnhardt's car I'd built him as a birthday present many years before, one that had sat on his desk for years, and put it in a box up on a closet shelf.  He was heartbroken.  He never said it openly, but he was.

For many reasons, I'll look back on 2001 as the freakiest, scariest, and all-around worst year I've yet lived.  Sure, it had its moments of laughter and joy and wonder, and it was the year I earned my doctorate and found the job I still have.  But it was also the year I was fired from my first teaching job, and the year a few hard-fought dreams got punched in the guts.  And it brought some moments that creeped me out and rattled me as have few others.  In some way, I think the indestructible Earnhardt finally meeting his doom as we watched live showed me that all bets were off, and that the unthinkable could occur, and that nobody and nothing was immune, and the world could go bananas as you watched.  Another event, on live television, half a year later really drove that point home in perhaps the most awful way possible, and completely threw our world off its axis. 

But these events, or most of them anyway, were yet to come a decade ago this afternoon.  For now, I think back to the last lap of a race that was but a handful of seconds from ending in unalloyed, delirious joy, and of what should have been.

On not giving up

Each year while the 24 Hours of Le Mans is going on, hubby and I take part in our annual model building challenge, constructing an automobile model entirely within the 24 hour span of the race.  This year, since we weren't able to get to Daytona for the Rolex 24, we did the same thing just for laughs.

The ratty pic above is of my entry in this year's competition, a Revellogram C5 Corvette that I bought for no particular reason many years ago.  It had been on my pile of stuff to sell.  But, for various reasons, none of the more appealing stuff in my stash really called to me.  Okay, well, the Tamiya Porsche Boxster kit did, but once I got started, I realized I'd misplaced the instruction sheet.  Okay, well, back to the Corvette kit instead.

This build seemed doomed almost from the start.  First were the multiple primer coats, because I couldn't get a smooth coat that didn't have a blotch or a piece of dust in it, so I had to sand all that out and re-prime it multiple times.  In between, I worked on the chassis and interior.  That went reasonably well, until I tried airbrushing the seats a different color and found not only that the color wasn't as complementary as I'd thought, but the paint was also too thin.  That's not to mention the adventures in assembling some of the trickier parts, including a rear suspension component that took flight and didn't turn up until I was cleaning up before bedtime.

The body continued to be its own adventure.  After much agonizing, I decided to use a can of Tamiya's Racing Blue, a very dark metallic blue I'd bought for the FW24 kit I have upstairs.  I liked the idea of using a Formula One color on a street car, and I love Tamiya's spray paints because they set up quickly and smoothly.  I put a pretty good progression of coats on it Saturday night, and left it to set up overnight.

Things were going reasonably well until I looked for some pieces and couldn't find them.  It turned out the kit was missing an entire runner of clear parts.  The windows were there, as were some other things, but the kit was missing its taillights, rear marker lights, and a couple other clear parts.  I don't know if the kit never had them, or if I lost them, or what.  Regardless, rats.  I tried to figure out what to do, since I was too far in to just throw in the towel.  Besides, something inside me didn't want to give up, anyway. 

Just before bedtime, I had a thought.  Upstairs I had a kit of the C5R Corvette, the fifth-generation Corvette built as a racer for Daytona and Le Mans.  On a hunch, I test fit one of the C5R's taillights on the stock C5R.  It worked fine.  I decided I'd thermoform new taillights for the C5 kit using a C5R taillight as a pattern.  Simple enough.

Sunday morning dawned and the race coverage came back on, and after a bit I went back to work.  That's when I realized that not only were there imperfections in the body's finish coat, but I'd missed a couple of recessed areas and some undercuts.  So I sanded out the imperfections as best I could and re-shot the body.  The second attempt was much better, but as I polished it, I got the hood a little too thinly coated.  So it was one more shot of paint, just on the hood and front fenders.  This one worked, and it polished out reasonably well, so I was happy.

By the time I had the body in shape, the race only had about an hour and a half to go.  I had to hustle if I was going to make it.  So I masked off all the stuff that needed to be painted on the window trim areas and such, and went to paint them black.  That's when I remembered that I forgot to clean my airbrush's color cup the night before; sure enough, it had a solid coating of dried paint inside.  While it soaked, I'd have to find another one.  Okay, well, our airbrushes use the same color cups, so no hassle.

I was starting to think I would make it.  Then I installed the windows.  Windshield went in okay.  The rear window...well, it was a little too close to some super glue I used to install some interior components a minute or two before, and within a moment or two there was a smoke ring crazed into the rear window.  That's when I decided the model had beat me, and I put it aside to watch the last half-hour of the race.  I didn't like how I was hurrying in the last stretch.  I was disappointed, because it's the first of these three builds I've not completed by the end of the race, but by that point, it wasn't worth it.  (Hubby, meanwhile, had completed a gorgeous build of a Toyota Celica from a Tamiya kit.)

The race ended.  I folded laundry after it was over.  My stuff was still set up on the kitchen table.  And I started to think about how I'd thrown in the towel.  We'd just spent the last day watching a race that's all about endurance, where the success goes to the people who don't give up even when things go wrong.  You routinely see teams a hundred or more laps down, long out of contention, but they'll bring their cars in, patch them up and change stuff out, and get back out there.  Because, you see, merely finishing a 24-hour race is an achievement in itself.  As long as your car can start and its engine can send power to four rolling wheels, you're not out of it.  We have pictures taken at past Rolex 24s of cars missing all manner of body components, looking beat to kingdom come, but they were still out there when the checkered flag flew, plugging away.

And that got in my head.  Why not?  So I sat down and started to work, fixing the things that bothered me.  I got some thermoform plastic and smash-formed the missing taillights.  I popped out the crazed rear window, used my polishing kit on it, and got rid of the smoke ring.  I fixed as many of the little things as I could.  And I got it finished.  There are a few touch-ups I have yet to do, but that little model is, for all intents and purposes, finished.

It gives me some hope that I did this.  If there's one quality I really like about myself, it's that I never completely give up.  Yes, there are times when I get really down and out and feel hopeless, but those tend to be short; most of the time, my mind is working, itching to get back into the fight so I can knock the problem into submission.  I don't like it when problems win.  I'm one of those people who has that test pilot mentality: when other people are going "Oh, no!  I've only got ten seconds before I crash!", I'm saying to myself, "Hey, I got ten seconds!  I bet I can save this thing!"  And that's how it was here.  Maybe I missed the end-of-race deadline for the project.  But the only disgrace would have been if I had put the model back in the box, taken it back upstairs, and put it back on the shelf as a failure.  Instead, I have a pretty nice little model -- not perfect, but not bad, either -- and a lesson from it.

Oh, and if all goes well, next year's Rolex 24 will be with us once again in the stands.  (Though I seriously doubt we'll bring model kits to build as the race is going on.)

Four for 30

I've been an on-and-off fan of ESPN's 30 For 30 since it started.  I say "on and off" because I've found the quality to be on and off.  Some of them were outstanding ("June 17, 1994," "Into the Wind," "The Band That Wouldn't Die," etc.).  Others, like "Marion Jones: Press Pause," were real letdowns that could have been so much more.  Some, I felt, trod too-familiar ground (was there really anything that revelatory, for instance, in "Four Days In October"?  Too shopworn a subject.  We get it by now, okay?  We know the Red Sox finally won a World Series.  Enough!).  Others had interesting subjects but ended up being sort of meh ("The Legend of Jimmy the Greek" and "Tim Richmond: To The Limit," among others, were nice but could have been better).

As much as I've enjoyed the series, I can't help thinking about other topics I would have loved films about.  Off the top of my head, here's four sports-related subjects from the last 30 years that would have made brilliant episodes of the series in the hands of gifted filmmakers.  There are more, lots more, but here's a start:

1.  Anybody remember the old IMSA GT series?  Remember how during the 1980s, a few drivers ended up in trouble with the law?  (See, as an example, this old Sports Illustrated piece.)  In the right hands, it would have been better than an episode of Miami Vice -- only, it would be all true.

2.  From the late 1980s on, there has been a boom in stadium construction on the part of local municipalities, as team owners threaten to move unless new facilities are built.  While it's been around a while, it really seemed to hit new levels in the 1990s; numerous baseball teams wanted their own version of Camden Yards built at taxpayer expense or they'd threaten to move.  The Browns relocated because Cleveland didn't build a new stadium (though this was briefly touched upon in "The Band That Wouldn't Die").  With it has come not only public funding of stadiums for private teams, but the loss of several time-honored old ballparks and one or two relocated teams.  A detailed examination of the stadium boom, its costs to society and sport, and the transformation of stadiums from municipal recreation area to giant television studio, would provide a lot to chew on.

3.  Perhaps a bit meta, but why not let a filmmaker take a look at how television coverage, and having so many networks and so much media devoted to nothing but sports and the worship of athletes, has changed sports the last 30 years?  It's now to the point where when you go to a ball game, you're not going to a ballpark; you're in a giant television studio.  For its 40th anniversary issue Sports Illustrated published a brilliant long-form piece on the effect of people like Roone Arledge, Judge Roy Hofheinz, and so forth on the sports and the world SI covered.  (Here's Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.)  This would be sort of a televisual version of that kind of story.

4.  Finally, what about a film about the merchandising of sports nostalgia?  This could run the gamut from autograph shows (and the fees ballplayers collect from those) to what I call the "Field of Dreams" effect, to the throwback jerseys and caps you can buy, the whole nine yards.  Why not a look inside the growth of this industry?  It'd be interesting not only as documentary, but sociology and psychology too.

Anyway.  Four ideas off the top of my head early on a dark morning.  (ESPN, I'm waiting for your call.)

The gray beast

 

Further to yesterday's post, here's how the R26 looked yesterday morning in mock-up form.  The chassis plate is pretty much done, and you can see the carbon fiber decal work.  On the body, that's the second primer coat.  The good thing is, the seamwork from the rhinoplasty (having to take about 6mm out forward of the front suspension) is pretty much gone.  The bad news is there's still a few tiny flaws here and there.  But they'll get worked out.  Then will come white primer, a final sanding, and then the yellow and blue and dark blue, and not a moment too soon.