RC Car Racing

On Saturday a week ago, Heidi, Ian, Tanner, and I went to the RC car races at an indoor track here in SLC. I guess what got me thinking about it was an interview with Greg Herbold (world champion MTB downhiller in about 1990), who showed all his cars. After seeing that, it occurred to me it might be a good family activity. When I asked the kids, I was a bit (pleasantly) surprised Heidi was interested.

Anyway, we watched a few races, and then a friendly guy approached us and answered all my questions. We left with everyone enthused about getting cars.

Ian ordered an Associated T4.2 truck, Heidi an RC10 b4.2 buggy, and I a Losi 22 3.0 buggy. Tanner hasn't decided what to get yet. We re-purposed the garden into a track, and have had fun racing against each other. Hopefully we will have time to visit the indoor track this coming week and do a race sometime after that.

After a complete break from RC cars for the past 27 years, it has been interesting to see how little has changed with the cars, except for the batteries and motors, which are far better (run-times of 45 minutes instead of 5).

I was also surprised at the names, faces, and personalities of people that came back to me while I was working on my car. Many people of whom I hadn't thought of since I was 16 or 17 years old. Hanging out at the track provided a lot of time to get to know people, although that was largely lost on me at the time. For them of course life has gone on, but for me they are lost to history, probably forever.