Written by Cute, Comments by Cutest in Italics
After owning a little sports car since 2007 and enjoying it immensely, I decided it was time to seek a replacement. Newer meant more cockpit space, helpful since I am the old NBA’s average height of 6’4” (now it's 6'7"), back-up camera and side car warning alerts (reads as older person driving aids) and an updated suspension (reads as my back doesn’t get as sore as quickly).
As a fun way to introduce Cutest to the "new" car (which she's driven all of three times), I secretly enrolled her into a Saturday afternoon all women’s autocross session What’s an autocross you ask. Autocrosses are run on closed courses, often large parking lots. Our city’s unofficial mascot, the orange cone, is used liberally to mark the course. The object of this exercise is to drive the course as quickly as possible, although speeds seldom go beyond 40 mph. To make this task more intriguing, sections of the layout are set up in a slalom snow ski design, with cars having to go right, left, right and so forth past the cones. Average total time to drive the entire track was two minutes.
(Slalom cones are the little dots on top left (easy to miss if you ask me) and along the right hand side.)
After telling Cutest of the upcoming event, she showered me with questions. “What if I wreck the car (not going to happen), what if I hit a cone (probably going to happen), what if people point and laugh at my slow times (didn’t happen).
On track day, Cutest, complete with a dashing helmet, attended the driver’s meeting with twelve other women. The object of the day was to enjoy the experience and learn how you and the car react to different situations at speed. Cutest completed her first lap. Enough said. While waiting for her next attempt, she enlisted the aid of a seasoned driver to ride beside her. (Well, actually he just ran up and got into the car.) With his instructions, her times came down and her confidence came up.
(No, that cute twosome in the middle is not us.)
This is a safe and fun way to enhance your driving skills whether you just turned 16 or are a seasoned driver. At the end of the day we went home, still the Cutest Couple, and the new little sports car remained blemish free. Whew!
(This seemed like a LOT faster than it looks and yes, I did miss those cones!)
Whew is right! I NEVER would have signed up for this, despite my love of going fast. Cute is being quite kind above by not getting into the details of my driving. I learned that there are other cone-challenged people out there and that wandering through a giant blank space in a parking lot just makes me laugh. But, I gotta say: I loved it! Would do it again in a heartbeat. Thanks, Cute! (And NO, we don't call each other by our blog names.)
Congratulations! I'm living vicariously through you two!