If anyone out there was wondering where I have been all this time and why no new posts..blame it on my manager at work. He has managed to keep me insanely busy for the longest time and his plans extend way beyond December. To be fair however, yesterday he arranged a team event for all of us hard working "worker bees", and it gave me something I absolutely had to blog about..so here I am!
As a "reward" for all our effort over the past few months, we would have a nice lunch followed by go-karting! For those of you going huh?? check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kart_racing.
At about 11:45am on a beautiful San Francisco fall day , we (a party of 10) set off for lunch. Lunch was at a cute crepe restaurant in Burlingame. Burlingame downtown was a pleasant surprise, it had many upscale shops and cozy restaurants with outdoor seating, which looked very inviting especially on that beautiful day. The restaurant we had chosen was called Crepevine (http://www.crepevine.com/)
Crepes are thin flour pancakes, originating from France, and have been compared to the Indian Dosa. The restaurant offered a wide variety of savory as well as dessert crepes, we each ordered a savory crepe which came with a healthy helping of house potatoes and salad which were equally Yum!! I could barely finish the whole crepe, so i skipped dessert, but we ordered 2 dessert crepes to share on the table, and the general opinion about those was good too.
We had a 2:00 o'clock reservation at the go-kart place, so at around 1:30, the party moved to Go Kart Racer in Burlingame (http://www.gokartracer.com/index.php). Now, people who have done go-karting before have a general idea what this is about, what is different about this place (from the other go-karting places I've been), is that the overall feeling you get here is probably the closest you will ever come to what the real thing is probably like!
So we all walked in and signed up, at this point one of our team-mates decided to drop from the racing, she's had a few neck/back problems and thought this might exaggerate them. That left 9 of us, 8 testosterone high men (or "boys" more like) and me! We were given our licences (yes, you get your own go-kart-racer licence!) and head sock's and asked to "suit up".
We walked into the changing rooms, and there neatly hanging on a rack are track suits of various sizes and colors! By track suit I mean a full length jumpsuit, the kind you can see on the pictures on their website or the kind you've probably seen Michael Schumacher wearing..(aha! now you see what I mean when I say close to the real thing).Once we'd changed, we gathered outside and chit-chatted while we waited for our "instructor" to be ready.There were tips given by team-mates on how to be a good go-kart racer, which I conveniently forgot as soon as i stepped into the car of course ..
Anyways, soon enough we found ourselves in a small room with a TV and VCR. They actually had an instructional tape, telling us the do's and dont's. For e.g. When you see the yellow flag "Do" slow down to one mile per hour. "Don't" bump into any other car. etc etc. The various flag's were explained to us, the yellow , the blue with a yellow line across it, the red..etc etc (and to think the only flag i was aware of was the checkered flag!!)
Once we went through the tape, we had a brief re-cap in the form of an instructor re-iterating some of the aforementioned things, and off we were sent to get our Helmets. As I slid into my helmet I had the most claustrophobic sensation ever..the helmet, the head sock, the clothes were all making us feel extremely warm! Hopefully the thrill of the race would make us forget our temporary discomfort. We trooped down an aisle and were each assigned our cars, we got in and got strapped in. At this point you also get to wear a neck brace..about comfort, this thing definitely is not..
Anyways, finally we were all set, we were asked to leave the "pit" one car at a time..I was the first one out (and that will be the last time i use the word "first" and associate it with myself :D). And zoooooom we all went, the track we were on (the Yokoma), had a couple of sharp turns, but was supposed to be relatively the easier track."Easy???" ...for the guys maybe, as each of them sped past me! I tried my very best to make up for my "sluggish" turns at the straight leg of the track, but phew this was hard!! The flag I saw most often directed to me was the blue with the yellow line (meaning "move aside loser there's a faster car behind you" :D)
Finally, after what seemed like the longest 10 minutes, the race ended (or so I thought), there was the checkered flag and off we went into the pits again. We parked, got our helmets off, every one's hair glistening with perspiration and faces glowing with the thrill and walked out to get our "score" sheets. I came 8th!! I was so ecstatic!! I wasn't last was my only thought, till someone mentioned this was only a "practice" lap.Practice?? Practice!! O God!
After a 10 minute break, it was back to the briefing room for us. Now, they said the race starts, no one will show you the blue and yellow flag, try and find your way around the slow cars and all other rules remain same, this session was 20 minutes!!. With a lot of apprehension yet not wanting to chicken out so soon, I walked out and re-donned my helmet, got back into a car, and off we went.
This is when things went soo horribly wrong.. first, the car I got just wouldn't turn. I practically put all my strength into turning the wheel and yet it just wouldn't!! so in the 1st lap, I found myself more stuck in the side tyres than ever..finally the track guys helping me each time I got stuck, told me to change my car. So I drove into the pits to get a new car. All this time, the others were well oblivious of my misery and continued speeding down the track. Soon enough I was back on the track in a new car, that was much easier to turn, but now my arms gave up on me!! I had practically zero strength remaining after 5 laps, and to make things worse, all the faster driver (which basically means everyone else on the track) kept bumping into me!!
So I figured before I really injured myself..I'll graciously bow out of the race and so I did, I drove into the pits and signed off..phew..the pain was over :). I watched as the others continued zooming past and seemed to be having a blast and after about 10 minutes or so I saw the checkered flag welcoming the winners!!
As we walked off the track, each of us had a story to tell about who bumped into whom and our own theories on what was the right way to make turns etc etc.. Everybody had soo much fun we declared the team event a true success!!
Update : Day 2 after the big team event and I barely have strength to type!! the arms are paaaaaaaaining..since the pain is so bad I can barely work..Wonder if that still makes the team even a "success" :D
