Can we come over to your house and play? Cyclekarting

"CycleKarts and their builder/drivers don't like to take things too seriously, and certainly not themselves or each other, so overzealous competitiveness is frowned upon, and a win-at-any-cost attitude is not invited back. We do encourage good, sporting competitions for fun, to which end the cars are kept reasonably similar in performance. Drivers have to make their own cars, as we decided some time ago that no one should be able to just fork over money and buy a CycleKart. Proper appreciation for the sport and the machines requires one construct one's own car.

...As if to prove our point one of the drivers flailing down the course disappeared behind a row of protective aloe cactuses. Suddenly we heard the rumble of the car stop abruptly and the top of one of the aloes suddenly waved back and forth like a banner. The man had missed his corner, but "break-neck speed" on this tight course was actually so slow that a head-on into the bushes meant nothing more than an embarrassing grouping of the crowd around the car to marvel at the impact absorbtion of the aloe plant (aloe also cures cuts, so there's that extra safety device).
True, there's not much glory in downhill coasting, -nothing to bring the babes a-running, or the self-image hounds out from under their rocks. But , give it enough tv play, and the ego-chasers will probably show up with a more expensive way to make sure they're taken seriously.

Like most research, in answering one question, we'd only raised others. The foremost of which was, "why did we feel we had to hide our experiment away from the "real" , "adult" world? Why does a world that feels that sitting in a smoke-filled room eating packaged foods and watching aberrated, obscenely paid freaks bobble a ball around on a vacuum tube is somehow a grown-up thing to do, while trying new fesh-air ways to suck a little adrenalin is cause for psychotherapy? Well, let them be 'sane", we say"


... I was in fact offered to visit a Cyclecart "race" a few years ago but sadly another less important and certainly less interesting thing got in the way, a hard lesson learned. The next time the offer is given I'll be there - and dressed as Fangio no less.