Karting

Karting

When I was sixteen I got a job at McDonald's burning hamburgers. My newfound wealth played a key role my childhood dreams. I bought a go-cart and began for the first time in my life to take an interest in mechanics. We would take it to the park and cruise for hours or until it broke down. It was nothing fancy but we enjoyed it. I paid for the parts while my brother did most of the fixing.
One while we were racing on the track some other people showed up with a few karts of their own. The motors on theirs were much smaller so we thought we had the race in the bag. We got quite a shock when they fired the engines and we heard the whine; it sounded like a chainsaw. It had the same snappy acceleration; it didn't take long to realize we had a snowballs chance in hell of winning. From that day forward we became friends we even went to the kart races to watch the professionals.
It was very exciting watching the karts scream around the track at speeds that were double that of a Corvette. I found it so hard to believe that something so small could go so fast and maneuver so well. Soon I too bought a professional Kart with aspirations of running on the track. I made one small mistake, I bought the card from an unsavory character and it didn't have an engine. So I began scouring the papers for an engine. I found them 22 hp snowmobile engine for the right price, so I thought I'd make a go of it. The kart I had wasn't designed for such a beast, so I began my own design modifications. Fortunately for me I worked at a small engine shop and the boss took an interest in what I was doing. I cooked it up and he put it together. It was quite a contraption but not as bad as the monsters automobile. It had a muffler off of Yamaha motorcycle and an ignition coil from an old style Chrysler so it needed a small lawn mower battery to run. And run it did, I never time that on the track but I'm sure it went close to 100 mph. It was extremely low to the ground, very fast and exciting. But it wasn't without its problems the extreme weight of the snowmobile engine flexed the frame and caused a chain to derail the clutch.
It was one of these exciting moments when I passed a cop car on the city streets headed to my old stomping grounds. As I flew around the corner the chain popped off; I was a nervous wreck as I jumped off and tried to restart it. The whole time I was sure a cop would be there at any second. But for some unknown reason my brother showed up first saw the gravity of the situation in my panic stricken face. I jumped in the seat and he fired it up. I blasted down the road and never looked back.