By the end of the week, I was getting cabin fever from working so much and Chuck had been to Wal-Mart, Camping World and Lowes about all he could stand. So I started checking out possibilities of things to do over the weekend. The NHRA Gator Nationals (pro drag race) in Gainesville was scheduled this weekend and there was a Formula One go kart race scheduled in Ocala so we decided to make it a “race weekend”.
Before we started full-timing, one of things we wanted to get was a good camera with a lens where you could really zoom up something far away. The races this weekend prompted us to go to Best Buy and see what we could find. We had assumed we would end up buying one of those cameras with the big long lenses you can change out but we quickly learned that those cameras take a lot of study to learn how to operate them. I asked Chuck if he was going to read the book to learn how to use it and he said probably not. And he asked me if I would read the book to learn how to operate it and I said probably not. We wanted a camera we could use right now.
What was most important was being able to zoom up things from far away so we started looking at all the “point and click” cameras with the longest optical zoom. The Canon Power Shot SX40 had the longest optical zoom. While Chuck played with the display camera in the store zooming up to different things and people in the store, I started looking up reviews for the camera on my phone. After an hour of playing and research, we decided to buy it.
On Saturday, we packed a picnic lunch and our camera and headed to the Ocala Gran Prix to watch the Formula One go kart race. We thought we would have to pay to get in, but there were places around the racetrack where you could just park and watch over the fence. We pulled up to the track, put the car in park, rolled down the windows and you could smell it…….racing fuel.
It took us both back to the days when Chuck raced go-karts when he was a teenager.
The track was a "road course" style track with lot of twists and turns.
All ages of “kids” raced from 5 and 6 year olds….
..to teenagers…
all the way up to adults driving “shifters” (go-karts that shift gears).
They all seemed to be good drivers and there were very few wrecks.
And they really knew how to "lay rubber" around the track...literally.
We talked to a mom of one of the drivers who was watching her son race in the #03 kart:
Go-kart racing is expensive! According to the racing mom we were talking to, some of the racers hire professional mechanics and people to set their karts up. These kart mechanics can make from $300 to $500 a day plus their meals and hotel accommodations. With the cost of the mechanics, parts and their own travel costs and hotel accommodations, it can cost them $5,000 or more per race weekend.
Things have changed a lot since Chuck raced. These kids must have sponsors or rich parents.
Some of them have cameras mounted on their karts:
There weren’t many girls racing either. But, #50 in the picture below is a girl and she even won her race. These kids may be the future NASCAR or Indy drivers.
Some of them have cameras mounted on their karts:
There weren’t many girls racing either. But, #50 in the picture below is a girl and she even won her race. These kids may be the future NASCAR or Indy drivers.
I think some of the older guys just race because it's fun and they can't get racing out of their blood. This guy was super fast and we were sure he was going to wreck because he kept running up over the curve on one of the turns.
We had our picnic lunch and later headed back home. It was cool getting to see all those go-karts and it gave us a lot of “camera” experience so we would be ready for the “Gator Nationals” tomorrow.
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