Trading Paint (Racing on the Edge) (60 page)

Bear Bond – A very strong adhesive used to patch a damaged race car.

“Are you alive?” Ryder asked peering over the side.

It took me a minute figure out what went wrong and if I was alive. Eventually I caught my breath enough to answer him. My head rested against the dirt as I looked up at the sky. Trying to recall what went wrong when I blipped the throttle before the jump. No, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was when I thought that
me
, the kid who raced cars, not dirt bikes, could kick his leg off the bike behind him like he was dismounting. Most Supercross stars have problems with this trick. Why I thought I could do it was clearly a prime example of my stubborn pluckiness. The plan was to land smoothly back on the ground but it didn’t shake down that way, nope, my leg got stuck.

“I think I am.” I huffed throwing my leg over the bike again. “I think we should make the jump bigger.” Ryder’s eyes widened with each word. “That way, you can just jump
this
part.” I gestured toward the gaping hole in the ground.

The screaming of a two-stroke engine charged from behind and we both turned to see Tyler and Justin side-by-side heading for the jump I just demolished with my non-existent
Nac-Nac
skills. The
Nac-Nac
was a trick where you kicked your leg over to one side in mid-air and then returning your foot to the foot pegs before landing.

It wasn’t easy and I demonstrated.

Tyler saw me standing next to my bike while Justin, he did not. So while Tyler slowed his speed and trailed off, Justin pinned it.

Take a couple sprint car guys and throw them on dirt bikes.
Never a good thing.

Justin misjudged the jump and did the unintentional
Nac-Nac
I had just done only he stayed on the bike and even as it slid down the twenty-foot embankment he stayed on it.

Ryder and I stood at the top of the hill watching Justin try and pull his bike back up. Did we offer to help?

No, hell no.
We made fun of him.

I had just purchased this property a few weeks back and construction of a quarter-mile dirt track and riding trails took place almost immediately. I don’t think it was necessarily the addition of the track or the dirt bikes that was dangerous but more the way we rode them. I was never the type of guy to do anything half-assed, nor were my friends.

While we all may have had obligations we should have been doing that day instead we made time to be twenty-two year old kids that day.

As I’ve said before, when we’re stressed, we did what any normal person would do, we did what relaxed us.

That was dirt bikes today.

When the world wasn’t scrutinizing our every move, the engines cooled, the unforgiving sun faded and we were left with a spark of time to be ourselves.

We spent a greater part of the morning tearing those trails up and then the rest of the evening nursing our wounds throwing back a few beers. It was great to see all of them again. I hadn’t realized how much I missed hanging out with my USAC buddies.

Money was rolling in from the wins and merchandise sales so I decided to buy a few things. Usually sponsors were throwing merchandise my direction so I never had to buy clothes again if I didn’t want to and cars? I had plenty of those. Anything Ford made, I had my choice of.

Besides my Ford F250 I had been driving since I was sixteen, I hadn’t purchased anything for myself besides race car parts.

After I poured a large sum of the money into the sprint car team, I bought some toys
...
a Yamaha YZ250, four of them actually, a 2003
Mastercraft
X-30 wakeboarding boat, three Yamaha Raptor quads and then some property to play on.

Ford was nice enough to provide me a brand new Ford 4-door F350 so I definitely had the
power
to tow these toys.

I ended up purchasing a large piece of land not far from my parents but far enough that I could get away when needed. It felt good to have something of my own for once.

Do you want to know my first thought as I walked around the land after signing the papers?

Sway.

I thought of what it would be like to have her here with me, sharing a home. Brief and fleeting, the thoughts didn’t last long knowing she would never be with me like
that
. Now with Charlie sick, any intentions I may have had, were now gone. It wouldn’t be right to ask for more, so I thought.

While the boys ran up the road for more beer that night after riding, I wandered around the property, watching the moon slowly rising. The orange and pink shades from the sun blended with the darker hues of the night as the moon appeared.

I wanted to feel Sway against my side in that moment. I wanted to hear her soft giggle, look into her green eyes and tell her everything I feared, everything I wanted, and everything I couldn’t. The gravel and dirt crunched beneath my feet, the wet, fresh cut grass smell surged throughout the air circling with the night’s cool air and the lasting traces of racing fuel from the dirt bikes imbued everything together.

I spent the greater part of the night out there just wandering around.

With fifteen areas, there was a lot of land to see. Changing rapidly from trees to an open clear-cut meadow, the land was versatile and allowed me to make more trails and even a bigger dirt track if I wanted.

Eventually I started a fire and waited for the boys to get back. I was sure they’d figure out where I was with the glow.

The orange flames from fire flickered against the beer bottle in my hand. When a piece of wood dropped it sent a burst light throughout the air, the white ash dusted my black fleece. Though it was summer, the breeze had a chill to it. I shuddered drawing my arms to my chest for warmth.

The fire reminded me of the night, in high school, when I went up to Dayton Peak with Sway, the same night I gave into Chelsea.

If I had my way, I’d take that night back. Hell, I would have never started anything with that whore. I heard from Tommy not too long ago that she was hanging around the dirt tracks again, even asking about me. She was out of her mind if she thought I’d ever talk to her again. Trifling, thoughts of Chelsea subsided when my mind, focused steadily on Sway, wondering what she was doing right now.

I heard Justin before I saw him, cursing as he tripped over a log. “Oh goddamn it.”

“Careful there,” I chuckled taking a drink of my beer. “I need you in that car next week.”

“You should have thought of that before you put that track in.” he mused. “I think I broke my finger.”

The flashlight he was holding swept back and forth watching the ground trying to guide him through the darkness at the fire. He shined it in my eyes when he got within a foot of me, blinding me.

“Jerk,” it took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust. “Where’s Tyler?”

Ryder had already left to catch flight to Ohio.

“He’s coming. I made him carry the beer.” He glanced down at his hand, rubbing along his palm. “I really do think I broke my finger.” He held his hand up to the fire; his index finger bent the opposite way between his knuckle and joint.

“Appears that way—can you race?”

“Hell—I’ve raced with a broken arm, this
ain’t
gonna stop me.” Justin took a sharp intake of breath before gripping the finger tightly and then jerking it into back into place. He fell over, moaning in pain.

“Pussy,”

“Oh fuck you.” He groaned kicking my leg. “This is your fault.”

“How so?”
I stepped away from him so he couldn’t kick me again.

“You said, and I quote, “Let’s build a dirt bike track,” really though,” he paused laughing. “
what
the fuck were you thinking?”

“I never said I was thinking at the time. It was supposed to be fun.”

Justin had this
way
of turning a conversation quicker that a sprint car flips, always had. You’d be talking about one thing and then he’d get a thought, next thing you knew, you were talking about the weather. In this case, the conversation turned against me.

“What’s with you and Sway these days?”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw her in Skagit last year. She seemed different. And
you
, you’re not the same when she’s gone either.”

“How was she different?”

Justin thought for a second before tipping his head to the side. “When she’s with you, she’s carefree and happy. The night I saw her, she didn’t appear happy, not sad.
Just different.”

I nodded but didn’t say
anything,
the fire cracked catching my attention.

“You’re different too.”

I shrugged indifferently. I wasn’t in the mood to “Dr. Phil” my feelings. I had enough problems trying to decipher my feelings and I didn’t need more thoughts.

“All I’m saying is, if you love her, tell her.”

Once again, I nodded in agreement but said nothing.

When Tyler came back with the beer about, we forgot all about feelings and broken fingers.

In the morning, it was race life as usual. Justin and Tyler headed to Ohio and I flew to Virginia.

The next race on the schedule was Martinsville. Located near Ridgeway Virginia, it is
a half
-mile paved asphalt straightaways with concrete corners. It’s one of the oddest shaped tracks resembling a paperclip with almost with twelve degree turns. Racing the track can be tricky because you have to slow down so much in the flat narrow turns and then accelerate.

I raced here in the Busch series last year so I had a feel for it but it wasn’t exactly my best race.

Never good at navigating pit lane, Martinsville was even trickier with the way the pits wrapped around both straightaways. It made pitting interesting and wasn’t really my favorite track because of that.

All that aside, I managed to snag a third place finish when Kyle made the right call on fuel mileage and stayed out when everyone else pitted.

The following week was Fontana and the temptation to stop and see Sway was there but time wasn’t. I had to fly out directly after the race for Richmond and she was taking finals with graduation approaching fast.

Once again, my car had a mind of its own in Fontana. I was just along for the ride.

Safety at these tracks has improved light-years as to what it was even five years ago.

With just seventy laps to go, I was leading. When I went into turn one, everything was fine. By the time I was in turn two; everything was not fine. I had cut a tire and was heading straight for the concrete wall.

I’ll never forget the first time I hit a SAFER (Steel and Foam Energy Reduction) barrier as opposed to a concrete wall I had been used to hitting. I’d like to kiss the gifted motherfucker who designed those pillow soft walls. When you looked up and saw your car heading for those concrete walls, you thought, “Well shit, I hope we brought enough Bear Bond and hammers.”

Now when you hit a SAFER barrier you think, “I hope I make it back around before the pace car.”

And usually you did.

Those walls don’t stop the damage from being done but they do lessen the amount.

So there I was
limping
my car back to pit lane so the guys could salvage what was left of it and try to at least stay on the lead lap and finish. Like I’ve said, every
single
point counts when you’re in it for the championship.

The first priority during a pit stop like this was to get four new tires on the car. Then they work on the metal, you’d be amazed how much damage not only that wall can do but a flat tire. From my view inside the car, it looked like a biker brawl with hammers, bats, and crowbars beating all over my car.

I must have pitted every ten laps after that for tires, Bear Bond, sheet metal patches, checking the toe, more Bear Bond, oh and more Bear Bond. I also want to point out that when using Bear Bond, which is essentially extremely strong tape, do not get it stuck to you.

Shane Peterson, my catch can man, found this out the hard way when he got it stuck on his leg as he tried to adhere a piece of it to my bumper. I nearly took his leg with me when I took off after that pit stop.

As much as I hated this part of racing and the pitting every few laps, it was part of the game. Every driver wads one up at one time or another. I tend to think it was the car more than me. That goddamn car had a mind of its own and by the end of the
race,
I struggled just to finish thirty-first and eight laps down. I wanted to set the car on fire after that.

On the way back to the hauler some smartass member of the press said, “It’s not that bad kid, smile.”

Did he honestly understand what he was saying to me?

Sure, I lived a good lifestyle but what he didn’t realize and never would take the time to, was that was not me.

I would never be satisfied with anything less than a win. It had absolutely nothing to do with the lifestyle I had. It had to do with the fact that this was me, being the best I could. So if I had a shitty race, I wasn’t going to smile as I let myself down.