Shake and Bake...

Every year at work, our team goes on a team-building section outing. Usually, we are presented with a list of choices and we vote on what we want to do. In years past, we have done things like attending a Reds game, going on a riverboat dinner cruise, going to Dave & Buster's, and other fun things.

Well, this year the team voted to race go-karts. And not just any go-karts, but some serious go-karts!

We decided to go to Competition Racing, a go-kart racing facility in Indiana. Their go-karts max out at about 35 mph, which is fast when you are only inches above the ground (helmets are required, of course!).

So the company rented out the facility for about 3 hours. We arrived and had some pizza (not the best I've ever had, but still pizza nonetheless). Then we engaged in a 2-hour LeMans style team racing competition.

We split up into 6 teams of about 5 drivers. And the goal was to, as a team, accumulate as many laps as you could in that 2 hours. So each driver would get about 24 minutes of drive time, if split equally. However, pit stops to change drivers counted against your time. Also, penalties could be enforced that could count against your team's time for not following safety rules (such as intentionally bumping other cars, failing to control your own car, etc).

So we divided into our teams, grabbed our helmets, and we were off!














It took a few laps just to get used to handling the car. Also, there were 6 cars on the track at once, so it was challenging just to avoid running into the other cars. But I got the hang of it pretty quickly.

There were a few yellow caution flags, a few disabled cars, and a few wrecks, but fortunately no injuries.










But let me tell you... I will never make fun of race car drivers again! If anyone thinks these guys are not athletes, try driving in a competition race like this and see for yourself. After two intense 12-minute driving sessions, my arms were really sore from steering. And I was mentally exhausted just from processing all of that information at such a high speed to keep myself from crashing while trying to pass other cars. And this was just after 24 minutes with breaks in between. Imagine driving a 500-mile race, for about 3 solid hours with no breaks! When I got back into my own car after work, the first thing I noticed right away was how much we take power steering for granted!














In the end, my team came in at 2nd place. When the 2-hour time had expired, we were only 1 lap behind the winning team, which is pretty good. The other teams were all more than 4 laps behind.














All in all, a really fun time. I highly recommend trying it out sometime!