Go Kart Madness!! (and some hijinx when i can fit it in)

[plthijinx]

ok this is down right embarrassing but what the hell if you can;t laugh at yourself....damn promised impersonations.....



and one more.....



here;s a bitch out. but in a polite way i mind you.....

[plthijinx]

oh. and all this? was this weekend. and there;s more. just too tired to put anymore up.

[plthijinx]

ok a couple more...

[kerosene]

Ha ha!

Hank and Dale...good ones, plt.

Your normal voice is pretty nice, too.

[plthijinx]

Originally Posted by kerosene

Ha ha!

Hank and Dale...good ones, plt.

Your normal voice is pretty nice, too.

funny you say that...there was a guy awhile back, a customer obviously, he was asking me if i ever considered radio as he is studying broadcasting. i have though about it. i can do the "SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY BE THERE WHEN SHIRLEY MULDOWNEY TAKES ON BIG DADDY DON GARLITS" voice. beh i;d like to do it on the side but not for a living.

[plthijinx]

dr. froth told me about a time at the track a few years ago when he and a couple others were playing "jackass" and he broke his arm. i'm calling you out bro....share that story, it;s funny as hell! crazy mf!

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by plthijinx

funny you say that...there was a guy awhile back, a customer obviously, he was asking me if i ever considered radio as he is studying broadcasting.

Did he say you have a face made for radio?

[drfroth]

Originally Posted by plthijinx

dr. froth told me about a time at the track a few years ago when he and a couple others were playing "jackass" and he broke his arm. i'm calling you out bro....share that story, it;s funny as hell! crazy mf!

Ahhh...yeah...that.

You have to remember that this was at a time when the owner of track was a guest of the state and we were running the place with no adult supervision. Never mind the fact that we all happened to be adults at the time.

Anyway, to make a short story longer, there was this guy that worked with us named "The Salad." I have no idea why we started calling him that, which is sad as hell because I gave him the nickname. I can swear on a stack of random holy books, however, that it was very fitting at the time of its conception. (The name, not "The Salad" himself).

If you have seen the video in this thread of Fred surfing the go-karts than you can see how much fun that looks. We thought it would be even MORE fun to try and really surf the track. Ronnie (still the acting manager to this day...and the big guy that runs over to save Fred in the ankle crushing video) took a big piece of plywood and built some handholds into it. Then we tied this to the back of one of the go-karts with a length of rope.

I was SUPPOSED to drive and "The Salad" was supposed to surf. I think that this would have been the optimal choice for how this story ends. Of course it does not end that way at all. The board would not even budge with Salad on it. Our sophisticated discussion into the possible causes of the technical difficulties we were experiencing went like this:

SALAD: This idea sucks Frothy, It aint gonna work
ME: Yeah it is...you are just a fat bastard.
SALAD: Fat has nothing to do with it...the kart can't pull it
ME: By "It" you mean "You" you fat bastard
SALAD: Bullshit...this is not gonna happen
ME: Sure it will work...I'll prove it to you...let's switch places

That was a very...very...bad idea.

In fantasy land, which is where I must have had this idea, Salad would have pulled the sled a few feet to prove that it could work. Of course this is not what happened...instead we took off for a ride. It was slow going at first until Ronnie gave Salad's kart a little nudge with a go-kart of his own and brought us up to speed.

At this stage of the game things were actually pretty fun. I could not stand on the board so I had to kneel and hold onto the hand holds that Ronnie had made. We navigated 3/4 of the track until disaster hit.

Ronnie had shot ahead of us so that he could make the last turn, whip around, and film this on his phone. As we were approaching him Salad decided to disengage the governor on the engine and get us really moving fast.

To this day I do not know if the rope broke, or if it is just too hard to steer a piece of wood moving at forty miles an hour.

Our track is bordered by a 1/4 inch rail made of iron that is bolted to a bunch of old car tires every couple of feet. This means that there is about three inches of space between the railing and the ground. This is plenty of room for a stupid piece of plywood to shoot right underneath it. And that is what happened.

On some primal level I realized that I was fucked and put up my left hand to try to protect myself at the last instant. This is like trying to save yourself from being hit by a train by using a Kleenex to absorb the impact. Thank goodness my face was also handy to soak up a lot of the shock.

Ronnie turned around just in time to see me crash into the rail with my head. The impact shoved a lapbolt (that holds the rail to the tires) a half inch into my skull and shattered a bone in my wrist. He says I flew up in the air like I was doing an handstand and then got twisted around and fell flat on my back onto the track. It gave him nightmares for a few weeks and as he was running up to me he was sure I was dead.

I was not dead, however. And when he got to me I was still taking inventory of how many of my body parts still worked. I took the whole thing pretty well considering it was my own damn fault. The doctors at the ER told me I was very, very lucky that I was not dead or wheelchair bound for life. "Wow" they said "You broke this pretty good. We wanted to give you stitches for your head, but there was nothing left to stitch the skin too...sorry."

At least I learned a very important lesson from all of this:

"Don't tie a piece of wood to a go-kart and try to surf the track."

I think it is important to learn from our mistakes.

Here is a couple of pics, though I am sad to not have a youtube video or something to share of this amazing story. The first is my x-ray of my wrist. The second is me playing bass for a concert a few weeks later with my arm in a cast. If you look at my forehead you will see the scar where the bolt went into my skull.






I did get a neat Titanium plate in my wrist as a souvenir...woo hoo.

[plthijinx]

i didn;t know you had the xray....pretty cool! bet it hurt worse than my foot!

[plthijinx]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

Did he say you have a face made for radio?

no one needs to tell me that! i already know i;m so unattractive that i send junk yard dogs running with their tails between their legs!

[plthijinx]

ok got some more. i need to figure something out about carrying my crackberry (soon to be replaced by an lg flip). i know it;s hard to see what i;m doing and going through but bear with me. i;m working on it. here are a few from this weekend. we almost beat our record set last saturday today, the next saturday.

surfing a kart out of the shop for friday nights business



some people you just can;t fix and they are stuck on stupid.



after hours. putting the karts up sometimes we have a little fun with them and bypass the governors....



i don;t need a gym! i lift 350lb go karts on the weekends!



and finally for S123, here is your heaveh burtation in the pre-race speech darlin!

oh. and the ride ends fucked up of course.

[plthijinx]

know i posted this someplace else but here it is again because it's worthy of the go kart madness thread. 2 angles here. i almost shattered my elbow when this little shit took me out!

[plthijinx]

ok so i don't have any pics or vid of this, oh wait, i can get it from the security cameras. at least the guy getting out of the go-kart. this is just plain wrong! i was scheduled to go home at 9:00 pm and just before then 5 guys show up. 4 of them buy our one hour wristbands. guy #5 is zonked drunk but the others seemed sober. so i sell the 4 bands and was walking outside to hurry up and get them in the cars so i could clock out and go play a poker venue (which started out great but was out before first break). this is when i noticed guy #5. i mentioned that with the wristband that guy 5 could go as a passenger in our double seater cars. they said cool and yeah they'd do it. guy 5 gets in the passenger side of the double this is when i noticed that he was drunk. i figured hey, he's not driving, no one else here, fuck it let him go with his buddies. he was so snockered that he couldn't get his seat belt adjusted but then again it's a harness and hardly anyone can adjust it correctly. so i get the ride out and going and go clock out. tim, my co-worker can handle it. hell, they were out there for an hour long ride. so i leave. i get to the bar near my house that hosts hold'em tourneys. right before the tournament started bob, the owner, calls me.

bob: "hey man, were these guys drunk?"
me: "only the one guy and he didn't buy a wristband, why? did he start driving or were the other guys tearing up the cars?"
bob: "no, but the one guy shit his pants and all over the car!"
me: " BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAAAA" the whole bar turned and looked at me! and i was upstairs overlooking the joint watching the astros on the big screen.
bob: "i gotta go man (snickering and laughing) tim's closing up and i gotta wash the car"

the go-kart track is like a box of chocolates *cough* turds, ya never know what you're gonna get.

[plthijinx]

now that i'm a manager at the track i spend most of my time inside running the business on my shift. every now and then i go outside to collect tickets to take back to the register to give out as we sell the rides. well here, last night, i went to smoke and get tickets and wound up hopping in a kart to chase down a hood rat bumping and slamming the cars. good ol' times! well i straightened him out and came back to the pit. when i got up, i didn't look over my shoulder first like i do most of the time. almost cost me.....



oh, and no, the ride wasn't over. no lights were flashing to indicate so. this dude just followed me in. grown ass man can't figure out the brake. and no. he wasn't allowed to ride again. ever. when i'm there.

[BigV]

tha's a big dude. he might have been standing on the brakes with both feet...