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

[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.