...gets posted online and at flickr. :)

Ork, Richard and Jason picked me up Saturday afternoon to head off for some kart racing to kick off the stag party.

We were going to go to the Richmond Go-Kart track, but Nick and the other guys got there ahead of us and called us to say that the karts were really slow and that we should instead go to the F440 track out in Tsawassen.

We bypassed Richmond, went through the Massey Tunnel into Ladner and then made our way to the track. We met up with Nick, Ivan and Bernie and got checked in and paid up.

The track is right near Splashdown Water Park which was the fist waterslide park I remember having near enough to make a day-trip out to when I was kid. I went there once with a summer day-camp and a couple other times with my brothers & my mom and it was always a highlight of the week/summer. I thought maybe that it was another park that we drove past on the way in, as the whole thing seemed really small... pathetically small, really. Four slides, one river-rafting slide on another pillar, and that was pretty much it. It was kind of a crushing blow to a childhood memory, but I digress.

The guy running the track (Carny... small hands... smell like cabbage) took our money and directed us into the next room where we were fitted with hair nets, neck braces and helmets and given the run down on the track.

We took a look at the track and "paid attention" when the Carny told us where the brake zones were for each of the turns and laid out the ground rules for us. Basically there were none, but bumping was "not allowed" on the track, and that was about it, really.. stay in your kart at all times, if you spin out or go off the track and can't get back on the track on your own, one of the guys would come out in an ATV and push you back on to the track with it.

We stood around looking at some of the cars that were privately owned that were "on display" in the waiting room for storage. People who paid an annual fee were allowed to bring their cars out and squeeze in a few laps between paid races and there was one guy there who had a little 2-stroke kart that went pretty darn fast, actually. One of the crew went and signaled everyone "last lap" and the karts started pulling back in to the pit area to switch over to the next set of racers, namely us.

We climbed into the karts, and the seats were quite enveloping. There were sides to the seats to prevent you from getting pushed laterally into the hot engine, or right out of the kart completely when you took a hard corner. I noticed later that the guy with the fast kart had some sort of rigid padding on that helped dissipate the force of the seat digging in to your back when the G's got higher than your average daily commuter. As snug as I felt in the seat, I was one of the smaller guys there, so they must have been bigger than they looked.

The first race (of two) I had a slower kart. I thought I was just imagining it as Richard went flying past me on the second turn. When I got to the straightaway along the back, I was humming along with the gas pedal firmly floored and three karts just cruised past me like I was driving a Corolla and they were in a Porsche. About halfway through the race, I noticed Ork had pulled into Pit row and was getting out of his kart. Did he have a problem with his kart? did it run out of gas? Nope. Ork gets carsick, airsick, seasick, Disneyland ride-sick and everything else sick. The vibration and the lateral acceleration did him in and he had to go sit down and get some air. Poor guy :) By the end of the 15 minute race, Richard actually lapped me. When we got out of the karts and were talking about it, turns out that I wasn't the only one with a slow kart, Nick had one, too.

We waited a race (there was another bachelor party there at the same time, and this poor kid didn't look older than 19 or 20, and his friends made him get dressed up in a superman costume with a real, actual ball-and-chain shackled to his leg. I looked at him when he walked in and turned to Ork and said "Dude, you got off so easy..." and he laughed. We got back in the karts for the second race and I made sure I didn't get in the same kart and fortunately I got a faster one this time and it was a LOT easier. I was able to pass people this time, and Ork and I had a good duel going on for a lap or two. I actually passed him on the inside IN the hairpin turn! w00t! I kept checking my six and he was RIGHT on my bumper. All of a sudden, next time I checked, he was gone. I looked around and couldn't find him anywhere. I checked out Pit Row and he wasn't there, either. Did he spin out? What happened? Turns out he got a bit queasy again and had pulled into pit row, bailed out of the kart and was sitting on the grass before I got to a spot to see where he was. Once we were done, we waited around for a bit and watched the guy in his little 2-stroke racer and then we all piled back into the real cars and headed off to the second stop of the day, The One, The Only, The now-famous Sammy J Peppers.