Ok...what's your story, how'd you get started?

[ScottyB]

after taking like 20 minutes to write my first story my compy crashed :x so lets try this one more time.

basically i have always been really into cars and racing, from my earliest years. most of the things i do revolve around going fast or controlling something with wheels...its just what i love. i devoured magazines at an early age and was quite the bench racer / walking car encyclopedia but had little to no "everyday" knowledge of cars or how to work on them. when i turned driving age my parents let me use their '90 maxima which i drove all through high school thinking i was a bad mamba jamba. performance driving was, for me at the time, limited to putting the transmission in "1" and gunning it through the parking lot after school, while envying people with "popular" cars that could be easily tricked out. those were dark times.

once in college my parents essentially handed the car over to me and i continued to learn more and more about cars and racing, especially with easy access to high speed internet. i also met a bunch of friends my freshman year who loved cars, which was tons of fun. i remember in fall of 2001, wandering around student org night outside of wilson hall and coming across a table with car videos playing and some literature next to a racing helmet. that was all it took and since then i can't imagine how different college would have been for me without MM. once i joined i started to take in alot of information about racing classes and how to get going at a recreational level, since i was crazy about racing but didn't know what to do or where to go (especiallly with little money).

by the time i was a junior i was living in an apt. with Ryan Wilson, Jay and another buddy of mine, and it was awesome. Jay, Ryan and I were all about cars 24/7, and fueled the addiction for me like never before. eventually both Jay and Ryan got into MM too. Unfortunately at that point i was pretty cocky about my abilities and one paricular snow storm was too much to resist. i kind of convinced Ryan and Jay we should go out and "play", which resulted in me putting the Max through a fence and in a ditch, and to my horror Ryan's car slid in my tracks and collided with the back of my car, totalling both. that was a huge, HUGE lesson for me in when it's play time and when its time to be responsible and mature. i typically take the hard way when learning things and this was the most extreme of any example!

my parents were amazingly generous in their forgiveness and with quite a degree of guilt i accepted their help in finding a new car. eventually we came upon a 2001 accord that fit the bill for my needs and at that point i experienced the first car i could really call my own. it was slow, and ungainly but thanks to Honda engineering it had quick reactions, nimbleness and was always amazingly reliable. i made a few small modifications and found that it was a great platform to hone driving skills with. i finally had my chance to autocross it a few times and did quite well. without that car i have a feeling i would have totally missed a valuable period of time in learning to be faster by maintaining smoothness and momentum in the absense of real power. it was sold this summer to a guy desperately seeking a manual tranny'd accord. i still miss that car!

today i drive a '99 A4 which i plan to track in the near future. i like to see myself doing a few years worth of track events during which time i find myself a dedicated "track whore" and then hopefully getting into some sort of sanctioned race series, especially karting (while still doing track days as often as money allows). ultimately i would have enjoyed college and cars nearly as much to this day if it wasn't for MM -- thanks guys.