Never the Same IC#19 It’s All Too Much!

Kirk had plenty on his to do plate, so he had difficulty prioritizing with his future lying in unmitigated uncertainty. Did he really want to be a stock car racer?

 

Cue: “It’s My Life” https://youtu.be/vx2u5uUu3DE

 

Well, philosophers tell us that fate and freewill are the same or not separate. Or they say flatly that freewill does not exist. Huh?

You might think you’re a victim of fate when a life-changing event occurs in your life, but most often the event occurred because of what transpired earlier in your so-called life. Fate, or the claim to be a victim of fate, removes your responsibility and so your future, whatever that may be, is imposed upon you�"conveniently in some cases.

On the other hand, you may believe you have the freewill to choose if or not something occurs in your life by resolute choice, but in reality, that something, that choice, relies on what occurred beforehand, so you are responsible for the something because you imposed the ingredients of the change, knowingly or not, upon your future. In other words, your so-called freewill caused your fate. It’s all very confusing!

Kirk never gave either fate nor freewill any thought whatsoever. Now as an adult, he recalled that his interest in car culture began early in his life, because of car culture exposure in different manners. Later, as he grew into street legal age his brother-in-law Mike assisted in his interest in cars by supplying cars for Kirk to drive. So, now Kirk ended up with a stock car which he may or may not finish and subsequently drive on a track is up in the air. If it does happen, was it cosmic fate or freewill on Kirk’s part?

Where we left Kirk, he had a lot, too much, to do. There sat a new motorcycle that needed riding. That in itself drew Kirk from whatever else he should have been doing. His newly purchased van required plenty of labor to prepare it for painting. He had just put his precious Firebird back on the road which drew him to the street as well, but the White Rat just plain needed to go. Kirk didn’t want that POS sitting in the yard staring back at him every day. But the most current task that required his immediate attention was his own personal stock car. At least he thought that he wanted the old stock car to be called his own.  It needed work, it required time and it needed money the two things Kirk was running out of quickly. Oh, sorry! That’s three things!

Besides all those wheeled problems, she came back into his life. Even though she wasn’t overly needy, the pretty, slim, red-headed, befreckled Farrah had recently come back into his life, and he didn’t want to lose her again!

So there he was in the midst of a load of dilemmas, and then...

There, the stock car’s body hung from the hoist and the skeleton-like roll cage fully exposed on the frame. The cage itself had been well engineered and welded a few years prior by Mike, but the rest of the car appeared marginal, less than marginal�"primitive and rusty.

Recently, Kirk found himself slightly embarrassed by being caught unaware of Mike beginning work on his stock car, wondering what he had planned. Despite that, what caught his curiosity was the brand-new appearing engine sitting in the corner tightly wrapped in a plastic bag. Tugging at the plastic bag to get a better look, Kirk turned back to Mike.

“What’s the story on the engine?” Kirk asked, with a smidge of hope that the engine was for his car.

“Just got it back from Marlon’s,” Mike answered, but Kirk thought Mike was a little tight lipped.

Kirk had worked at Marlon’s Speed Shop as a young teen, that’s where he dropped a Corvette differential on his big toe. Incidentally, the toe was never the same. Kirk knew all about the high-end machine shop at Marlon’s.

“What did you get done to the motor?”

“Started with a factory crate motor and had Marlon’s machine shop do their magic on it,” Mike said, though he seemed to want to focus on Kirk’s stock car at the moment.  

Kirk felt a bit behind the power curve. “For your car,” he gulped not wanting to go there, “I take it.”

“Mmmm, mmm, yeah.”

“Westchild pay for it?” Kirk said, squatting down next to the engine. He could see that the engine had been bored with oversized, high compression pistons installed because there wasn’t a cylinder head on it.

“Yep!”

Kirk mulled over the situation for a minute or so. He finally realized that he had to find out what the whole story was so he blurted out, “What am I going to do for an engine?”

Mike stood up from his work.

“Ah. So. Chuck (Westchild that is) promised buying engines for both cars.” Kirk realized Mike didn’t say our cars. “He ordered two crate engines awhile back, but only the one came in. I sent it over to Marlon’s to work on. But. Well. With the economy the way it is and supply chain problems only one crate motor, that one, came in and the other one is on backorder. I checked with Mark in parts and he said that they didn’t know when it’s coming in.” Mike shrugged. “If it doesn’t come in by racing season, we’ll have to come up with another engine some other way.”

Kirk stood there silently eyeing the engine, then eying up “his” the other car, that now was partially disassembled. Seeing he was on a roll of sorts, “So, what else did “Chuck” promise for the two cars?”

“Besides the two engines,” Mike paused. “All the paint and supplies and a professional sign painter to put our names and numbers on the cars.” Kirk perked up with that thinking the cars would look really slick with professionally painting on his car, not like some drivers who put their numbers on with a spray can or what looks like a paint roller. “He’ll also get his name on the cars for his new-car sales advertisement.”

Kirk’s brain did a 180, and he groaned internally. After analyzing what Mike had revealed about the sponsorship, he realized that that left a whole lot of race car unpaid for! He seethed on the little amount of sponsorship being paid and of course Westchild would have his name on the two cars! His hopeful vision of cool additions to the car had been abruptly dashed to bits. He pondered the implications of the situation a few minutes realizing maybe, perhaps, he shouldn’t have bought the motorcycle or�"the van for that matter. Finally, he straightened out his thoughts�"at least a little. He needed to know what he was in for.

“So what’s the plan with the “old” car,” Kirk asked, not going so far as talking about it as “his” car.

“I think you mentioned awhile back that the car sat too high, and I thought that too seeing it didn’t handle all that well,” Mike said, resting a hand on the black roll cage. (Mike actually raced the old car for a year and a half.) "What I’m thinking is to bring this roll cage down a few inches, I’m thinking four inches. That should be the first step. Then we can look at other things like the suspension and…” He continued to put chalk marks on the cage legs while holding a ruler on the frame.

Kirk thought a moment not quite comprehending. “Won’t that make the cage weaker with a cut and a reweld.”

“Not at all,” Mike said pointing at a chalk mark on the roll cage leg four inches up from the frame. “If we cut equally on four main corners and whatever is needed on the diagonal braces, it’ll be just as strong as originally. We can then have the body lower on the cage and the overall car.”

“Hmmm, sounds good,” Kirk said, looking it over. He bent down and looked at the underside of the cage. “Ah, but what about headroom?”

“Yeah, we may have to adjust the seat height and then the steering to match�"shouldn’t be much of a problem.”

Kirk had not been around many stock cars whether in the garage, on the track or in the pits where the drivers and crew work on their cars between races. In that respect he really hadn’t a chance to compare cars all that much. Even in the racing pits, he perhaps noticed a nice paint job, a clean, dry engine or a well-outfitted cockpit, but other than that he didn’t know what made a good race car or maybe a faster race car against a potential racing slug. Kirk turned around to take in the “new” stock car that Mike had just built. It was definitely a few steps improved over the “old’ car that he inherited. The suspension mounts, struts and adjusters were cleaner and lighter. The cockpit appeared cleaner and tighter because it was a much smaller body. The steering looked better engineered than the old car.

Overall, the old car, his car, must have been nearly two feet longer than Mike’s new car. The frame was heavier because it was thicker and wider. The roll cage, because the body was bigger, had more metal tubing as well. The new car didn’t have nerf bars on it yet, but the ones on the old car were big, bent and scraped up from close encounters with other cars. Something Kirk would have to attend to.

Soon, Kirk found out that even the wheels and tires were heavier on his car. Mike bought new wide, lightweight slick tires mounted on brand new steel wheels. The old car had thick, narrower recapped tires on wheels that had been reinforced with rebar. Back in the day, when racing was more of the “last car running” style of racing this wheel set up was probably the norm for protection of the wheel and tire. Now, cars looked better and drivers acted a little more polite with not so much purposely slamming and banging while racing.

A bit of racing technology follows here. Open-wheeled race cars of this type had nerf bars front and back and along the sides. Of course, front and rear bars are like bumpers for bumping and being bumped. Then, there are side nerf bars. These side nerf bars prevent actual wheels and tires from contacting other cars’ tires. Case in point: If one car stuck his tire in front of a competitor’s tire, it could make the other car’s rotating tires ride up and over the other’s tire and actually flip the car. Not something you’d want to happen, huh? Hence, side nerf bars.

Also, recapped tires are definitely a thing from the past. Way back when, you could have new tread put on your old worn-out tires. Seems bizarre, right? This was before radial tires became widespread, but it was a commonplace practice even for race car tires like Kirk had on his inherited car. The recapping industry would take the old tires and hot mold on a new set of treads. Because back then the tires didn’t flex like radials do, but just the same, tires could flex, heat up and occasionally destroy themselves on the highway. Something else you wouldn’t want to happen as well on the race track. Anyway, Kirk’s car had these recapped tires which are heavier and less grippy than the new slick tread, low-profile tires. So much for the short primer on stock car equipment.

Being just after Kirk’s birthday, which came and went without much hoopla, meant that it was late March and only two months until racing started. Was Kirk excited about racing? He couldn’t say he was all that enthralled, but seeing Mike had begun work on his car, Kirk felt obligated to assist him.

Mike burned off the four-inch stubs of roll cage that now hovered above the frame. Kirk manned the grinder to clean off the slag and rough remains of weld where the cage had been welded previously. At the same time, he cleaned and trued up the cut ends of the cage. After that, they lowered the cage back on the frame. Even with just four inches removed, Kirk thought it significantly brought the car’s profile down. Obviously, that was by eye, and the proof would be revealed when the body was put back on over the cage.

Just to verify, Kirk slid into the wrap-around bucket seat to check head room. Without his hat on, his hair touched the underside of the cage. That meant they did have to lower the seat to give him headroom when he had a helmet on. He eyed the gap under the seat. The seat mounts were maybe only two inches off the floor. It’ll be a close fit but Mike reassured him that it would be fine. Ending the session, the two stock car builders had to do some finagling on the cage’s diagonal braces, but they got it set squarely into place all the way around. Kirk left to let Mike reweld the cage to the frame.

No doubt during this spring of wheeled diversions, Kirk was pulled in several directions. Kirk’s underlying philosophy when pulled in several directions is to simply to run away! In the past, he might just drive around in his Firebird or hang out with his buddies or best yet, when he had a girlfriend, he’d just go see her.

Relieved from the obligated labor on the stock car, Kirk felt he could get to the other things he preferred to work on namely Farrah, but her influence on him has already been covered previously in “Kirk’s Love Life.”   

Kirk decided he needed to get rid of the old winter car he named the White Rat now that conditions were completely safe for the Firebird to be put back on the road. So, at work, he went to his go to contact for all matters of buying and selling of used cars, Mark, who worked in the body shop.  Kirk was never completely sure if Mark dealt in legal or illegal transactions because some deals seemed a bit too good to be true like Kirk’s Firebird for instance, but by the same token he was never pulled over in his beloved Firebird by the cops and subsequently jailed/impounded. Same goes for the White Rat, which the DMV cantankerously registered just as unhurriedly as any other auto registration.

Kirk decided to clean up the Rat a bit after he told Mark that he could pass the word of the sale around. At the time, he thought the same amount that he paid for it seemed reasonable. After all, a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks when you’re short of change like Kirk was at the time. He stopped at the auto parts store and bought a can of Gunk, oil and filter, and a spray can of white paint.

Spraying the Gunk all around the engine and the compartment, Kirk let that smelly, greasy, foamy, oozy mess sit for awhile before blasting it off with the garden hose pressurized of course with a thumb blocking the nozzle. If the engine would start, Kirk didn’t know, but the engine looked better than when he bought it.  Getting dripped on, he changed the oil and filter, the only time he did the maintenance since he owned the car! Taking his heavy-duty electric sander, he knocked down the rust spots. He wiped these areas off with a damp rag, let it dry, and used up the entire can of white paint. He was happy that he didn’t have any runs, but his paint job was distinctly obvious with the new white brighter than the old faded white. Kirk stood back, took it all in and shrugged. He went to start the Rat, but of course it wouldn’t start because it looked too good to run! Joking aside and not really needing his trouble shooting skills, he pulled the distributor cap and naturally it was all wet inside. He wiped it out, replaced the cap and the car started up just like usual. 

Within three days, Mark had the car sold for Kirk. A cool hundred bucks. But that would not go very far with all the jobs on his plate at the moment. Kirk’s head spun with wretched indecision.  

Kirk pressed on unhappily at work. He continued to work on his van. He went to see and spend time with Farrah whenever he could. Once in a while he’d take a joy ride on his new bike or a speed run in the Firebird. Then one day, to add to his head-spinning circumstances, his father unleashed on him about helping with the springtime crop work seeing he, Kirk’s father, now had a full-time job at the gypsum plant. Kirk had always enjoyed running the tractor "pum, pum, pum," but that was when he was young and didn’t have many diversions or much of anything else to do in his once boring life.

Nevertheless, with all Kirk had to do, wanted to do, the stock car season creeped closer on him day by day, but then, suddenly, he realized that he hadn’t been over for another week to see if Mike continued to work on his car or if he expected Kirk to do the rest of the work. Kirk understood there was a lot of work on it, but he wasn’t overly enthused about racing. Was it fear, was it the commitment to work on the car and race, was it that he’d rather do other fun noncommittal stuff, or the blatantly obvious fact, Kirk noticed that no one cared he was going to race, not his friends, not his family, not those he worked with? So why should he be excited?

Well, whether driven by fate or freewill, this was Kirk’s life. How it would end up was anyone’s guess because he basically cruised along in life without a commitment to much of anything meaningful that might make a real, honest change in his life.

We shall see…