I’m not the most social person in the world; I tend to be a bit of a loaner. Slot car building can be a great solitary activity but when it comes to racing, it seems only natural that that’s something you need 2 or more people for. In January of 2020 the economy was booming, I’d just had a successful year in business including a big bonus and things were looking pretty positive. By March we were locked inside our homes afraid to even goto the grocery store. Here I was beginning to come out of my shell, just found a new hobby that I thought might lead to some social activity, and suddenly social activity gets shut down by government mandate.
I did contact the 2 HO slot car clubs in my area, and I did meet with the coordinator of one of them, but both of them said basically the same thing: no more club events or racing because of the scary chinese virus. I exchanged a few emails with a few club members and I did manage to attend 3 small meetings at someone’s home track, which I admit were really fun, but once the “numbers” started going up again, even those small 3-4 man meetings were called off.
So, that was pretty much that; it was back to playing with my toys alone. Now, had I not been able to find an acceptable timer, that would have pretty much been the end of this hobby right there; with nothing more a lap counter, solo racing wouldn’t really be possible, which is why a timer was so critical. And once I got a timing system, it turned out it wasn’t really so bad. Solo racing means racing against the clock, but I made up my own way to pit 2 cars against one another; just run each on its own lane one at a time and who ever gets the best time critera-be that the fastest lap or the fastest total race times-wins. Obviously this isn’t rocket science and yes, I know it isn’t really “real racing” but, again, “real racing” requires real racers.
At first I was just writing each race down on a notepad and doing the things the most simple way possible: the winners of the first heat face off against each other, paired by the fastest times, until a ‘final battle” where only 2 cars are left since, as we all know, “there can be only one.” Then I started spreadsheeting everything, which is cool because you can track progress and get an idea for which cars are consistently winning as well as which ones seems to be losing performance and thus may be due for a tune-up or upgrades. I even took to giving my races cool sounding names like “‘Sportscar Suicide’ Fast-Lap Eliminations” and “Muscle Car ‘Manic Panic’ 5-lap shootout;” the kinds of names you would see on flyers and tickets when you went to a real track. This is all child’s play compared to some of the complex things that can be done with software but I found it quite satisfying. Maybe I am a simpleton…or maybe I’m just trying to make the best of a bad situation.
I hope that someday in the future our lives can return to normal and people can start interacting like human beings again, able to leave our homes without half ours faces covered so we can see each other smile, and we can actually invite people into our homes again for some drinks and bullshitting and racing. Its my cynical nature to say that, as time goes on, I’m starting to doubt that anything will ever be normal again, but when I have those kinds of thoughts I remind myself that its always darkest before the dawn. And, if I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, at least I can see the light on my timing gate!
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