Burbank On Shuffle

Expanding my karting horizons...

Torrance had been very good to me. I will always credit that track with my kart awakening. I have such fondness for it that it inspired one my my paintings that hangs in my apartment to this day.

No bullshit. I painted the damn thing.

I had hit a plateau at the ‘ole home track and PRs were no longer as plentiful. It felt like it was a good time to expand outward. Luckily I live in LA where there are nine K1 Speeds within a very reasonable drive from me. I thought I would start local.

Around this time, Kimi was getting busier with life and thus I only saw him at Kurch. I had been karting A LOT during the week on my own. The husband joked karting was clearly my new boyfriend. The Burbank track is where Kimi obtained his own awakening and I was curious.

Some call it the Monaco of So Cal karting. It’s old, narrow, sketchy and therefore, iconic. Friday night, I got there too damn early. I wanted to hit that magic hour when people leave to drink and it’s just me and the try-hards. Sadly, traffic was better than expected. Well, tough shit, I was there and son of a bitch that first race sucked.

The rumors were true about the narrow bit. I couldn’t muster the balls to overtake anyone, no matter how slow. There’s also a nasty wall that sticks out on the last corner that scared the shit out of me. I felt like a baby out there finishing nowhere near Kimi’s PR. I ripped off my helmet annoyed with my mental blocking bullshit.

I had a good chunk of time until my next race. I took a look at the track and studied. No Kimi to copycat a line, I had to craft one from scratch. I’d never done this and had about 40 minutes to figure it out. I watched the karts go by and built a few different lines in my head. That was half the problem. The other half was overtaking. My mental block came from not being able to predict what the other drivers were gonna do. I watched how people moved, especially those who didn’t know what they were doing. While often erratic and downright insane, there were some patterns. I plotted escape route lines.

Second race finally came and I could already tell, I was thinking too much. A head full of new theories and lines, no good. I hopped in the kart and like a breath of fresh air, Rob Zombie entered my head. It was “Dragula” and I could feel the overthinking bits of my brain shutting down. I took a deep breath rolling out of the pit. I had to squeeze by for the first overtake. A little clipping but I was polite about it. After that, I was feeling feisty and Rob was only encouraging it. I had a grin under my helmet that I couldn’t shake as I made quick work of the other racers. I finished my 12th lap with six overtakes and came in less than a second behind Kimi’s PR. I felt like a werewolf on a full moon.

Typically when I raced, I might have a tune in my head as I sit in the pit, but then come race time, I turn that shit off. For this race, Rob stuck around but would dial down when I wanted to hear what the kart was doing. It wasn’t something I had to manually control. In fact, I had found a new level of calm flow in my brain that I didn’t know was possible.

Third race was practically empty and I welcomed that clean air with open arms. I could try all sorts of lines, cut tiny slivers of a second off my laps. I could push and get flat out. This race was a whole different tune. Literally. “Wonderland” is a lo-fi banger from Limes that slipped over my brain like a silk scarf as I danced across this crazy track. I finished with a respectable new PR. Thanks to Burbank, I learned to crank the tunes and never shy away from an overtake.