Field Trip: Thousand Oaks

New Track Unlocked

Kimi fawns over Thousand Oaks for its kart quality and track design. The first time I went, I was solo, couldn’t get him to wake up. It took about an hour to drive up there which was the longest I had driven for some race time.

I got there right at open, there was a birthday party of young kids and a pack of dads. A couple of them asked me if I had brought a party guest. I laughed and told them I was there to race. There was a long pause. Kimi often jokes that he feels like Kramer at the dojo, if you get the Seinfeld reference. They were utterly mystified why an adult would take this so seriously. All I can say is, their loss.

I had the track to myself, with curious dads observing. I noticed immediately these karts were a different generation from what I had been racing. I get out there and right at the first corner I went into a graceful full spin. This happened at several more points on the track. I was totally lost.

I realized I was starting from scratch and for my next two races I slowed down considerably. My goal was to take full advantage of the straight and tackle the first corner without spinning out.

I went at this for the next two races with no success. I stopped spinning out, but I could tell I was lifting too early on the straight. I knew what I needed, but his lazy ass was still in bed.

On my second visit, I gave Kimi a ride, ensuring he would get there. We arrived around noon and the track was packed which meant so were our races. I was hoping to copy cat Kimi as I had done at Torrance but this traffic was brutal. When Kimi was finding clean air, he was flying. I locked in on trying to catch up and something happened.

It was almost as though I was driving through the people in front of me rather than around them. It was an ever shifting, unpredictable puzzle. I had to get into very thick crowds and found myself pretty comfortable there. Finally, I see the back of Kimi’s helmet. However, he had now found more shitty traffic. Instead of lining up behind him, I got ahead of him and took the win for that race.

I left not coming even remotely close to mastering that track. But the thing that stuck out from that day was my abilities in a pack. This entire time I had been avoiding crowds when scheduling my track time.

I was able to navigate thick traffic with minimal contact on unfamiliar territory. Hell, I even liked it. As a bonus, all those bodies on the track kept it warm. There was something about elbows out that felt really natural.

K1 standard races are all about nailing that fast lap. When it came to fast, Kimi reigned supreme, but when it came to having to fight, my lap average often slipped below his. This was the day I stopped trying to get the track to myself.

Back at Torrance, most of my friends are deadly fast. But they have to create those perfect conditions. Often pulling over and sacrificing laps to create a traffic free environment. I wasn’t ready to do that, I paid for the laps, I wanted to use all of them. I liked fighting for clean air, and I was getting pretty damn good at it.