Hello Bay Area Autocrossers:
I just thought I'd share with you my experiences of the Solo II Nationals in
Topeka, KS last week. It's not very easy putting this into words.
Tuesday morning on the north course, as I was cheering on my dad to his
fourth place in A Prepared, I heard some news from Jean Kinser that lead me
to believe that she had lost her mind. She was walking around handing out
Evolution Driving School stickers, and telling us that the Pentagon and the
World Trade Center were on fire, and to pass the word. I was absolutely
convinced that she was insane, but she said it with such urgency, I knew it
had to be true.
I went up to Chris Cox and Rick Gould, who were there to support Pilar who
was running in the same group. I said, "This ought to put things into
perspective," passing on the news, not quite digesting its severity.
They thought for sure I was passing along some sick joke. "Look at your
smirk," Rick said. "You are so full of it."
Rick and I went to his truck and turned on the radio. As we watched the cars
race on the south course, we listened to Peter Jennings describe the mayhem
in New York. He could barely get out the words. I heard the sounds of
explosions and helicopters and sirens, and just his voice describing the
terrible scene. A small group, including Jim McKamey, gathered around to
listen to the news unfold. We tried to find words, something to explain it
all, but we couldn't.
They stopped the event shortly thereafter. They allowed the second group on
the north course to run, and on the south course, they got through the third
group, and that's when they told us all to get off the site, immediately.
Just pack up your things as quickly as possible, you can leave your trailer
at the new SCCA headquarters site, but just get off the site.
It took a couple of hours, but slowly, all 1000 of us siphoned out of the
gate. This is the part I wish I could find the words to describe. The
intensity and the importance of nationals suddenly became about as
significant as the rubble of the broken concrete, as we slowly, quietly, and
solemnly packed up our belongings, not really comprehending what was
happening, or what we were going to do. Do we go home? Stay?
I called my boyfriend Bob on a cell phone, as we waited to fit in the long
line to leave the paddock. He said there was video footage of planes
crashing into the buildings on the TV.
What I'll remember most of all of this event is laying on my bed in the
Motel 6 in Topeka, watching the horrific details unfold on television, and
making cut out daisies for my Snell certified helmet out of contact paper.
Somehow, the daisies made me just a little bit happier.
On Wednesday night, we all went to the banquet, to award trophies for those
who ran on Tuesday, and to learn that the event would continue on Thursday
and Friday, only we'd all just run on the South course, three runs each.
Somehow, we'd just make it all work. We held hands in prayer, and Roger
Johnson gave us a stirring and eloquent speech. He read all of our minds and
somehow put it all into words, and helped us make sense of it all.
I think the words will be in the next issue of NAP, I'm not sure. I'm not
saying that to get you to subscribe, but just so you know where they are.
The gist was that although many of us have gone home, understandably, for
those of us who are still here, to pack it in and give up would be like
letting those bastards win.
And so, in the next two days, I saw the most amazing autocross of my entire
life. They ran six groups on Thursday, and nine on Friday. Friday's event
had some 435 competitors. They had two course walk throughs, and did
on-the-fly worker change overs.
On the upside: what that means is that we can get 1600 entrants in 2002.
As Josh Sirota noted, SFR brought home six well earned national championship
trophies.
There is something more important, though, and that is that we even
autocrossed at all. It's not just that they let us autocross. It's that we
did it, in spite of the enemy's attempts to make us live in fear.
Forbes Field is a live air force base. They could have just sent us on our
way. Although we were given only half the paddock space on Thursday and
Friday, we made due with what we had. You could only bring your trailer and
RV onto the site if you were competing on that day. There were no
complaints.
I trust our President and his assertions that those guilty are associated
with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, but trust is all I have. I really
don't know. I am so baffled by the human mind, and how people who look just
like we do, who love their children just like we do, could want to harm so
many people in such a sick way, and if you ask them why, they'll give you
well reasoned answers. You can try to debate with them, but their minds are
made up, using their own logic. It makes sense to them. It's not a culture,
it's not a religion, it's a philosophy.
I turn to logic, because it is what makes sense. Yet, so do these
terrorists, yet their conclusions are so different. In fact, from their
perspective, WE are the terrorists. This attack was so well planned. It is
almost impressive, but I cannot comprehend it. We humans separate ourselves,
rather smugly, from other animals in our ability to use reason and logic,
but events like this lead me to believe that humans are not rational. We are
not superior. Our brains are like putty, moldable and pliable into any shape
or belief. What amazing creatures we are, capable of so much beauty and also
cruelty, the sickest things ever that can destroy the whole world. It's a
sick joke I will never get.
But if Bush's assertions are true, that the source of these attacks came
from the Taliban, then it means my right as a woman to compete in such a
silly, meaningless sport with such passion is even more precious.
Two weeks ago, I was ready to quit autocrossing. I was sick of the politics
and the personality clashes, and that it was becoming more of a job to me.
All I wanted to do was make my nationals runs, and fly home and move on with
my life. After my year in Prague several years ago, where I was immersed in
a culture that placed priorities on different things than we do here in the
U.S., where I had to struggle to learn a really strange language, and deal
with stares because of my funny accent, and live in poverty, and just be
grateful that I had a roof over my head and at least a supply of bread and
beer, I had made a promise to myself that autocross would never become more
important than what is truly important, a life of liberty, justice, and the
American way, whatever that means. I have a roof over my head, and friends
and family, and a kitchen with all the appliances, and thank God for that.
That is all that is important.
Yet over time, I allowed myself to be sucked into exactly what it was that I
had tried to avoid. I had lost the strength to rise above what I had so
disdained. The price I pay is lost friendships with people who once, and
still do, mean so much to me, and now we even avoid each other in airports.
So, I just wanted to hang up the helmet, to start a new activity where I
could reinvent myself, and I could just enjoy this activity, whatever it is,
for simply being what it is, even if it was just going hiking in the woods,
because I had lost that ability with autocross. Too much importance is
placed on success, some nebulous, meaningless term, than the true fact that
autocross is more symbolic of our free time, and we can weave in and out of
traffic better than most, and what it really is is a whole lot of fun.
I don't care what place I came in at Nationals. I am grateful that I got to
make those three runs, the best runs of my whole life, to Jeff Ellerby for
letting me drive his wonderful, red Westfield (Lotus 7 like thing) in DM, a
car that makes me smile just looking at it, that I got to play in a parking
lot with about a thousand other champions, and that I had, in a pretty small
way, a chance to give my big finger to whomever it was who decided to steal
airplanes and crash them into buildings and kill innocent people.
Katie Kelly
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