“So how long have you been doing this?” I asked Shelly, a 91-year old man, as I cast my gaze over the dozens of his intricate wooden sculptures that lined the shelves in his independent-living apartment.
I was a local TV reporter at the time, assigned to cover the story of a nonagenarian wood carver who teaches classes introducing his craft to kids in park district classes. His home was like a personal museum, each creation on display was the work of a master artist with eye-catching details – the stubble of a cowboy’s five o’clock shadow, the feathers on a hummingbird, and the flowing folds of a dancer’s dress.
“I started when I was 75, so just about 16 years now.”
I think about Shelly a lot. It’s inspiring to see that you can choose to pick up a new hobby at any point in your life. If there’s ever been something you’ve dreamed of doing, and you have the ability to try it, you can try it. If you keep at it long enough, you might even become an expert.
That said, it’s probably a bad idea to wait until you’re 75 to pick up a new hobby if you can avoid it. Not all of us will be so lucky as to be in good health at that age.
No, the best time to pursue something new is right now.
I Waited to Start Racing. I wish I hadn’t.
I bought a 2001 Mazda Miata in summer of 2016. I had just finished my sophomore year of college and had saved up enough cash to replace my penalty box of a car (an automatic 2000 Saturn SC1) with something befitting a proud r/Cars-browsing car enthusiast.
I drove Miata-chan (as me and my weeb-trash friends called her) for four years. I was aware of autocross and HPDEs by this point, but I never got over my inertia and the excuses.
“I should get a helmet first.”
“It’ll be too expensive.”
“I’m too tall for a roll bar.”
“I don’t have the time.”
Sure, I was in college for some of that time and actually poor (just spent all my money on the car), but those should have been non-issues. Most autocrosses have loaner helmets. Blackhawk Farms Raceway – a club racetrack near my home at the time – allows Miatas without roll bars in their novice groups. Neither type of event is particularly expensive, and they happen mostly during summer, when I had time.
I sold the Miata last summer before I moved to Boston to be with my then-girlfriend (now fiancée), putting the end on my chance to learn performance driving in one of the greatest cars to do so.
But the car enthusiast bug didn’t go away just because I moved to one of the single worst places in America to be a car enthusiast; I bought a 2015 Mini Cooper S as a car that could happily do it all: miserable Boston-area commutes, weekend driving fun, autocross, and track days.
I knew it was time to stop waiting, and start racing.
Yes, racing a real race car on a real race track gets real expensive real fast, but there are other, relatively affordable ways to start racing.
I’m writing this the day after my first SCCA Autocross.
I can’t stop replaying my runs in my head. I’m hanging onto the experience of driving my car as hard as I actually could, wondering how I could have gone faster, and fighting the urge to look at lightweight wheels and sticky tires on Tire Rack.
My legs are sore from chasing cones. I’d say drivers were spinning out (and managing to wipe out entire gates at once) more than normal because of the cold, wet weather, but I have no point of reference to compare to.
I keep checking the region’s Facebook group for pictures every day. I know it takes time for the volunteer photographers to comb through hundreds or thousands of photos, but I’m eager to both see a picture of myself in action and to see great pictures of all the competitors. It was a lot of fun to watch them in action, up-close while working the course.
Basically, I had a great time. I know I have a lot to learn and can’t wait to improve as a driver. I plan on attending at least one autocross per month all season long, and hope to get a track day in there somewhere too.
It’s just a shame I’ve waited this long to get started when the biggest barrier to me starting this earlier was myself.
Any Amount of Something is Infinitely Better than Zero of Something.
This website is all about approaching motorsports as a hobby. Very few people grow up to become pro racing drivers, but motorsports are more accessible than most people realize.
Yes, racing a real race car on a real race track gets real expensive real fast, but there are other, relatively affordable ways to start racing.
Autocross might not be wheel-to-wheel racing but it’s a legitimate motorsport. HPDEs offer the thrill of speed and option to chase lap times for less (not zero) risk. Arrive and drive karting leagues do offer proper wheel-to-wheel racing and a structured championship points system, often for less than a thousand bucks per season.
If you want to be a racing driver, participating in any motorsport you can is literally, mathematically, infinitely better than participating in nothing at all.
Even if what you really want is to drive a real race car on a real race track (I sure do), it’s normal for any hobbyist to start small.
Most hobbyist photographers start with an affordable kit and take some classes before dropping thousands on lenses and cameras. Many hobbyist astronomers probably started with a cheap, mass-market telescope before they got the bug and bought something more expensive.
It’s fine for hobbyist kart drivers to race arrive-and-drive before deciding what kart class they want to own and drive in. It makes sense for the amateur racers of the SCCA to start with Track Night in America before buying a race car.
It’s okay to start small. It might even be for the best. Just start racing, right now.
Because we can’t all wait until we’re 75 years old to do something we’re passionate about.
Header image by Altemus Prime | Wikimedia Commons
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