from the EDITOR THE GETTING THERE

By Justin Zoch

WE ARE INTO the summer doldrums now and a good chunk of my energy is spent trying to find something productive for my boys to do that doesn’t involve YouTube or a character from Zelda but I feel like just spent the last few months as an unpaid chauffeur getting them to track, piano, orchestra, student council and several other activities. I didn’t realize how lucky I was.

I heard a clip on our local sports talk station with actor Jeff Daniels talking about his own experience as a hockey dad. While he’s talking about hockey and stick-and-ball sports parents, he could easily have been talking about racing parents. Just like there are millions of parents who have gone every extra mile with their kids in various sports, think of all the families that have spent hours upon hours in a toterhome or a pickup truck together chasing racing. I found his thoughts paraphrased as “we’ve got a pretty close family. Just ended fourteen years of travel hockey with two boys. My daughter was always a part of that… As I tell idiotic, stupid, youth-sport parents, it’s about the drive there and the drive back, not about the trophy or how your kid played. We’ve always had a good relationship with our kids. You’re driving with them and talking to them at the age of eight. It became this adventure and they learned to love it. You connect, you really do.”

This is so well said and crystalizes that those mundane moments are the ones you usually really want back. It got me thinking about my own childhood. I never played sports and wasn’t really involved in anything much in high school that required a lot of shuttling until I was old enough to get myself there. However, looking back, my drives to activities were much longer, much more involved than a three minute journey back from tennis camp or a quick drop off to McDonald’s for work.

My after school activities involved getting to as many dirt track races as I could. I’d regularly convince my dad that we needed (NEEDED!) to be at every sprint car race within 200 miles and when the tours came though, like the World of Outlaws or NCRA Northern Tour, we had to make as many of these shows as we could too. I never got involved in any meaningful way with a race team as a pitside helper working on cars and my dad, while extremely mechanical, never passed any of that ability or interest on to me.

He did, however, seem to appreciate the fact that racing gave me what I was looking for and helped to nurture the things that appealed to me about the sport, like traveling and oddball characters who live life on the edge. We got there early and stayed late so I could talk to the drivers and crews after the races and start to feel like I was a part of it. He helped me buy every possible piece of racing media from programs to yearbooks and patiently sat next to a know-it-all-wanna-be race announcer while I showed off everything I’d learned from them.

There were plenty of late nights when we got home at three and he got up at five and I didn’t. He sacrificed a lot of time with his wife and other kids to drive me to Rock Rapids, Iowa, on a weeknight to sit through a long rain delay. I used to keep meticulous notes on every race and still have them but outside of Butch Hanssen’s big crash, I don’t remember anything else much about that race.

I do remember stopping for gas late though and driving in his old Jeep south of Luverne and listening to oldies on the radio. I get it now. The journeys there and back, not the race, made it worth it for him. Although, let’s be honest, watching sprint cars has to be more exciting than traveling basketball!

The sport of racing is uniquely designed to keep families and friends together – sometimes that produces more together time than perhaps you’d like but you can’t go it alone. Next time you’re driving to the track, watching the fuel gauge suck down seven bucks every 13 miles, try to remember this is the best part of the whole deal – the times you’ll want back more than anything.

Cheers to all the fathers and mothers who shared that same windshield time with their kids as I got and to all the families that racing has brought together and helps keep together one mile at a time.