Cafeoutdoors.com: Well Suze....

I can take you back, a long way here. What I learned in real life, when and why, and this is specifically for Griffin, because, I know what his dream is right now. It's to be the BEST, and my knowledge of cycling, or triathlon is limited, MINIMAL at best, but all racing has the same mindset.

In, I believe 1966, my Father's best friend was driving a car for another team. Even as I sit here today, a half century later, my old man will say to me:

"Do you remember ANY of this nostalgic crap between teams that they talk about today on T.V.? Those other drivers and crews were the ones I was there to beat! We never approached another opposing team in the pits without a wrench in our hand. I sure as hell don't remember helping them, and they sure as hell didn't help me." And, I'll say, "No, Dad, I don't remember this nostalgic stuff. We had families and kids that were friends, as long as you were on the same TEAM, but if a team split up, you kept your distance from opposing teams, and stayed with your Dad's team, and the family members of his team." We were cordial, mostly, to everyone, and frankly, quite frosty to others, because every weekend, you wanted to beat them, and they wanted to beat you, and sure enough, sometimes the likes of Mario Andretti, the Bodine Brothers, Ken Schrader, Darrel Waltrip, and others, might be among the competitors, but this was long before REAL fame, and REAL money, and REAL sponsorship, REAL jealousy, 24 hour sports TV Channels, and most importantly, the internet.

What the media is selling, is revisionist history, a bunch of touchy-feely bull.

So, I'm going to take you back to the story of my Dad's best friend, who drove on an opposing team around 1966:

In a heat race, at a US track, my Dad's friend, came out of the fourth turn. The race was 'nothing special', just a run of the mill, weekend race. This is when officials didn't necessarily have a starter's stand, and the flagman entered the racing surface, that's when my Dad's friend clipped him with his front tire of an open-wheel car. My Mom's first instinct was to cover my eyes with her hand, but I still saw the flagman get tossed way up in the air, like a rag doll, and maybe 60' down the track. At the time, drivers and crews never signed those long legal documents, and one thing for SURE, women weren't allowed in the pits, because we were considered ONLY a distraction. The prognosis was, that the flagman, would survive, but that he would be in a wheelchair for life. The very next order of business though was to get my Dad's friend, back across the border, because the flagman could sue him in court for everything he owned, had police been able to serve him court papers in the US. My Dad's friend got back home to Canada, and never raced again. Except for probably a little blurb in a hometown newspaper, the ACCIDENT, would go largely unreported, there were no videos, only eye-witness accounts that would have had to been retold in a courtroom. We all watched for years later, as flagman continued to run out onto racing surfaces, and most prevalent in the highest form of motorsport, F-1 racing. Stupid, huh?

About five years later, when my Dad's driver died, his best friend's son & daughter were sitting right next to me, during that accident. His friend's family and ours became even closer, because, my Dad gave up racing for a long while, and his friend understood what it was like to have to quit, something that we all LOVED. I was a pallbearer at his wife's funeral, and despite the years and distance, our families are still friends.

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Now, you're going to ask me, what this has to do with Griffin. First of all, we're not bitter, or litigious about anything that happened. Sad, sometimes, reflective most times, but realistic. We found other things in our lives, eventually. Tough times don't last, tough people do. But, more than anything if you have the heart and soul of a racer, it never goes away. First you'll be chasing that bunny (the best), then you WILL be the bunny, and people will be gunning for YOU. I could care less if Lance Armstrong was juiced or pumped full of oxygen, I'd still want to beat HIM. It's something quite inexplicable to those who have never experienced the equivalence of doing 300 kilometers per hour on a freeway, and what we call "The blood-red mist", the adrenaline pump, it's damn addictive, without performance enhancing drugs. So, you want to be a racer, but you want to do it on your OWN terms. You don't do things Lance's way, or Tony Stewart's way, you do things your OWN way, and this is real, real hard to get through to teenagers, but your Mom & Dad aren't holding you back, they are reining you IN, because when you ARE the bunny, THEN you're going to find out who your REAL friends are. I know that your Dad at least has experience with extraordinary things happening quickly, and a cop's intuition about people, learn to trust him and your Mom. And, when you ARE that bunny, Mom & Dad, your sisters and Cody, will STILL be there. Otherwise, it may require that you close off your soul to new people in your life, because people can't always be TRUSTED with your future. This cost exists in real life, in the media, and on the internet, but, it doesn't last forever, you will find a place and time for them. But, right NOW you are standing on the edge of greatness, amongst the world's finest, and that may never come again. Go for it, right NOW!