The VIR 2024 Story, Part I

They exchanged brags about their sim racing skills and rig builds as I stared into my almost empty cocktail doing my best to zone out. They weren’t racing drivers, so as far as I was concerned, they were talking about videogaming in their spare time. I seldom had spare time, and when I did, I needed to be doing something productive to dig myself out of the hole I put myself in to be working in IMSA.

Something struck me about the guests in my periphery being led to their table. I looked over. It was two fellow -albeit much more experienced- photo colleagues. My gaze followed them to their seats hoping to cross paths with theirs. When it didn’t, I smiled and waved in an exaggerated way to draw their attention, at which they playfully returned the gesture. This bewildered the companions at my table almost as much as it annoyed me that I then had to explain who the two colleagues on the other side of the restaurant were. I gulped the remainder of my cocktail and made a non-verbal “another, please” gesture to our waitress as she passed by. One of my companions shot me a judgy side eye then returned the conversation about some other topic I deemed juvenile. A moment passed. I re-zoned out as I sloshed the ice in the empty tumbler and took a sip of the no longer existent cocktail. And then it hit me:

“I’m at the kids table”.

The worst part? I put myself there. Was it an avoidable lapse of judgement that I should have foreseen? Or was I just destined to be damned by ambition? It didn’t matter. It was in the realization of the table I seated myself at and the longing to be at the table on the other side of the restaurant instead that I initiated the shutdown process. There was no going back once that switch was flipped. From that moment on, 2025 wasn’t going to happen per the plan I was still clinging to when we walked into the restaurant a half-hour prior.

VIRginia may be for lovers, but divorce was imminent at the kids table.

As my second of numerous drinks arrived, I was just focused on not completely nuking the weekend on a Friday. But it was too late - the missiles were already launched and enroute to reach their target the following evening.

To be continued…