The Beginning of the End, Part IV
I was sitting on a rock above Turn 13 fighting back tears as the heavy mist tried to turn to rain. The few that escaped blended into the precipitation on my face. This wasn’t helped by the Ghost Atlas song in my ears:
“Roam the earth to leave new holes to be filled
Inconsistent tempo like rainfall on the windshield
Please stop making sense of this
A god in the machine
I can’t take the artifice
Repel this gravity
All along a renegade
Pulse starts beating
Shackled in my embrace
The world was coming at me in waves
All along a renegade”
-J. Cash, 2024
What was I doing? I was possibly in a stage withdrawal from a somewhat toxic medication I’ve pulled myself off of. There was no need for that anymore. Or was there? No seriously, what am I doing here? I was actually home sick during a race weekend. I don’t know if that’s ever happened before? This made it furthermore impossible to ignore the doubt of whether I should even be there.
“I should probably get the rain gear on my cameras” I said to myself, but quickly followed it up with a disheartened “what’s the point?”. I took a photo on my phone and sent it to my wife, telling her how much I missed her, wished she was there with me, and begged of her: “what the hell am I doing?”.
“You’re chasing this dream and you’re making it work - that’s what you’re doing”, she replied.
I felt like I was failing to prove my worth. I knew I was clinging to a dying dream. I was desperate not to seem desperate. And I didn’t know that my day was about to get much more difficult.
The stupidest thing is: sitting there sulking on that rock in the rain was the lowest point of my weekend, if not 2024 season. That was the turning point for me - not the impact in Turn 1 that ended my season with RVR, nor the meeting in the hauler the next morning that made it official. Whatever it was that I felt -whatever it was that I got over- sitting on that rock in the rain fighting back tears, that is the reason I’m still doing this.
That is the reason I’m working in the SRO this 2025 season. That is the reason I’m back at Road America today, despite all that has played out since. In spite of the reason I have for not being here this weekend.
