RVR MidO Throwback
Are we still doing “Throwback Thursday”??? Cuz I wanna throw it back to some humble beginnings…
Against what I thought at the time was my better judgment, I took a Friday off of work in the middle of October 2019 to drive to Mid-Ohio and shoot a grassroots race . I wasn’t remotely being paid to do this, it was only so I could post my photos into their racing series’ Facebook group in the hopes of getting someone to bite. Turns out, it was probably one of the best, most life-altering, decisions I’ve ever made. The decision to take that risk and put myself waaaayy outside of my comfort zone was the first step in a chain of reactions that found me working with an IMSA GTD team in 2023 and eventually to being back with Random Vandals full time in 2026.
MidO may not be the most glamorous place on the IMSA circuit, but it does hold a special place in my heart. It was the first track I went to (outside of my “two home tracks”, WGI & Lime Rock) when I decided that I needed to be at more than one IMSA race a year. But more significantly, that grassroots race at MidO in 2019 was the first time I shot on the hot side with a photo vest, ever.
I meekly walked into registration with my D5700 and a pair of very low end lenses looking for someone I had never met named “Kelly”. When I found her, squeaked out “uh… I was talking with Rudy [the series photographer]... and, uh… he said I should talk to you about getting a photo vest?”. She squinted at me and thought for a second, and then responded “oh! Right - my friend told me about you. Here you go” and tossed me a vest. It was impossible to know at the time, but this brief interaction would play a key part in the outcome of my career in motorsports. There’s obviously a bit more to this part of the story, but I’ll save that and why I was focusing so much on RVR for a few weeks from now ahead of Watkins. I digress.
Anyways, because I can trace most of my origin story back to that Friday in October of 2019, as much as I’d maybe like to shrug off Mid-Ohio at times, I owe a little bit of why I’m where I am today to it. And for that, I’m excited to get back to Lexington Ohio this weekend…
