In Need Of A Hobby

Living here in Artesia is like being grounded when you were a kid!  Of course not in this day-n-age where pre-teens have their own laptops, smart phones, iPods, DVD players, and video game consoles in their own rooms... but back in the day, where you only had the posters on the wall to stare at when sentenced to your room!  So... with me being "grounded" out here for what seems like an eternity, I knew I needed a hobby!

I always find it amazing how the oddest things from your childhood come full circle and without warning suddenly pop back into your life again!  For example... one weekend afternoon about a month and a half ago, while hanging out at my buddy's place across the street, he begins to explain to me how his messy divorce is leaving his bank account bone dry.  He then breaks out his impressive gun collection and actually tries to get me to buy whichever and however many guns I was interested in!  After politely declining his offer, he then - almost out of the blue, asked me if I would be interested in buying his R/C (Radio/Remote Control) car.  My ears immediately perked and my eyes shot wide open! 

Come to find out, my buddy had an old gas R/C car that he hadn't used in forever and was just now putting it up on 'Craigslist' to try and sell.  Well, little did he know... at one point in my life I was absolutely infatuated over anything & everything R/C related!  So of course he broke it out and showed it to me... and I of course broke out my 'Flux Capacitor' and traveled back in time to when I was a kid again!  He didn't have any of the special fuel required to start and run it, so all I could do was just hold, inspect and stare at it... and reminisce about a better time in life when 80's music was just simply referred to as music... and me, Justin, Andy and the rest of our friends spent the days building tracks and racing our R/C cars... and having but only one small worry in the world: how long our batteries were going to last!

To say I seriously gave a lot of thought to buying his car from him would be a huge understatement!  But I always came back to the same argument: it wouldn't be any fun if I didn't have anyone to race against!  So in the end, I chose not to buy it.  But as time went by and the more my buddy & I talked about it, the more interested I became in buying my own... and the less interested he got in selling his!  Finally, after completely talking me into it, I ultimately succumbed to the peer pressure and bought myself a decent cheap little R/C car off of eBay.

No sooner did I click 'Buy It Now' than my buddy already asking permission from the owner across the street if we could use his acre sized empty lot as an R/C car track!  We got permission and suddenly I had no more free time on my hands... for the next two weeks my buddy & I spent just about every day designing, shoveling, and sculpting out a brand new R/C track with nothing but our hands & our shovels!  It was back-breaking work that came with nothing but blisters on our hands... but to tell you the truth, it gave me something to do, I was outside enjoying the warm weather, and call me crazy... but all that shoveling and hard work moving dirt around, sculpting jumps and making that track was actually quite therapeutic!  I can't really explain it... but it was very satisfying and I actually enjoyed it! 

By the time we finished building the track, my car had finally arrived... along with plenty of "Nitro" fuel, and my buddy & I were ready to race!  We really didn't think anything of it... but apparently our little two-week construction project attracted some attention with the locals, and much to our surprise a few of them just so happened to share the same hobby!  We befriended a couple of local guys that had their own R/C cars and were absolutely thrilled that they now had a legit track to race them on!

If you would have told me a year ago that I would have my own R/C car, built a track for it, and race it with friends in the middle of nowhere New Mexico in a years time... I would have looked at you like you were crazy!  But as crazy as it sounds, I now have a new hobby... and it's an absolute blast! 

    

Here's a short video...

of one of our local friends racing around the track with his R/C car!