Sloane Gets Behind The Wheel

After years of being an avid spectator, Sloane finally gathered the courage to take to the track. Mostly by accident. One night on late season trip to Little Middleton to watch the Tillsonburg Outlaws, we came across a kart with a for sale sign on it. I took some pictures to show a coworker who had expressed some interest in Outlaw kart racing for his son. He said "Are you going to buy it?"

I hadn't thought about it honestly. After a couple days of pondering, and doing a little more research, I proposed the idea to Sloane. She was ready to make the move to the other side of the wall . A couple trips to Chesterman Powersports later, and it was ours. There were only a couple races left for 2019, and we decided that we would spend the fall getting comfortable with the kart off track and start fresh in 2020.

As it turns out, the novelty of your own racing machine at 10 years old, is quickly overshadowed by fear and anxiety when you get in the drivers seat. Sitting in a loud vibrating kart, and being charged with the responsibility of operating the go pedal was little overwhelming. Some kids start in this as young as 5, and have the advantage of not understanding, or at least not fearing consequences. Unfortunately for Sloane, she had plenty of opportunity to watch the sprint cars at Ohsweken Speedway cartwheel into the wall at a high rate of speed, leaving mangled aluminum debris in their wake. At 9hp (restricted to probably half of that for beginners division), we were a far cry from that kind of excitement (carnage), but the images danced around in her head none the less. After many trips down to grandma and grandpa's house to drive circles around the yard, Sloane was slowly building her confidence. "Are you ready to get on the track next year?"

"I think so..."