So it’s finally time to race a go kart in Austin. I drive past the bill board on 183 four days a week which proudly announces the new K1 Karting location by the Domain and I’m pretty excited to try it.
Electric carts on a track that looks for all intents and purposes like a fairground funnel cake or a cross section of an orangutan’s brain should be fun. It’s all brutal acceleration, heart stopping brakes and maintaining mid-corner speed. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds like something I’d read in Motor Cycle News 20 years ago, so I’ll go with it.
There does appear to be one long straight on the track, and a bunch of hairpins. I hope those brakes are regenerative – that’s the Prius driver in me.
And for something completely unrelated to electric cars, the sublime to the K1 Kart’s ridiculous is available soon in Austin too. No longer do you have to fly to Virginia to thrash a four wheeled jet boat around a track under (what I sincerely hope is) expert and watchful gaze of a driving instructor. Yes, now you can feel the woosh of a supercharger in what is essentially a large go-kart on the tracks and roads of Central Texas. Lone Star Exotics are unleashing the Ariel Atom on the unsuspecting guts of the truck-driving center of the universe.
I used to ride a pretty fast road going motorbike – my teenage wet dream – the CBR929RR known as a fireblade in the UK. I mean, fireblade. What a name. Let alone the urban camo colours it optionally hid behind. This was years before Gandalf ever fought the HD widescreen Balrog. This was all power and no brains. The typical 0-60MPH in 2.5 or 2.75 seconds kind of nutter bike that could go far faster than I could ever drive it in California. True, I did pass a cop car at an indicated 154mph once, but he was going the other way on the highway and probably busy doing something else. Me, a mild mannered janitor smoking cops on the freeway. See? This is what calling something a fireblade will do to a young man.
Fast forward to the hybrid years, and I can theoretically assuage my wife’s very-well-founded fears of two wheeled lunacy, and get from 0-60MPH in under 3 seconds. By virtue of the Ariel Atom. Maybe I can beat my fastest speed on 4 wheels while I’m at it – 145MPH in my old Subaru Impreza Turbo.