Nelson, welcome to The Garage and I just wanted to say I am looking forward to your future articles with great interest. I have been involved with racing in one form or another since I was a little boy but my path took a very different road (no pun intended) than most. On the other hand is there such a thing as a “normal” means of a passion for the love of racing? I think not and I am sure each persons chain of events that led to their passion or involvement of racing is as much of an interesting story as any other.

In my case I grew up in a small town in southwestern Oregon back before the muscle car era when anything that had a set of mag wheels or a hole in the muffler was classified as a hot rod. My racing bug started with my buddies and me racing our bikes down hills in something similar to what today is called Mountain Biking. Later on it was go-carts and that eventually led to me lying about my age so I could drive an old beat up “Hobby Stock Class” car in the dirt stock car races. I can remember one of my father’s friends had an old Corvette stored in my dad’s garage. For hours at a time I would set behind the steering wheel making tire screeching sounds as I yanked the shifter around pretending to bark off the gears. I am sure that even with a dead battery I probably wore out the tires on that car without ever leaving the garage.

Like all other young guys I went thru the “car stage” in high school but the good news was it all began right at the beginning of the muscle car era and that is when I came to California to get involved with racing. My thinking was, if you want to learn to cook you go to the kitchen and when it came to cars California and hot rods were where it was all happening.

Once I got to California it didn’t take long to realize racing cost more money than I had… or at least that’s what I was led to believe for several years. In the meantime I enjoyed living close to one of the biggest names drag strips in California so I kept my hand in it for some time and eventually got some rides in some slingshots and even a few funny cars.

What I really wanted to get into was road racing and as a kid back in Oregon I remembered all those races with the McLarens, Porsches, Lotus and others and don’t forget some of the most awesome racing movies ever made to this day where big hits back then. If movies like Grand Prix and Le Mans didn’t make your heart stop nothing ever would.

What happened next was one of those “just being in the right place at the right time” sort of accidents and in this case it was life changing. One weekend while working at a service station a customer asked me if I wanted to go to a race at Laguna Seca. All kidding aside I had to ask if that was the name of a Mexican restaurant or something. But it was during that very weekend that I was asked by Dick Smothers to help his team in the pits. I am sure they had to wipe the drool off their cars every time I was near them, after all F-1 was a young boys dream back in the early 70’s.

All that did was make a young man realize his true passion for racing and it was years before my day behind the steering wheel of a winning road race car ever took place but eventually I did find myself racing full time and it has been an incredible journey to say the least.

My advice to anyone truly interested in becoming involved with racing is to first of all ask around about clubs like NASA or SCCA. All too many times those who share the same dream of racing cars are under the false belief that they must own expensive cars to get involved. As a matter of fact the best way to get started is not even by owning a race car. You should find the clubs that allow you to get started in the school groups using a stock street car. Don’t get the impression you will be allowed on a race track where you can open it up and go for broke. It just isn’t going to happen like that. A long story short you will in fact have taken the first step to living the dream that you have had for so many years.

I’ll write some more on club racing in future articles where you can see how easy and affordable it is to get involved in racing and believe me it is fun for everyone. I do not recommend starting off in exspensive schools like the Russell School of racing just to name one. That’s like sending a 5 year old to ride his tricycle in the Tour de France. Let’s get you started off on the right foot and regarding club racing in Canada, I am no expert but I am willing to bet that there is a large community of organized club racing where you will find a home. I do know that SCCA sanctions racing in the U.S. and Canada so that’s a good place to begin. But if you have no luck I would almost bet someone right here on The Garage will have the answers or at least know where to begin.