The Nasty Party - Phase 1

As promised, in my next post I'm going to gush out all the gory details of the Nasty Party, the celebration of the GRP. I don't remember why bachelor parties happen, I'm sure I wrote about it for one of the other posts about them or Cheese and I went over it on the Conversation about archaic traditions, but hell, they're fun so let us! Anyways, so if you recall from where we left off, Admiral Bonesaw, Beer Guy and I were meeting in a hotel parking lot. I hid my vehicle and we piled in with the Beer Guy. We got to the plaza where the rest of the team was eating a nice breakfast but we could not find a spot to park. It just wasn't happening. There were a bunch of Asian eateries, a bank, the breakfast restaurant, a gym, a few random store fronts and a gas station. No reason for hundreds of cars to be piled in there early on a freezing Saturday morning. Frustration and giggles resulted. Eventually we just pulled over out of the way. The Admiral and I went to the Dollar Store to wait out of the cold and Beer Guy went to eat. We got the GRP a couple of niceties to celebrate his big day. We found the bus and boarded for our first stop, Top Kart Racing. Recall this retelling is strictly from my experience. I was worried about finding a racing suit and helmet to fit my carriage let alone a kart that I could manage. If this was Mario Kart, I was going to be the Bowser. I got squeezed into a suit with a torn leg that I tucked into my waistband and crammed a helmet down over my melon. We were instructed on how things work for rules and process. The rules are boring so I'll skip those. The process was that you drive for a number of laps, ten I think to get a feel for the vehicles but that is also the 'qualifying' for the race. The race is a 70 lap Grand Prix, at least for the winner, the rest do far less. It only took a lap or two to get a feel for the lines of the track and the power of the kart and I was off and running. I figured it was all safe so I let loose pretty early on, well as loose as the 9 HP motor would allow for a man my size. There was some confusion when we all were stopped until it dawned on us that qualifying was over. We were sorted like low to the ground, smelly cattle into the order of our speed. Somehow I was fourth of fourteen. Didn't make a lot of sense to me either. I noted the numbers of the three in front of me, knowing they would likely be passing me before it was over. Then suddenly we were off. I did alright for the first seven or so laps, staying right with the lead pack and not hitting any of the others. Then I noticed that on turns, especially the tight ones, my engine started to stall out. I was worried that my mass was destroying the poor little motor. Turns out I was running out of gas and after a couple laps like this I gently careened into the tires with a dead motor. I lost about 3-4 laps being dragged into the pit to be re-fueled. This spelled the end of the race for all intents and purposes. No one else hit the pit until the last two laps when one of our racers had to scramble out of his car to puke. Mostly from motion sickness than from anything else. Reports have him barely able to the get the helmet off in time. For myself, I got back in but was relegated to pulling to the right most of the time to let the leaders pass me. My lap times dwindled considerably. There were several cautions as people traded paint on the tight corners but nothing major. Just before the end of the race I pushed too hard on the final turn and spun out into the tires. I got T-boned in the process, causing a three kart pile-up. It was pretty hilarious. We met in the seedy bar area for a drink and some pool while we waited for the bus to recover us for phase 2 of the Nasty Party. More on that in the next post. I have included an inaccurate stat sheet that we were given. Some of the names are confused but you can see the level of detail and seriousness that they take go-kart racing dans la belle province.

Looks like lap 19 and 35 were really my undoing.