Go Speed Racer

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go down to Mark One Composites, Mr. Fred Gans's garage in Indianapolis. This is Carter's dad, of course. They build race cars there. If they made a list of the ten coolest jobs in the world, this would definitely be one of them. I learned quite a bit about building and repairing race cars. This isn't like the assembly line where you see your parents' minivan being built. They're dealing with lightweight materials and form-fitting major parts of the inside of the car to each driver. It's amazing. I pretty much walked around with my mouth hanging open during my tour. Mr. Gans has secured himself an open invitation as a guest speaker for the coming years when we're learning about physics in class.
The major reason for me going down originally, though, was to try out a racing simulator. This was on loan to them for awhile, and this was my chance to go down and try it out. This was a little bit different from Mario Kart, though. Any time I ran into a wall (umm...on purpose, of course), off the track, or shifted gears, I felt it. It was up on big hydraulic lifts that made it feel like I was in the middle of it. Carter trusted me enough to "ride" along with me, as you can see in the pictures. This was one very cool experience. Thank you, Mr. Gans, and thank you Carter and the rest of the family for being such great hosts.


(Click on the pictures to see them bigger. They're even cooler when bigger!)