Tag Archives: my metro at the lovelock speedway
Lovelock Speedway: Keep Your Hands Off Of My Metro! – Part 1
I grew up in Reno. It’s a great little town on the California and Nevada border situated on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. By “great”, I mean it’s got great fist-sized river rocks for throwing at passing motorists on I-80.
I don’t live there anymore, and don’ really have any interest in visiting it, so last month I was surprised to find myself $200 down at the penny slots of the Golden Nugget Casino in downtown Reno.
As I was searching my memory banks on the timeline from my couch in Los Angeles to my current coordinates, I noticed an acquaintance by the name of No-Joe sitting to my right, and figured (correctly) that he had something to do with it. While his presence was by-no-means reassuring (No Joe can be a serious asshole), the realization was enough to call off the synapses in my brain to investigate any further.
Later on I’d come to find out it had something to do with a self-imposed sabbatical from my writing career – more on that later.
While the story of my excursion to Reno is quite funny now that enough time has passed, this post not about how I got there, this post is about what happened next. This article is about how my little sabbatical almost caused the demise of my precious garage-kept 1989 Blue Geo Metro Hatchback.
Part 1: The Plan
Was I was 100% sure of my whereabouts, and had run out of money to plink in the Crazy Eights slot machine, I mosied down to No-Joe who was standing (swaying) at one end of a $15 Craps table and seemed to be talking loudly to a young lady who was looking the other way. From afar she looked a bit like a young Frida Khalo. As I got closer, the similarities grew even more pronounced, right down to the unplucked unibrow.
I knew by the sour look on the young Frida Kahlo, that my friend was dangerously close to getting kicked off the table, and maybe out of the casino, so I grabbed him bar the arm and said,
“Hey amigo, there you are – you’re missing your 1:00 Luncheon appointment!” (I had no idea of the time BTW).
He gave me a faint look of recognition, and then annoyance as I quickly escorted him away from the table just long enough for him to grab his $40 worth of chips off of the table.
“Wha the hell ju do that for?”
Now normally I’d give him time to sober up before I started asking questions, but I really wanted to know what the hell I was doing in this pig-sty.
“What the hell are we doing in this Pig-Sty?”, I said.
“Aw yeah, donja remember?” he said, looking at the top of my forehead rather than my eyes. “We’re taking your Metro over to the speedway to race! Now lego a my arm you bastard! I think that girl waz goina give me ‘er number.”
“What do you mean ‘taking my Metro over to the speedway’“?
“Yeah, you had mentioned how’s you wanted to race the car for once. Said you could beat any other car in it’s class.” he said matter-of-factly “So I signed you up to race at Lovelock tomorrow.”
Dammit.
For the uninitiated, he was referring to Lovelock Speedway, a dusty oval dirt track where Western Nevada’s gearheads get together to race their modded Stock-Cars while blowing the eardrums out of the spectators.
Situated about an hour east of Reno on the outskirts of Lovelock, I’d gone there quite a bit as a teen, mostly for the $1 beers and non-existent ID verification. Problem was, I couldn’t remember them having a race for amateurs, well outside of the demolition derby.
Before I had time to think further, a large mustached security guard grabbed No and I by the shirts and hoisted us off our feet like rag dolls. 30 seconds later I was staring at hot pavement outside one of the casino emergency exits.
Continued in Part 2..
