What I Learned While Karting At MB2 Raceway: Lessons In Patience And Equipment Testing

I've never really had any formal reason, over these last few years, to write specifically about Tesla Motors. Truthfully, I've never worked for the company, either as an employee or freelancer, and the best that the company has ever given me, in return for my journalistic efforts, was a bright red Model S?

No; the best I ever got in return for free advertising was a bright red, Tesla t-shirt, and honestly, I was grateful to be given that shirt. But even with this, the Tesla Motors company fits into the grand scheme on so many levels. Let's face it: if it weren't for the practice of equipment testing that we've learned from Tesla, many of us from CORE would have never driven a go-kart!

Tesla doesn't owe me anything, and neither does Mitch Melassanos; if you don't know who he is, be sure to pick up a copy of the Los Angeles Fashion the next time you're in a grocery store. Melassanos works for that magazine, and he was the one who invited me on a Model S, P85 test run. If you've been following my Tesla blog since 2013, you may remember that Mitch and I had the pleasure of driving a Tesla sedan, from Woodland Hills to Calabasas, California...and back!

Now if you're anything like myself, then you're probably wanting to respond to this blog in the way that most spectators would: kudos to you that you were at the right place, right time, and got invited to go for a ride in a bad-ass car! Let me be the first to say that I agree; the fact that some rich guy took me for a ride in a Tesla is not that big of a deal!

Here's what is a big deal, though...Tesla Motors has taught everyone how to do automotive, and this includes the disabled community. Why? Because Aaron Baker, Robby Rohan...pretty much everyone who's a part of this community can tell you that we've known about electric motors since the 1980s and '90s! It's understandable that the invention of the electric motor is not one exclusive to either of those decades, but let's face it: in 1993, if any of the "cool kids" would have approached Aaron Baker or myself, we would've told knuckle heads in grade school and junior high that our adaptive equipment has torque.

Power wheelchairs like a Permobil C-500 are not fast-moving machines, but they have bottom-end. That means that my Permobil doesn't have a small-block in it, do 0-60 or anything like this. But, it can still pretty much climb Mount Everest!

Tesla Motors was not a car company that was even a thought when guys our age were in grade school, junior high...wherever! But most Americans, most people really, were too ignorant, 20-25 years ago, to ask the disabled what they thought about running fossil fuels in production vehicles. And then it's like going on Star Tours or the "People Mover" all over again, because I know that there are other visionaries besides me who have thought, while visiting Tomorrowland, "Why can't the real grid be like this?!"

That's where Tesla has come in to the picture for me, and I can't speak for anybody, but Aaron and myself seem to share this opinion. That's because we've talked about it, and what we seem to agree on is that if more cars/vehicles would follow the Elon Musk model, then there would be a lot less chaos within the driving experience. And the thing is that we know this because of the very challenges that are keeping us from driving in the first place.

It's weird to look at things that way, especially since the source of so much frustration is the challenge itself. The word, "Challenge" can be psychological or physical, but everyone has one regardless. But I couldn't think of things that way: the challenges that a person with a disability faces in motoring are the same ones that any car enthusiast faces. Motor-driven hobbies, any hobby, requires practice and testing. There's no way around the testing part; everything has to work as it should!

Recently though, Aaron Baker, gentleman behind my knowledge of motorsports, has gotten me to do what I never thought possible: we drove kart! It's not even really important that anyone go fast around a track, or whether some dude ran a 19-second lap while mine was 40. Aaron and MB2 Raceway taught me a lesson: the vehicle type really is irrelevant when it comes down to testing. For that reason, I just don't think it's even right for me, at this point, to reach-out for any formal sponsorships; no matter how "ready" you think you are, you will inevitably run a better lap during the next race.

No one will ever get it on the first try, but that lesson is one that fits with the rest of this Tesla blog, because when combining the equipment-testing at MB2 with the cash of Tesla, it makes for a very workable circle. Think about this: my dad, who's been doing auto body since the '80s, was one of the first people on earth to tell me about self-driving cars. Some time after, Aaron and I started talking about the possibilities of automation; how does that work for our community?

SmartVan Paratransit was an idea birthed from that thought molecule; shortly after, Android Authority and Reuters announced that Google was looking into building a dial-a-ride business, similar to Uber. CORE Centers in Northridge, California was a large driving force in SmartVan's formulation, and recently, sales representatives from Tesla's Topanga Canyon store have given me and others an inside scoop: Tesla wants to be able to fully-automate cars by this time next year. Again, those ideas and others were those that led me to Tesla's front door in Woodland Hills, and just a couple of years later, MB2 Raceway in Sylmar, California.

So money really isn't even so much the driving force behind speed as it is people. It's understandable that a lot of us grew-up with the adage, "Speed costs money." Yeah, it does...absolutely! But with that also comes another thing, "Work smart instead of hard!" That seems to be Tesla's motto behind car construction, and really it's that motto that got me, Aaron and several others to drive successfully.

I don't like the fact that motoring takes such an effort, for Aaron or whoever! It kind of sucks that we have to use so many processes of elimination every time we go out on an MB2 run, but then everyone has to do that.

You have to sort of look at it from that "optimist'" angle: Me and Aaron may not be running 11-seconds in the quarter-mile, but Aaron and MB2 got me driving kart. They got a grip of people from CORE on the track!

So how has any of that gotten our community closer to the goal of independent motoring? We have to remember that it doesn't happen right away. That's not a challenged thing; that's just a motoring thing.

Great times, good experience, and it appears as though indoor karting with MB2 in Sylmar will continue to be doable, no matter how much money need be allotted or time be spent. I'm willing to make a formal thing out of it, but it comes with the whole practice thing...