Making Moves

Somewhere in Michigan, there are Nationwide Series cars screaming around a 2 mile oval race track. There is a crew member hustling to change a rear shock while another is running to the transporter to get a different left-front spring. There's a right-side track bar getting bottomed-out in preparation for a mock qualifying run. Stop watches are clicking. Wheel impacts are buzzing. Radio chatter is filling the invisible air waves. The race track is alive with sound.

In Cornelius, North Carolina the silence of this little 3 bedroom house is killing my ears. The most noise I hear is the squeaking of Watsons toy frog and the water hitting dishes as the rinse cycle begins inside my dishwasher. For the first time in my 7 years as a NASCAR mechanic there is a race car that I built making laps without me. This is all by design but it's borderline torture. I fear, any minute "Party in the USA" by Miley Cyrus will be blaring from my laptop. Its a scary thought I know but crazier shit has happened.

In the past 36 hours I have started, stopped and deleted this blog over half a dozen times. Why do I keep shaking the etch-o-sketch on this blog? hmm Well I am not sure.. maybe it's all of the lose ends that I can't tie up within this entry or maybe it's the complex outline that becomes hard to follow. Whatever it is, I need to write it, and at this particular moment its the only thing I have to do.

This week I walked away from my four year long relationship with RAB Racing. I quit. Just like that, in the midst of a 35 race season, in those exact words, I quit. Now, before we get all melodramatic about this big change you should know that, I have been planning this move for quite sometime. Now how it actually happened was not how I had hoped but none the less, the move was made. That said, here we are "the diary of a female mechanic"...uhhh from her kitchen table.. I prefer to write while I'm in the holding pattern prior to the race with butterflies fluttering around in my stomach. But Hey, There is a hot pocket in the microwave, and that might get crazy so its kinda the same thing..right?

The exciting part is once again I have made a big leap without a parachute. Again? Yes, again. Seven years ago there were sprint cars buzzing around a 3/8 mile dirt track without me. That was the day I chose to move to Charlotte in all of about 24 hours I made that decision, packed my stuff and was on my way. This move profoundly mirrors that day: Racing every weekend, everything was ticking along like clockwork, etc. Yet I felt like I was spinning my wheels. Not even the perfect race made me feel like I was moving in the direction I needed to go. I made a move, a big move. I left my sprint cars, family and job behind. Little did I know, that move would lead to my helmet collecting dust on a shelf. All while a new fire, for a different career path would be fueling my every move. I moved to Charlotte with dreams of being a race car driver and I ended up with wrenches in my hands, on a quest to call the shots from a pit box on Sunday afternoon.

Like that day, this decision that I have made leaves a whirlwind of unanswered questions for both myself, my family and now my mortgage lender. eeek What I do know is, I had to make a move. There were many reasons for me to leave the company, many reasons that will easily disappear from my memory once I am back underneath the hood of a race car. But what I will recall about all of this is, my career was growing stagnant. I was losing my spark. Everything was glassing over into a job rather than a passion. I need to learn more. I need to be pushed. I need to be challenged. I am anxious to start building the next chapter and I have a very small window of only two weeks to make it happen. And I will make it happen, I have to, no one wants to read a blog about "the diary of a homeless girl" I sure as hell dont want to write it. Stay Tuned!

"When everything is calm and life is easy you need to look around, make some moves, and get to work because your not making shit happen. Don't allow yourself to become content."

-Hamilton Parlett (Dad)