I’m writing too many serious posts these days, but I won’t apologize for it. Not yet. There seem to be a lot of serious things to discuss.
This one tackles something that bothers me on many levels. It’s the looming disaster known as Global Warming/Climate Change. Maybe you think “looming disaster” is too strong a statement – but thousands of scientists worldwide are backing it up.
Despite this knowledge, as a society we’re doing very little to improve the situation. Human nature tends to veer our attention to shorter term pleasures over long term (boring things) such as saving for our own future or saving the planet for the future persistence of humanity.
Take for example professional sports. So much time, energy and money goes into the numerous sports leagues around the world. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – they provide joy to millions of fans. But it seems we should each be putting just as much time/energy/money into whatever is needed to ensure the planet can support life ongoing. Without that, our favourite hockey teams won’t mean much – in fact they won’t exist at all – and neither will their fans – all of us.
That’s just one example. To the list we could add the movie industry, travel industry, personal care, even our pets! We spend billions and billions on these things – and they all have one thing in common. If the earth can no longer support life they will all be gone. All of them.
When I hear people say that “we can’t afford a carbon tax” I really can’t believe it. People, your money will be no good to you in a world with no people. Sure we could forget about making any changes to our economy – maintain status quo and maintain our current standard of living – for now. But eventually it will all be gone. Or we could make the difficult changes now that could lead to sustainable life on our planet.
Right now it’s like we’re all patients who have been given a short time to live unless we make drastic changes to our lifestyle. But we’re living it up – ignoring doctors orders. Maybe it’s time we thought about our futures instead?
We recently spent a few days in Vegas. Krista was attending a conference for public historians and I went along to see what this Vegas place is all about. I didn’t do a whole lot of gambling but there are plenty of other things to do around this city. I spent some time touring the strip and most of the hotels/resorts that can be found along the way. One day walked all the way up Las Vegas Blvd through some rather rundown areas, which of course included numerous garish and cheesy wedding chapels, as well as the pawn shop made famous by the tv show “Pawn Stars” (it was crazy busy in there), all the way up to Freemont Street. That’s the pedestrian zone with the zip line that runs directly above the street. There are all sorts of interesting and bizarre people and things to see there and along the way.
Before heading down to Nevada I did a bit of searching online to see what kinds of things I might want to do while there. My search unearthed all sorts of possibilities but the one that caught my eye immediately was the chance to drive a Lamborghini on a race track. I’ve always dreamed of driving one and here was a chance to get in one and really see what it can do! So I signed up at Exotics Racing and on April 17, 2018 I finally got to drive a Lamborghini. It was a Gallardo – the smallest of the 3 current production models – but still plenty of power for this sports car newbie. The only other thing close I’ve driven before this was a 1980’s Porsche 911 – under the watchful eye of it’s owner.
The experience at Exotics Racing is very professional. After checking in the first step is attending their classroom training session where they go over the basics of driving a high performance vehicle as well as what you can expect for the rest of the experience. Next is a couple test laps driven by a staff member in a Porche SUV. They take it easy on the first lap explaining where to aim/look around each corner, when to brake etc. On the 2nd lap he really opened it up and, given that it’s an SUV with a higher center of gravity, you really feel the g-force around the corners and the somewhat disconcerting seeming potential for roll-over. But they are professional drivers and know the limits of these vehicles and like to push those limits within the range that is safe.
After that’s completed the “main event” comes. Each person is taken for their drive with an instructor “co-pilot” who provides verbal instructions for when to brake, shift gears (all cars are paddle-shifted – no manual transmissions) and where to look etc. It can take a while to wait your turn with the size of the groups so they encourage everyone to look around and get into any of the cars you want until they’re ready for you to hit the track. I was surprised at the open access to all the cars – it was really cool being able to hop in and out of so many supercars. Here’s a few video clips I took with my GoPro wandering around and getting in and out of some of these very expensive vehicles.
The other cool thing they do is record the entire experience on the track for you and put together this neat video (below). There is an additional charge for the priviledge of having the video to keep of course, but it’s a very well done presentation and in my case I know it’s something I will watch over and over again. Near the beginning you’ll see another car enter the track before I go – that is a professional driver taking someone for a ride in their Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat edition (over 700hp). He gets the back end drifting around all the corners. Near the end of the video my instructor makes a crack about me being a pretty good driver “for a Canadian”. Bit of an inside joke since before hand he told me he was born in Red Deer Alberta 🙂 Apparently the Gallardo is one of the more difficult cars to handle as well – the brakes are very sensitive especially. All things considered I think I did pretty well, and managed to pass the more powerful Huracan to boot.
This experience was definitely the highlight of the trip for me. There are lots of other “extreme” experiences available in Vegas – shooting off many types of guns is one of them, and I heard that you can even drive a tank over a car at one place! But driving a Lamborghini was the experience of a lifetime I was looking for and I’m so glad I did it.
