First of all, thank you everyone for all the well wishes. I spent most of yesterday afternoon sleeping so that I'd feel well enough this morning to take the Jim Russell Highway Survival Course at Infineon Raceway. (Yeah, I know it as Sears Point but somewhere along the way it changed names. Apparently someone over at Google is also a race fan because Google maps doesn't know where Infineon is but it sure knows how to get you to Sears Point.)
These were definitely NOT the things I learned how to do 20+ years ago. We drove in a skid car and learned how to control it. That was very difficult to do. Then we did some braking exercises where we had to brake just before it locked up. Once that was mastered we then moved on to braking the car just enough so that we could change lanes and come to a complete stop as if we were avoiding an obstacle. The third set of exercises was to learn how to pass lanes under speed WITHOUT braking. Basically this means that you whip the wheel to the next lane and back again. At 30 mph this wasn't too bad. Then we increased speed to 35 mph and finally up to 40 mph. Let me tell you that although that sounds slow it certainly doesn't feel like it when you're whipping the car quickly. :-)
The course ended with a little autocross race. Yeah, I'm thinking that I went faster than 40 mph on the passing section. I so wanted to win since the class was filled with teenagers and only one other adult. Sadly I didn't get the fastest time (I missed the last cone in the slalom) but then again, I wasn't the slowest, or even the second to slowest. So that's something. But I did feel pretty happy that the winner was a girl. And she was unsure about doing it too.
I had a lot of fun and definitely feel much more confident with a car's braking limits. Before today I'd never had to brake a car that fast. Nice to know how it feels in a safe environment. I would highly recommend this course, or a similar one, to every teenager out there. It would probably keep a lot of them out of accidents. (Too bad they didn't have a better price on it. I wouldn't have been able to afford this when I was younger and it's really geared for first-time drivers.)
I for one want to do the autocross race section again. I'm sure that I'd be better at it a second time around. Now it's time to rest again. :-)
