July 18, 2006 - Tuesday
The race track pictures herein were taken on July 25 and I have to admit that I made a special point to take it as we went by it again on our way home at the end of our 8-day trip to Pittsburgh. Today was the first day of that trip and the day we started out from home on the first leg of a 10-hour drive. We'd reserved a campsite a little more than halfway to Pittsburgh at Ricketts Glen State Park outside Wilkes-Barre, a place we happened upon last year, and it was a long day in the car. The boys were great, never complaining and only asking a few times when we'd get to Ricketts Glen. But the picture below offers a pretty good look at what the days was like for the better part of six hours, inlcuding short stops for take-out McDonalds, gas fill-ups, and groceries for the evening's campfire dinner. The portable DVD, which they are watching in the picture below, made it tolerable for everyone.

Still, it was a great day if only for this little go-cart track and the four minutes of unabashed childhood joy for both a six-year-old boy and a 43-year-old father . It would have been easy to drive right by this place, and initially I did. It couldn't have been more than 10 minutes away from our campground and getting to the end of the a long day in the car gets increasingly alluring as the it grows closer. But a few hundred yards later, I turned around and went back. It was empty of patrons and the man in the booth said a four-minute ride was $5. There were double-seater go-carts so Harry and I could ride together, as could Jeremy and mommy. It would be $10 for a random and spontaneous pleasure.

Mommy said later that Jeremy was a little nervous and didn't want to go too fast at the beginning, although he did eventually get more comfortable. For Harry, it seemed like things could hardly have been more exciting. He and I were literally giggling and smiling for four straight minutes as I drove and he sat next to me spinning his faux steering wheel. Even better, Jeremy's desire to go slower allowed Harry and me to catch up and lap them about three and a half minutes into the ride and the excitement of the chase just made the whole thing all the more thrilling. Harry, after all, is six and at a boyhood age when car racing seems pretty cool.

Truth be told, this wasn't a completely random stop. I'd actually searched the web a few days ago for activities that might break up this long day in the car and specifically searched for "go-cart" racing in several of the towns and cities alone Rte 84 through western Connecticut and Central New York. I figured go-carts would be both fun enough to break up the trip and a short enough stop to not drag out the day too much more than necessary. Unfortunately, the closest place I found was just over the border into Pennsylvania and about an hour out of the way. I had no idea about this little place we did stop at before we drove by it, but I'd have to admit to having been thinking about how cool driving go-carts with Harry. The wonderful thing about it, though, was that it was even better than I'd imagined.


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