Christine Mailey-Snapshot 6

Christine Mailey

English1109-10:30       

Off to the Races

     The season begins at a dirt-track in Daytona Beach Florida on the third Thursday and Friday in March.  The warm Florida sun shines from the sky and warms our bodies that are chilled from the cold winter weather.  We purchase out tickets for the motorcycle race.  We also stop to buy the newest year of flat-track race tee-shirts.  Now it’s time for practice to start.  The sound of the motorcycles starting up is like music to my ears.  The fumes from the exhaust are a familiar and welcoming smell.  The bikes enter the track to begin practice, the dust starts to fly.  The bikes race round and round the track.  After all of the classes of riders have practiced they get a short break to work on their bikes to get the best performance out of their bike.  They riders will also race in a fastest qualifying race, and then heat race.  For the main event the top couple riders from each class get to race in the main.  The main will usually have fifteen to twenty riders in t and they will race twenty-five laps.  It is a miracle for the racers bot to crash during the main.  Some spectators like to see the crashes.  My family and I do not.  My brother and dad used to race and you never wanted to see them crash.  We had a close friend Chuckie Jordan killed while racing.  We have had other friends that have passed while racing.  We have a good friend Nick who was hurt severely in a crash in 2009.  My family and I ran a fundraiser at a race to help him and his family while he was in the hospital.  We consider the racers and their families our flat-track family.

     I began loving flat-track at the young age of four, when my dad and brother raced.  It was a family affair.  My mom and I would help prepare for the races by packing, cooking, cheering and praying for a safe race.  When I got married, I introduced what I loved to my husband.  When our daughter was nine we took her to her first flat-track race.  They both love the sport as well.

     I am very passionate about the sport.  I am very blessed with many great people in my flat-track family.  The come from a lot of different states.  We have a lot of friends from the state up north.  We tease back and forth about Michigan and Ohio State.  I will continue to attend the races as long I am able.  If you are curious about flat-track there is a National race the last Saturday in June every year in Lima Ohio.

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Nick Cummings-racer/Photo by: JGPhotoworx