The Road Race Karting Cabal
Monday, November 28th, 2005To the regulars that lurk here (both of you) this one isn’t my usual schtick on pro audio or the music biz but one of those once in a blue moon karting posts. The 2k5 season was pretty suckola for me as far as karting went. Only two testing days, aborting the partial season then doing the usual spending most of the year on the road much of it out of the country. One of the reasons I moved down here, other than to stop touring and take a house gig, was to spend more time racing. It’s way more motorsport friendly than in the Northwest. Year round racing, gotta love it. A bit of a note to the karting types that are stopping by for the first time… A Barking Dog is not kid safe for sensitive kids or parents. If you don’t want your kids exposed to adult situations, language and humor, they shouldn’t be reading it. Same goes for you… That said new readers to ABD might want to check out the Mexico Tour series for a peak at what being a show biz roadie is all about on a dysfunctional tour with a well known artist in a foreign land (it’s in reverse cronological order, which means start at the bottom and work up) and “The Glamour of Show Business” short film (it’s big 20MB) that is a video peak at a tour I did about a year ago.
There’s been a recent thread on eKarting News about some of the road race karting clubs withdrawing from the sanctioning body the IKF. Good. It’s about time. While there have been some good, well meaning people on the board, the organizational structure is about as useful as tits on a bull. In my view, it’s a disfunctional, fractionated organization that while bearing a charter to serve the recreational karter, is really nothing more that an insurance broker. The board is elected by the members (which I was for three years) but the board really isn’t accountable to the membership. It can be a pretty defensive bunch which is understandable considering how high strung most karters are. Especially parents of karters. Some of them make hockey dads look rational by comparison. Karting is supposed to be fun. That’s why I started. But it’s hella expensive, and when everything is going well, it’s hella fun. There does need to be a structure in place but when that structure falls out of touch with the racers, it is less enjoyable. That wouldn’t be so bad if the structure was able to deal with change and serve the needs of most of the racers. Sadly, this one can’t.
