38 - Gas powered slot cars.
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I  was  over  at  dad's property  the  other  day,
working on  my headlight  fence. I'll  write about
that some other time, because this thing my dad is
doing is way more interesting.

There's these dwarfs coming  around his place more
and more these days, ever since he and I sold them
my   old  F250   that  they   fixed  up   for  the
elfs. Similar interests and  all that.  And lately
they've been doing  this gas-powered slot-car drag
racing  thing.  Yeah.  They've  put  up this  pair
of 100m metal  guard rails with a  groove in them,
and  packed  the dirt  down  on  either side,  and
that's the  drag strip. And then  they take little
engines from lawn mowers  or whatever, fit them on
a frame with some simple drive gear, wheels, and a
tiny gas  tank, and attach  a guide arm  that fits
into the groove on its rail. Set a pair of them up
at one end,  let 'em rip, sit back  and watch, and
that's some  good racing.   Tinker and  run again.
Noisy and stinky  as all hell, and  don't even get
me started about the  gas they're blowing through,
but my dad  and the dwarfs can go all  day at this
stuff, so good for them I guess.

Anyways,  the  other day  when  I  was there,  the
dwarfs bring over this massive rig to test out. It
was probably like a  7-liter Cummins they'd ripped
from some truck. They roll  this thing over to the
slot, clamp it on and start it up. Pulled the gear
and it  goes roaring  on down the  rail in  like 4
seconds. It  totally tears  off the  ignition wire
pull bar at the end of the rail that's supposed to
stop it,  and so  then this  thing is  tearing off
across the field all on its own! And so if you can
imagine, there's these dozen little dwarfs chasing
as fast as they  can after this disemboweled truck
engine that's ripping around the field. And dad is
laughing    so    hard,   doing    that    old-guy
cough/choke/laugh/wheeze  thing  where you're  not
sure if  you should  laugh along,  or try  to calm
them down. And eventually they get their rig back,
when  it  ran   out  of  gas  in  like   5  or  10
minutes. Maybe they want to gear that thing down a
bit next time.