💾 Archived View for republic.circumlunar.space › users › joneworlds › 2021-01-24-slot-cars.gmi captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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 that 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.