Understanding NASCAR

The other day we hit the road a bit later than we should have and made our way to Ringing Rocks Park.  The drive was tedious in that it has a million lights and on this Sunday collected every last driver lulled into lackadaisical driving by the complexities of communion wine and heavy scripture.  We made it, but were forced to dip into the picnic lunch rather than risk mutiny for the 90 minute drive.  This place is a boys dream.  It’s a boulder field filled with rocks generally about the size of a large suitcase….. larger rocks formed island like features, smaller ones kind of fill in the nooks and crannies. You can’t see the soil underneath the rocks at all.  As soon as you leave your seat you can see rocks with hemispherical divots carved out of them…products of countless visitors hitting the rock looking for a ring.  You have a short walk from the parking lot to the field, you know you’ re getting close as the ringing gets louder….the divots on each stone mark the trail.

It’s not often a boy is given a hammer and told to hit whatever he likes.  My sons eyes gleamed, and they tentatively tapped rocks and lumbered across the field.  You could tell the good ringers from the bad, the good ones had the larger divot.  The boulders are a type of diabase granite with high iron and tin content so when you hit them they give off a distinctly pleasing “ding”. Depending on the bounder’s size and how it lies, each bounder has a different tone.

The best way to navigate a field like this is speed….you kind of walk quickly across the tops of the bounders rather than climb up over and down each one.  Think Qubert or maybe Mario brothers.  The faster you go the more stable you are and the less likely it is for a stone to turn under you. Its counter intuitive until you see it done…..so it makes sense that the boys were slow and thorough under their mothers gaze ….tap tap, ring ring and a slow scramble.  I however, knew better and bounced out to mid field, gracefully hitting the tops of the rocks. My wife did the same and joined me.  My sons were shocked, mom and dad running on rocks!?! The boys realized that they were the slow ones, which to a boy is unacceptable,  so they tried to emulate our rock bouncing. 

Here is where it gets interesting.  In moments we watched the boys evolve from slow safe rock scramblers, to rock bouncing hammer wielding daredevils. I was pleased until I recognized that my wife wasn’t nearly as content as I expected….watching her precious boys run over rocks with little concern for how little spring diabase has when impacted by a head wasn’t quite what she bargained for….. And then it happened. 

“Mom watch me jump!” Horror to a moms ears, no mom really wants to watch this, turning her head she saw the boy leap a good 5 feet from one the “island” boulders onto the next” island” bounder.  He made it, no blood or snapping of bone.  If you have sons you know what happened next, each boy vying for our attention as they attempted jump after jump.  We watched….and watched, eventually they tired of jumping and we heard, “Ok I’ll race you to mom and Dad” and it was on.  Two boys running over the tops of bounders, hammers in hand, bouncing, leaping into each other…..for no good reason except they were boys and the boulders were there.  They were loving life.  For the parents, it was a moment of pridefull terror. For the boys, few large bruises and a scrape or two but nothing severe enough to stop the subsequent races.

If the challenge is there, and there is some way to make it a competition, boys will do it.  Like it or not it’s gonna happen…. so now finally I understand NASCAR.