My Brother was a Beach Bum....

I say was because he died 11 years ago.

Anyway, he was a very cool older Brother to have, even though as I got older, some of the coolness was exchanged with a little bit of corniness. But, to a 12 year old, a 22 year old Brother that moves to Panama City Beach every Summer is cool. Especially one that lets you spend a weekend with him.

Then I got older and he was even cooler cause he could buy beer. Not that he ever did, of course....

One Summer my Mom and I drove down to PC Beach to see my Brother and he asked if I wanted to stay. Well, duh. Of course I did! He even told Mom he'd drive back to Tallahassee to drop me off later in the week.

Back in the 70's and 80's, PC Beach was very cheesy, filled with lots of homey recreational type things. Game rooms, bars (my Brother was 6'6", so he was a bouncer at one time or other at most of them), air brush shops, Mom and Pop food stands, Putt Putt Golf, go kart tracks and even a Wax Museum. Outside the Museum, they would have someone dressed up as Frankenstein or some other character to wave at cars driving by. Well, again, my Brother was 6'6" so when he worked there, he was Frankenstein, but he didn't have to wear the platform shoes. And to a 12 year old, if your Brother is paid to dress up like Frankenstein, well, that's just cool.

Back to the go kart track. This place was awesome. After my Mom left, we made a bee line to the go kart track. We rode several of the tracks and then came to a tiny little track. It looked kind of boring. It was maybe 50' by 50' and all the track had was a long railroad tie in the middle of the track. So basically, you rode in a fairly small oblong circle

We watched the race that was ongoing and we realized this was the coolest track at the place. The track area was oiled down. So you basically drifted around the entire track.

We raced with about 8 other cars on this tiny track and it's a wonder no one died. All I remember was drifting almost the entire time, riding sideways around the entire miniloop around that railroad tie in the middle.

Sort of like how I was on the Bandit yesterday riding home from work!

No, I didn't crash or anything, but riding down the road and then rotating from straight to left then back the straight to almost 90 degrees to the right was a bit......disconcerting.

I've since had time to figure out some of the things I did wrong but will save that for tomorrow.