 The story actually starts in September 1990. It was the last kart race of the season at Peterborough, Ontario. It was a re-scheduled race date to replace a rain-out from earlier in the season. I was sponsored by Kart Klinic again in 1990 but I was free to go to as many or as few races as I wished. A number of the races I had chosen to compete in were rained out. Many had not been re-scheduled, so I had even fewer races than expected. After many years on the circuit my enthusiasm for kart racing was not what it once had been. The number of entries in the 2-cycle classes I had always competed in were down. This made it harder to get motivated to spend the endless hours preparing and fine tuning the kart before the races as I had done in the past. Actually, I had always quite enjoyed spending the hours out in the garage trying to wrench some more speed into the kart. Preparation is the key. With less competition and fewer races it was more difficult to justify all the effort. I know that if you want to achieve a desired level of success in any form of racing you must be dedicated to it. This did not mean that I tried any less once I was out on the track. On this particular weekend at Peterborough the Yellow Fin tuned Parilla was working just fine on the unpainted Margay Cougar double rail prototype chassis. I had been using this kart since the O.K.R.A. race at Point Pelee at the beginning of August. On that weekend my sponsor, Roy Brydon of Kart Klinic, had sent the chassis down with the Whaling family and I met them at the Point Pelee track on Saturday afternoon. I spent all day Saturday assembling the kart under the Whaling's canopy, in the rain, so there was no opportunity to practice. I was quite proud of the fact that I had taken this kart, which I had never driven before, to victory in the first heat during the race on Sunday. At Peterborough I was going well again and seemed to be the fastest in the Stock Medium class all during practice on Saturday. You can usually tell if you are going fast by the number of visits Charlie Pilags of rival Canadian Performance Products makes to your pits. He comes over to see what you are doing differently from his drivers to get the extra speed. Charlie made a few trips over to see us that weekend, so we must have been fast. It was mid-afternoon and I was happy with the setup of the chassis, engine and clutch. My chief mechanic Marilou Whaling and I were just about ready to call it a day. Marilou told me that she would like to go for a ride and try the kart out. I had been trying to persuade her to go out and try driving since she first started helping me out, but she had always refused. She was driving her own car now and had much more driving experience on the road. She figured it would be somewhat similar driving the kart on the track.  Marilou started as my chief mechanic near the end of the 1987 season during the Pre-Nationals at Picton Kartway. Prior to that I had not had anyone specifically helping just me at the track since the first couple of seasons when I started racing. My crew had included friends Doug and Marjo Sweet and Alan Swankie. I still wanted to go to the races so I started to do everything myself. I installed a stopwatch on my steering wheel to time my own laps. At different times I went with other drivers. First it was Perry Wood and later George Gilbert. Their friends and family would help me out as well. After they stopped karting, I was on my own again. Then I would usually get a pit spot near the Kart Klinic trailer and I would get some assistance from them. Once a year I would drive for Kart Klinic partnering Grant Greaves in the season ending endurance races where two drivers were needed. It was quite a different experience for me as they had a full crew to work on the kart and all I had to do was drive. Gerald Whaling, Marilou's father, was the main 'wrench' and engine builder for Kart Klinic. He built my engines also. Marilou had helped her Dad in the shop at times disassembling engines. She came to all the races but she did not have much to do so she usually was quite bored. The Kart Klinic team was going to a W.K.A. race which was being held the same weekend as the O.K.R.A. Pre-Nationals at Picton in 1987. Gerald suggested that I go with Wilma and Marilou to Picton in their van so neither of us would have to go on our own. At Picton Marilou started helping me by doing all the pushing and lifting of the kart and she started the engine before I went out on the track. The next year as she learned more she had her own stopwatch to record my lap times. In time she started working on the kart changing tires and making some of the adjustments. She would then record all the changes we made to the setup of the kart in the clipboard. Marilou must have been doing a good job because nothing ever fell off the kart while I was out racing around! You have to trust your mechanic completely. I think by actually working on the kart she became more familiar with how everything worked, and what changes could be made to make it go faster. Now kart racing was more interesting for her. A couple of months before the Peterborough race in the summer of 1990, Marilou, Sarah Somerville and I had gone to Lakeland Kart track at Burlington Beach one night to ride the rentals. We could have gone anywhere that night and done anything we wanted, but wouldn't you know that we would end up bombing around a race track, even on slow moving rental go-karts. It was Sarah's idea even though she was now racing TQ Midgets. Marilou jumped in her machine and took off into the distance. She certainly did not wait around for Sarah and I to catch up. Earlier in the summer Marilou also scared me more than once driving around the fields of her grandmothers' farm in one of the old beaters they have up there. I should have taken both these instances as signs that she was ready for more. |
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