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Blind
Driving: Eye Rock 500
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Blind Driving: Eye
Rock 500
At a country track in upstate
New York, the sightless get a chance to do their
Dale Jr. impressions.
After declaring the Eye
Rock 500 -- a race in which blind drivers and
sighted co-drivers compete on an oval dirt track --
to be a definite winner in "Winners and Losers" in
our January 2007 10Best issue, editor-at-large John
Phillips decided competing in the race would be an
excellent way to demonstrate to our readers that
the people who write for C/D never mature past the
age of 17. When the annual race in upstate New York
changed dates, Phillips, in a fortunate stroke of
self-preservation, found himself unavailable and on
vacation in Montana. And so it fell on my narrow
shoulders to be the Car and Driver chump, which is
why I found myself strapped into a car with a
completely blind man going wheel-to-wheel against
10 other blind drivers.
Now in its seventh year,
the Eye Rock 500 was dreamed up by the crew at
radio station WPYX 106 in Albany, New York, as a
fundraiser for Camp Abilities, a week-long summer
camp for blind children that encourages their
participation in sports and activities (biking,
swimming, gymnastics, beep baseball -- the bases
and the ball beep) not traditionally associated
with the sightless. In addition to the cash donated
by Eye Rock 500 sponsors, the camp collects $1 from
each $12 race ticket. Since its founding in 1996,
the organization has expanded to include camps in
five states, with two more planned for next
year.
Interestingly, this year
the radio station ended its association with the
event, apparently after corporate overlords had a
closer look and determined that the race had
"lawsuit" written all over it. On the other hand,
we rarely ask permission of our corporate overlords
to do anything, and hence our
involvement.
The Eye Rock is a kind of
novelty event held as part of a Saturday-night
racing card at a half-mile country track, Lebanon
Valley Speedway, in West Lebanon, New York. On this
balmy 90-degree night in early June, a boisterous
crowd of nearly 6000 has settled into the old
wooden bleachers, and folks are in a festive if not
rowdy mood for a night of racing that includes
Modified, Sportsman, and Prostock classes. Wedged
into these contests will be two Eye Rock qualifying
races before the finale.
The dirt track has tight,
highly banked corners (17 to 19 degrees), which
climb upward like walls, and flat straightaways
about an eighth of a mile long. The track's Hudson
River clay surface has been watered and groomed by
large tanker trucks all afternoon. Eventually, the
surface dries, and after some warm-up laps, it
becomes, as one driver put it, "wicked tacky."
Imagine a huge gooey clay ashtray that smells like
a weird mix of racing gas and hot dogs. A half-hour
before the race, organizers round up the 40 or so
Eye Rock entrants in the infield and begin pairing
up drivers and navigators. In hopes of avoiding a
rollover or hitting a wall at 70 mph, I sheepishly
ask of organizers Don Doherty and Link Pettit to
avoid being partnered with anyone who has "Wild,"
"Crazy," or "Danger" in his or her
nickname.
Moments later, outgoing
20-year-old Shawna Kane and her father walk over
and introduce themselves. Blind since birth, Kane
is college-bound this fall but is back to compete
in her second Eye Rock after a disheartening DNF
last year due to car trouble. I wonder to myself if
she knows she's pressing her luck by running twice
in the Eye Rock.
A word about blindness.
The "legally blind" have severely limited vision,
but they are able to see something -- light, hazy
images, movement. The truly blind are completely in
the dark. The laws of this country declare that
people who have at least 20/200 vision with
corrective glasses are legally blind (20/200 vision
means a person sees at 20 feet away what a person
with normal sight would see from 200 feet). About a
third of Eye Rock's drivers qualify as legally
blind, an obvious advantage.
We find last year's
winner, 60-year-old George Bolton, in hopes he'll
spill the secret of his victory. Bolton stopped
driving in 2001 when macular degeneration rendered
him legally blind. His vision continues to
deteriorate, and now he sees only hazy shadows. As
for his victory, he says his sighted navigator,
Howard "The Ice Man" Smith, "told me to put it to
the floor unless I tell you to stop." So how does a
sighted navigator -- that would be me -- give
driving directions to a blind driver? By mimicking
the hands on a clock, or by degrees?
"Hours on the clock is the
key for me," he says.
I have an existential
moment: Were I totally blind from birth, how would
I know what a clock looks like, let alone a car, or
Britney Spears, or what Britney Spears looks like
getting out of Paris Hilton's car? I hope the
driver I'm paired with will have had vision at one
time. Nonetheless, I jot down Bolton's advice and
ask him if he's practiced at all for the race. "I
don't belong on the road!" he says.
Finally, I'm paired with
62-year-old Ray Heydet of Copake, New York, who
looks like Jerry Garcia, had the late Grateful Dead
icon dieted and stayed clear of the flaky white
powder. Heydet is wearing a Blind Rifle Association
T-shirt and is surrounded by a number of friends
and well-wishers. His story sounds like a Jimmy
Stewart movie: Born utterly blind, Heydet underwent
surgery in his mid-20s and miraculously gained some
sight in one eye, only to completely lose it again
four and a half years later. During his short time
of sight, Heydet drove the cars and motorcycles of
friends and worked as a mechanic. Today, he lives
alone with his guide dog. On Sundays, Heydet's buds
gather at his place to watch the NASCAR race. His
friends tell me he is employed detailing cars. "We
all take our trucks to him. He does a great job.
Seriously."
I ask about his seeing-eye
dog, an 11-year-old Labrador retriever named
Schooner. "Why didn't Schooner come to the
track?"
"Track's too loud for
Schooner," Heydet replies.
I wish I had thought of
that excuse. I ask about the Blind Rifle
Association T-shirt.
"It was a gift a friend
got me in Texas. I'm not in any rifle association,
but I did learn to shoot when I worked at the
police station."
"What did you do at the
police station?" I asked.
He smiled back. "I was the
pathetic blind janitor."
This self-deprecating
morsel of his life history gets brushed aside by
one of Heydet's friends, who interjects this
advice: "Just drive like you're taking us home from
the bar." It occurs to me that I should see if
Bolton has found a partner yet.
I walk Heydet over to the
race car I picked up in Jackson, Michigan, for a
cool 1600 bucks: a 1988 Volvo 740GLE. (By the way,
for you aspiring young professionals, I slipped
that amount through on my expense report under
"minibar.") This Swedish beauty has 164,000 miles
on the odometer but not a speck of rust on its
body. It pains me to make this somewhat pristine
symbol of safety walk the plank. But can you think
of a safer car in which to go for a drive with a
blind guy at the wheel?
Heydet strolls around the
Volvo, caressing its sharp angles as if the car
were some sort of robot supermodel. We've added a
roll bar and a pair of four-point racing harnesses.
Oddly enough, Heydet's a little disappointed that
the Volvo isn't a manual, but he likes the power
steering. I'm comforted by the fact that the
Volvo's 2.3-liter four makes only 114 horsepower.
Coupled with a four-speed automatic, it accelerates
like it's sponsored by Valium. Heydet might not
even be able to get us into much trouble should he
try to pull a Jim Jones on me. I consider yanking a
plug wire to slow the Volvo even more. The Eye Rock
500 rulebook requires only this: Vehicles must have
four-cylinder engines, competitors must wear
helmets and driving suits. The track's rules
require that all the cars' glass -- with the
exception of a strongly laminated windshield -- be
removed and that window nets be in place. End of
rules. Cars range from having full roll cages and
racing belts to ones that aren't even gutted. I
wince when I see a Ford Escort from the early '90s
with motorized seatbelts.
There are two qualifying
races of seven laps each, with the top-three
finishers winding up in the big 10-lap main event.
While we await our heat, I try to describe the
action to Heydet. A handful of drivers on the
straights are, surprisingly -- or maybe the word is
frighteningly -- getting up to what might be 70
mph. These blind hotshoes appear to be coming
dangerously close to the concrete wall. On the
other hand, some of them are having a hard time
just keeping their cars in a straight line. Much to
the delight of the crowd, a Toyota Corolla wagon's
hood pops open, whips backward, and blocks the
driver's vision -- but that's okay, he's blind. The
driver is unfazed, but I can see his co-driver
desperately trying to peek through the slit of
daylight at the bottom of the windshield. I watch a
Nissan Sentra lose its front wheel, which goes
bounding off toward the infield. The multitudes in
the stands let out a collective gasp, then a cheer.
I'm beginning to feel as if I were about to be
thrown to the lions.
Heydet's friends wrap
masking tape at the high-noon position on the
steering wheel to give him a physical indicator of
where the wheel will be when the car is pointed
straight ahead. I show him how far to turn the
wheel when I say, "Left." Once there, Heydet agrees
to hold the wheel in that position unless I say,
"More left" or "Less left." We strap in and find
that, in a field of 11 in rows of two, we're in
sixth position in the third row awaiting a
traditional standing start. We sit stationary for
what feels like an eternity as the cars behind bang
into one another getting into position.
As soon as the starter
waves the green flag, a couple of cars accelerate
rapidly away from the field. Most of the completely
blind racers are left behind and start zigzagging
from inside wall to outside wall as if they were
feeling their way around the track. This is what is
truly terrifying about the event. Some drivers, who
can see at least something, lap with the ease of
seasoned pros; others proceed as if, well, as if
they're blind -- poking along at 25 mph and
swinging their cars back and forth as if they were
canes looking to locate barriers in their way --
tap, tap, crash. In the first corner we're clipped
just behind the front wheel by the Toyota Celica of
the weaving Shawna Kane. I watch in horror as her
car bounces off the Volvo, jumps the two-foot-high
dirt berm that defines the inside of the corner,
and then slams into the cement wall that protects
the infield. I'm pretty sure she was still
accelerating when she hit the wall.
This being Heydet's third
Eye Rock (he previously finished fourth and fifth),
he doesn't swing the steering wheel wildly and
therefore we manage to stay near the center of the
track. We top out at nearly 50 mph on the straights
before slowing for the corners. I only have to grab
the wheel a couple of times to set the car right in
traffic. My strategy is never to stop talking in
hopes of creating a mental picture of where we are
on the track. I feel like Howard Cosell announcing
a fight. "Ray, it's a lovely day for a race. We're
coming out of the corner high onto the straight.
Straighten the wheel, Ray. That's it. Now: gas,
gas, gas! We're passing a car on the right. Lift
off the gas, start your left turn. More left,
little less left. Back on the straight. Gas! Car
zigzagging in front of us. [Expletive
deleted.] Brake! Brake! Brake!"
Despite his experience and
the fact he can detail a car without seeing it,
Heydet and I are lapped repeatedly by the leaders
whom I am beginning to suspect can see more than
they let on. We finish fourth, or possibly fifth --
I get the feeling no one really knows or bothered
to keep track of the finishing order. The good news
is we don't qualify for the finals, but we do
qualify to join Heydet and his friends inside Turn
Two where they have gathered to guzzle Coors Light,
the brew that makes drinking all day possible.
What's this? There are 10 cars that start the final
race -- by my count that's four more than could
have qualified for it. However, no one seems to
have the heart to stop the blind drivers from doing
whatever they want; it is, after all, the one day
of the year that they get to drive.
They're off, and the race
goes nearly a full lap without the sound of metal
meeting concrete. And then it gets
interesting.
Mid-sip I hear what sounds
like the Coors Silver Bullet train coming
around the bend. Actually, it's the Escort with the
motorized belts, and it's rolling over, about 12
feet in front of us. I notice its spare tire has
made its way into the back seat. Next, a tow truck
appears to pull the car off the track, which is
just in time for a Camry driven by -- you knew this
was coming -- "Wild Wes" to slam horrifyingly into
the big truck at full tilt. I'm pretty sure he
never saw the giant red tow truck. But Wes is okay.
He just backs up and goes merrily back into the
fray on the track. And then, possibly in an attempt
to outdo the Camry's spectacular crash, a tan
mid-'90s Chevy Cavalier never bothers to turn into
the corner and instead goes straight into the wall.
Both airbags explode. After five laps, the race is
called due to a father and daughter team crashing
into the wall -- both leave by ambulance. Heydet
calls me at the office a few days after the race to
inform me that both are fine.
Taking home the giant Eye
Rock trophy is 38-year-old Marty "Mad Dog" Kelly of
Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Complications due to
diabetes completely cost him his vision nine years
ago. This is his sixth Eye Rock and his second win.
Kelly admits that he practices regularly on dirt
roads as he fingers the trophy in search of
Braille. "I look forward to this race all year. If
I'm having a down day, I think about racing the Eye
Rock, and it keeps me going."
Kelly is brave and fast.
I'm just happy to escape with both eyes still
working.
See "Not
Seeing is
Believeing"
for Tony's blindfolded driving experience.
* * *
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