Love slot car racing or certainly the set up, design and model making that surrounds it but the actual racing I find quite a frustration as it always ends up in disaster with broken cars or some sort of failure of circuit without a clean race or clear winner
One Scalextric race at my house nearly ended in death for one of my friends which thankfully was avoided by a miracle
I was newly married, no kids and just moved into our first home which had a large well appointed open loft space with good lighting and heating and Velux windows
Access was via one of those sliding ladders on a hinged hatch, professionally installed
I thought it would make a great space for a large slot car track so I set one up and invited a few of my closest friends for a nights racing
The racing was going really well except a tough bend was proving difficult where a few cars had come off and one spun off the track, tumbled on the floor and went down the open hatch, falling down two stories on to the Ground Floor. Obviously completely smashed to smitherines.
So I pulled the ladder up and closed the hatch to avoid another disaster !!!
After another hour of hard racing and quite a bit of beer consumed another car spun off this particular corner, tumbled to the floor and landed inside the folded ladder on the back of the closed hatch
Young Andrew, whose car it was, was winning the race by a good lap and was desperate to get it back on the track, leaped forward, hands outstretched to dive on the car.
You can probably guess
Yes he flew on to the closed hatch head first, the hatch opened and he went head first through the open hatch and disappeared!
Horror!
I don't know about Andrew but with me knowing Andrews family very well and it being my house, I saw MY life pass before my eyes !
Anyway by some miracle, instead of Andrew falling to his death with slot car in hand, his foot got trapped in the top of the ladder mechanics as it slid off the hatch and so he was left dangling in the air from the hatch by just his foot.
"I've got it" he cried, " can somebody pull me back up"?
Needless to say we awarded him the win
And I needed a very stiff drink
