remembering california

I lived on a steep hill in Laguna Niguel. It was a beautiful gated community and if I walked to the top of the hill where the mansions were I could easily see the ocean. On a warm Sunday morning I was having breakfast with my dad and one of his friends. During the course of our conversation the man mentioned that his son had grown out of a go-kart and he wondered if we might like it. His only concern was that it might need a little tune up and a paint job. I jumped on the offer and bugged my dad until he accepted. It was rusty and beat up but it was perfect for me. With a new paint job and some love it was running like a champ. We improvised and put some lawnmower tires on it and pretty soon thereafter I was flying around our neighborhood and sliding around sandy corners. If I was going fast enough and I turned hard enough in either direction I could get the tires to squeal and lay down black lines of rubber on the road. the brakes on the go-kart were either applied or off and only on the rear wheels so when I slammed on the brakes it was like ripping the e-brake on a car, if I was turning and had to brake then I would instantly be trying to control a drift, alternating throttle and brake in order to control the slide. We soon moved to dove canyon, another gated community that was farther inland. It was a newer community based around a golf course, but once you got past the fence it was surrounded by desert. There were a few breaks in the fence and that's where my friends and I would break through with our go-karts and mini-bikes. On Saturdays and after school we would burn up gallons of gas while whipping around the desert trails that stretched for miles around. The dirt corners were perfect for my rear wheel drive kart and on almost any corner you could find little chuck flying sideways followed by a blackening dust cloud, and screaming at the top of his lungs. On one particular trip I forgot to check the gas tank before I left, and consequently I was several miles away from home with no gas, no cell phone, and no water, surrounded by miles of burning barren desert. Luckily after about 15 minutes a friend came flying up on a dirt bike, and gave me a lift back to my house. I came in quietly in because I didn't want my dad to find out that I ran out of gas. I got back and parked the chuck-mobile in the garage and vowed never to run out of gas again. Over Christmas break I walked into my basement in Connecticut and sitting on flat tires covered in a grey dust was my little 5 horse power go-kart. But I didn't see dust or flat tires or rust, all I saw was a mean machine that has a million unforgettable memories of the time I lived in California.