Exhaust Stroke – The exhaust stroke is the final stage in a four-stroke internal combustion engine cycle. The gas that remains in the cylinder from the ignited fuel during the compression stroke is removed from the cylinder through the exhaust valve. The gases are forced up to the top of the cylinder as the piston rises and pushed through the opening that then closes to allow fresh air/fuel mixture into the cylinder for the four-stroke process to repeat itself.
After my win at Sunset, we spent some time at Grays Harbor and did the memorial for Charlie. Being back around all the responsibilities of owning a track was stressful. Van and Andrea were doing a great job but there were still decisions that Sway and I, as owners, needed to make and things to take care of. It was around that time we were thankful for the shared ownership in the Cup team.
Even though we had only two cars running in the Cup series, it was still a lot of money being torn up each week. When a car was destroyed, guess who gets to pay for that?
It was certainly not the driver.
He doesn’t care. The owner cares because he’s the one paying the bill. I understood that when I was racing but paying those bills now, I had more respect for Jimi and how he operated Riley-Simplex Racing all those years.
That was when the stress got to me and I asked myself why I was doing it.
I didn’t like owning a Cup team. It wasn’t me.
I know my dad would have wanted us to be happy.
So, I decided owning a NASCAR team wasn’t our thing anymore, so we sold partial ownership and merged with Tate’s team. We were still involved to a point but not nearly as heavily as before.
Easton was one of the best guys to have racing for you but I still didn’t want the responsibility of it all.
I had too much responsibility for so long. Now I was enjoying myself. Aside from my son blowing up my houseboat and being questioned by the police weekly for all the stupid shit we did on that two-hundred-and-thirty-acre plot, we didn’t have stress.
That lifestyle I was living when I was racing the Cup series wasn’t me. This was me. Being an owner of a dirt track, that was me. Racing sprint cars when I felt like it, that was me.
You see, living that lifestyle racing in NASCAR had brought battles I never wanted to fight but I didn’t know that until I wasn’t fighting them anymore.
Here’s the thing, unlike some athletes, I didn’t retire from the injury. I retired for me. I was done with that lifestyle.
I still raced, that would never change for me. Even the death of my father doing that very same thing couldn’t keep me away from sprint car racing.
Why?
If I would have walked away completely, all that I worked for wouldn’t have mattered and, more importantly, I would have felt as though I had let myself and him down.
Once again, I found myself walking a dirt track surrounded by memories, I thought of how I got here, standing at a track, that some forty years ago I raced for the first time.
Until now, my life had been one long continuum, and racing had been its link. From age four to forty-three, I have shared one passion, one pre-occupation and have had the same pattern over those years.
The track was quiet but I could hear the rumbling in the pits as cars heated their engines and prepared for a night of racing in honor of a man who had made this track what it is now. Dirt track racing with the smells, the tracks and throwing the car sideways was what I loved. It may have taken the lives of some friends, my dad and nearly taken my own life, but it was still home to me.
I loved this place. I fell in love here. I found my family here. It was my home for years and a place my heart knew.
My heart beat a little differently these days. It beat for the rhythm of the speed, the rumbling of an engine and the grooves that move the line to the victory I tasted. It beat for the methanol, the adrenaline and the speed. It beat for the passion that defined my greatness. It beat for the place I called home, where two hearts were secured within a cushion and a rail. It beats for a dirt track.
It beat for a home cooked meal, a cold beer after a win, and a place I called home.
Walking around the track, I made my way to the flag stand.
I must have stared at that flag stand for close to twenty minutes when Spencer found me.
“Do you remember when we crawled under here and watched the race from right here?”
“How could I forget? You broke my nose that night.”
“Oh, yeah.” Spencer laughed looking over his shoulder when he saw Sway coming toward us.
His hand clasped my shoulder as he smiled. “I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you for this lifestyle you’ve created for all of us but....” emotion crept over him, his eyes shined. “Thank you.”
“No man, thank you,” I said pulling him in for a hug. “I couldn’t have done it without you guys.”
Sway found me sitting on the back stretch wall, her hands wrapped around my shoulders. Twisting around, I moved her onto my lap.
Looking at her now, there was something about this woman that controlled me.
Sway had a power that no one else could ever have. She healed the scars over time.
I stared at the ring on her finger lighted by the burst of lights high above the clay. Here she was, our entire lives behind the wheel with her supporting me no matter what. Even when she left me for lying to her, or the months following my injury when the guilt and depression pushed a void between us, she had never truly left me. No matter what I put her through, she stood by me. So many times she had been relegated second in this life but not now, not anymore.
Wrapped in thought, her hands mapped the lines of my face as I stared at her.
Sway was my prayer. She was my untold answer in all of this. She held the key to everything without even knowing. My edges may have been rough, she knew that, but her touch created a surface stronger than any metal.
The expression I saw on her face took my breath away. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t speak. I just stared, transfixed looking into her eyes. Mesmerized by the depth of the passion and caring at the love I saw there. The same, I was sure that, which was reflected in mine.
The thing is that you can be the greatest driver, champion and legend of your time. You can walk through the fire or you could be the difference between seeing it rise and making it rise. You could be a kid who no one thought would make it and then, twenty years later, you’re standing in the hall of fame looking at your name etched in the wall of the greatest racers to ever grace the sport.
You could be that because, although you may not have believed it would happen, you made it happen. Whether it was my relationship with my wife or the things I’ve accomplished, I made it happen.
To me, the greatest feeling I knew was that I didn’t do it for revenge. I didn’t do it for someone else, although at times it may have seemed that way. I did it for me. I did it because it was a dream I believed in and refused to let go of. It was an unwritten legend that I scripted to fit me.
We were still that same couple we were back when we threw ourselves into whatever it was that drew us together. That connection, that unbelievably fucking magical connection between us was stronger than ever and always would be. My wife may have never been the type of wife who had time to go to PTA meetings or host Pampered Chef parties but she was a racer’s wife. She planned schedules, drove our kids to various tracks and made sure the night before a race I had my favorite fried spaghetti meal. She wasn’t comfortable in heels but she was in flip-flops. She hated Los Angeles but loved going to the local dirt track. She was my counterweight and balanced every imperfection my life had.
There was a time, a place, or maybe just a passing memory of this life when I once thought, would I ever say when?
Eventually, maybe without warning, your life, your body or maybe your mind has a way of saying it for you. I guess right now I was simply… saying when.
I took comfort in knowing that a reflection, a memory, if only just a glimpse, could last forever.
Overlooking the track, I cuddled up with her, relieved to know that what we had was worth everything we had been through.
We hadn’t said anything, nothing needed to be said, a comfortable silence just holding each other.
For close to an hour, nothing was said before she let out a chuckle leaning her head back to look up at me.
“Do you remember that night after the race in Charlotte when this all began?” Her arms wrapped over mine which were around her as though she was cuddling into a warm blanket, or a sweater that was soft to the touch.
“I do, honey,” I smiled, remembering the anxiety that overpowered me about what I wanted that night, a night I would remember forever. “I remember the exact look in your eyes when I asked you to stay.”
“Me too,” she whispered, pulling my hand to her lips kissing the promise I made to her.
I said it before and I’ll say it again because it was the one thing I know to be true besides the love of my wife and our family.
As I said to my wife, your life is measured in moments. Moments that tested you, challenged you, and moments that could make you fall to your fucking knees, begging and pleading for all you’re worth for just one more moment. But those moments defined you as a person, the life you lived, and the story of your life. You had to take them as they came because before you know it, you were out of moments.
All you had left were the memories.
So when you think you’ve forgotten and you realized nothing lasted forever, look back to those memories because they do last forever.
My life couldn’t be summed up for me as being just a legendary race car driver as those times were simply just snapshots. Clips of what my life really was. My life behind the blaring spotlight became the shadows I knew and who I really was. I was the son of two of the greatest people I know. I was a brother to two of the most giving and unselfish people a sibling could ask for. I was a husband to a woman who I cherished more than anything, a father to three children who showed me more about who I was than I ever thought possible and now I was a proud grandfather.
Those were the greatest memories I had.
Sitting there with Jameson, being back around dirt racing was what our family needed. It was where our love story began and healed us from the scars we thought would never mend.
There was something about the human heart that most never consider. It could be broken and ripped apart by this world, shattered beyond your belief. But what made it beat again?
Love, family, sex, trust, all of it could heal a heart and make it beat again. I would know.
When I’m old, I want to remember certain parts of my life and hold onto them forever.
I wanted to remember holding my children, vowing forever to my best friend, painting my nails with my mom, watering a dirt track with my dad, Jimi with his smart-ass remarks and Nancy with her compassion. I want to remember everyone in my family for what they brought to me.
Love.
Watching Jameson prior to Charlie’s memorial race we had every year, it was easy to see now that he longed for the moment that he could be at peace with his past, dreamed of it even, but it would never come without a fight. Finally, surrounded by everything that made Jameson Riley who he was, he was finally living where the clay met rubber.
From the day we met to now, we’d come full circle, back to where the clay met rubber and desire defined greatness. Jameson went back to where he would always feel comfortable, a dirt track. There was no pressing media here and nothing but his own desire forcing him to race. Sure we had challenges but they were different.
Sitting on his lap, his lips gently touched mine, brushing softly before pulling away. “My wife,” he said softly as he drew me close. My senses engulfed with him, the track, and our love.
“I love you, honey,” he murmured holding me tighter.
Jameson took pride and poured everything he had into everything he did. Now wasn’t any different.
I don’t think anyone can capture the vulnerability, magic, sensitivity, charm and pure greatness of this man I’ve loved all these years. He influenced and contributed to the racing world in ways no one ever had or ever will. People used to come from miles around just to see him race. Those were the people who understood. The people who stood in line for hours just to meet him prior to a race or stayed until the wee hours of the morning watching him celebrate after a victory. Those were the people who captured the magic that was Jameson Riley. It was a magic that consumed me in every way.
He taught me the love and the passion he held for a sport which changed our lives and intertwined them to the point that there was no us without it.
In turn, I gave him everything I had to give. I gave him my heart, my body, my soul and three wonderful kids.
He is the greatest man I have ever known.
Thinking back on my life, the fairytales of my childhood made perfect sense to me, but that wasn’t what I ended up with. I had my version of the fairytale. The glass slipper fit me. The dirty heathen turned into my prince and my soul was awakened with his kiss. And once upon at a dirt track, we found our happy right now.
Our lives were so twisted and turned that we couldn’t find our way back to where it all began and I was okay with that. The reality, the dream, was far better than any fairytale.
I’ll always remember the feeling I got when I knew I loved Jameson. I’ve held it with me like a secret gift all these years. It was a fire in me that burned to this day. Some fires never went out.
Some lights burned forever.
My love for him burned forever.
Jameson looked at me and breathed, the night air seized around us but I only saw him as he waited for my gaze to meet his. “I’ll tell you something, honey,” His finger traced my lips, “Something that a race could never offer me, something that’s worth all the aches and tears in the world. Something I believe in.”
“What’s that?”
His eyes shined as he spoke about a passion that held us as one. “A man and woman in love.”
Where the clay met rubber and desire defined greatness, a love was formed in a world of adrenaline, speed and desire. Whether that love be for a sport that consumed your life or a man and woman in love, a taste would never be enough. Over tragedy and triumph, you fight, you don’t give in and you see within the shadows of the blaring spotlight why you did so.
I believed, as Jimi once said, in love and hold onto it with everything you have as it was the only real legend of our time.