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Sidelines
Kalani Simpson
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No track is no excuse for street racing
IT was a sad story, on March 31, when Hawaii Raceway Park shut down. Working on cars can be a positive hobby. A healthy outlet. It's often a family affair, generations getting together under the hood. All kinds of people love the roar of engines on a Saturday night.
As one guy told Channel 2's Ron Mizutani, in a report that aired in the days heading up to the sport's local swan song, "How many golf courses do we have here in the state of Hawaii?"
Good point. Yeah. Exactly. Same thing.
So, yeah, hard not to get a little teary-eyed, hearing all the stories of the families who had done this together, the people who had raced for years.
But the sadness always went away pretty quickly when, with almost every telling and most TV reports, the next sentences talked about people pushed off the track -- and now they would surely take to the street, to race. Because now they had no place to do so legally, and at least a few people would go out on the highways.
They would have "no other choice."
And I would get very angry, hearing this. Very angry. No other choice? Have we already forgotten about all the people who had died because of this kind of thing? No other choice? After all that has happened, how could someone even say that out loud?
Let's hope the shooting range at Koko Head doesn't close. By that same argument there would be people out firing guns.
Apparently they would have no other choice.
» Enough of the heavy stuff. Let's go to some reader e-mail:
"I'm drunk but here's a couple of thoughts anyway. ..."
OK, let's step away from the reader e-mail.
» If you've talked to Riley Wallace lately, or if you even know him at all, you know there's no way he's going gently into that good night. Which is good. But hearing him on the radio yesterday that he may not be ready to hang it up after next year, may have to go someplace else ... so why sign that contract then?
If next year comes and Wallace isn't ready to quit coaching, but he has to leave UH -- I don't think that's going to feel good in anyone's gut.
» Big story on Dan Hawkins in the latest Sports Illustrated, and, hmmm. A lot of the stuff that seemed so cool at Boise State now hits me as a little less so at a big-time school. (What's sillier, jumping out of an airplane or shouting "Colorado Buffaloes No. 1!" while doing it?) But I guess with his record, you can't bet against the guy.
My favorite part of the story was when Jordon Dizon, in the middle of January, "shows up in flip-flops (slippers), asking no one in particular, 'How could it be so cold?' "
In college on the mainland, I was that guy.