April 20

It was 1994 and my wife decided to get a computer. She needed to get up to speed on one because her new job required it.
All I remember was that it was a Compaq 486 with 4MB of RAM. I didn't even know how to turn it on and I really didn't care, at least in the beginning. My curiousity got the best of me and I finally learned the fundementals...how to turn it on and off.
I had always been into sports cars and motocycles. I had done some dirt track racing and enduros on bikes. However, I wasn't very successful as I had this thing about pain and suffering and tended to be a conservative rider..not the way to win races.
Anyway, I was in a computer store one day looking at games and came across Indycar Racing from Papyrus. I took it home and installed it and it barely ran...not enough RAM, I discoverd. After parting with $200 for another 4MB the game ran pretty good and I was hooked. I never saw anything like this. I could go as fast as I wanted, crash and never get hurt. I used to get up early to play before going to work and wait until my wife went to bed before jumping back in the cockpit.

April 21

Driving or attempting to drive with a joystick became old pretty quickly so I began looking into wheels. I settled on a low end Thrustmaster...what did I know? It lasted a fair amount of time before it became erratic. I took it apart and found bungy cords controlling the tension. It was time to start looking for a better wheel. I happened upon the TSW from Thomas Enterprises. It was expensive but got great reviews. It wasn't much to look at but turned out to be an excellent investment. I have had it for ten years and it is as smooth and accurate as it was on day one. It has been back to the factory twice...once to be converted to USB and another time to have paddle shifters installed. As an aside...I recently bought a MOMO Force Feedback on eBay and I'm looking forward to seeing how they compare.

The purchase of the TSW coincided with the release of Indycar Racing II and I was really getting into sim racing. Online racing barely exsisted and wasn't really an alternative for me with the slow dial up that I had. There were a number of off line leagues available and I soon joined one. The race parameters were sent out weekly by the league manager and we had one week to run the race. The program generated a race file and we emailed it in by the deadline the following week. Although I generally won the race against the AI, which was usually set between 95-98%, I never came in first against my human opponents. The total time was the determining factor and my lap times weren't fast enough. I think I came in second once at a Watkins Glen race.

Things were getting competitive on the home front at the same time as my wife and I both wanted the computer.. I wanted to practice and she wanted to be practical. She won that race and I decided I needed my own PC.

to be continued...