COLLEEN KENNEY / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Saturday, October 7, 2006 7:00 pm
Christy Carlson doesn’t have kids yet. So her baby is her Subaru. She loves her baby, an Impreza WRX STI. She drives it to her job at the university where she is a regional climatologist for the High Plains Regional Climate Center. She also drives it to a local Subaru owners club gatherings.
She drives it between orange pylons on fields of dirt and in empty parking lots while competing in the adrenaline-pumping sports she loves, RallyCross and Autocross.
She laughs.
“You know you love your car when you spend more time with it than you do with your husband.”
Any driver can do Autocross and RallyCross, the 26-year-old Lincoln woman says. The sports have the same basic concept: You take any car, as long as its wheels are not about to fall off, and you race it against the clock in a safe, controlled environment. Autocross is on pavement. RallyCross on dirt. You compare your time against other drivers in your class.
The sport tests a driver’s ability and a car’s handling.
She was afraid at first, she says. She thought she’d look stupid and be slower than everyone else competing, mostly men.
“But I got out there and they were very encouraging. And being a woman, it may have helped me because they were there with just all sorts of words of support.”
She started out racing other women, now she’s finishing in the middle of the pack of men. She’s near the top of her class in the region. The class is based on the type of car. If you have a Dodge Neon, for example, you race against similar cars, not a Viper or Lotus Elise.
She will compete in the National RallyCross Challenge Oct. 27-29 at the Hastings Motorsport Park.
“This actually helps train you to be a better driver, so you know exactly what your car can do, how fast it can stop,” she said. “And you have fun while doing. There’s lots of bench racing. The guys always are bragging, ‘If I had done this or this with my car, I could have beat you.’’’
Carlson has been an adrenaline junkie since she was a kid. She grew up near Oakland on a farm, a good place to watch storms come in. Her best childhood memory is going storm spotting with her dad.
Her dad taught her to always position the vehicle into the wind — strong crosswinds could tip it over.
She got a degree in meteorology from UNL, then a master’s in professional meteorology in Oklahoma, tornado country.
In May 2004, while back in Lincoln, she and another storm-chasing friend saw a small green dot on the radar. They drove out. Near Wilber, they encountered a tornado, part of the massive system that destroyed Hallam and heavily damaged other towns in Southeast Nebraska.
The tornado was massive and mesmerizing. It rotated both clockwise and counterclockwise. But then they realized there was no way out.
They had stopped on a road south of Wilber. Big mistake. The road ran just north-south. There was no east-west route for a safe getaway.
“I was thinking, ‘How did we get ourselves into this?’ That was the scariest thing, and a turning point. I didn’t go chasing storms the rest of that year.
She chases storms every now and then, but now that she’s no longer a student, she has to structure her vacation days around it.
Her husband understands, she says, when she takes off toward dark clouds and lightning.
“I think he realizes I need it to stay sane.”
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.
Quips
My dream vacation is: A stormy week in the middle of the Central Plains — with somebody to pay for my gas money and a hotel. Maybe two weeks during storm season.
The food I could eat every day for the rest of my life: Milky Way Midnight bars. It has the dark chocolate outside, and a white nougat and caramel inside. It’s really good.
My pet peeve is: Drunk drivers, because a drunk driver took away my car (another Impreza) in 2004. I had to get rid of it. They never fixed it right. My neck still hurts.
My favorite weather is: I love large hail. I did some undergraduate work on the climatology of hail. I also love a super-cell storm that produces large hail. It’s so beautiful, the colors of the storm. And, naturally, I love tornadoes.
My husband thinks I’m: An adrenaline junkie. Hyperactive. Always being blown away somewhere.
On the web
Nebraska Region Sports Car Club of America, www.nrscca.com