Electric Bugaloo.

A hobby of mine is RC cars designed for rock crawling. If you've ever seen those large jeeps that have been retrofitted with large, knobby tires and jacked up suspension then you've seen my hobby's origin. It started with my brother's interested in the "sport". He got into RC cars, primarily nitro powered models. He's purchased and sold a few of them so far and seems really keen on his current Baja model which is quite the sight to behold. He asked me while I was convalescing if I was interested in getting one. I mentioned to him that the rock crawlers seemed neat, more in an effort to support his enthusiasm and less for my own end. What this resulted in was him getting my family to pool together to buy me an RC rock crawler. They're not cheap, not at all.

Ashamedly I let the car sit unmade in the box for longer than I should have. I always blamed my leg for not wanting to start the hobby. Finally, one night when I was suffering from a bout of insomnia I walked into my TV room, cut open the box and sat there for something like 8-10 hours building this car. It was an involved process to say the least. From the ground up I compiled the parts into a working vehicle. I was immensely proud of my accomplishment. When my brother woke up that morning I was sitting on the floor finishing the last parts of the car. I had the shell or body of the car to paint. I decided on an old WWII military style with the big white star and army green. I painted in the rust and it turned out pretty good. I took it out behind my house a few days later and drove it around on the rocks surrounding my fire pit. It was fun, but a vehicle like that requires some real terrain to take it out on. After a few more attempts at local hills and such my brother informed me of a gorge about an hour and a half away that he'd visited that would be perfect. We took the car there and it was amazing. It's a place called Elora Gorge and the rock formations were idyllic. We had a great time with the car and took a lot of photos.

We explored a few other areas like campsites and rock faces within a two hour radius of our house. A few of them were great, but were expensive to get to (entrance fees). After a while of watching me have fun, my brother decided to get a car of his own to tinker with. Being the engineering-minded person he is, he took the stock car and created a lot of custom aluminum pieces that suited his needs. With each of us having the same base car, we took our designs in entirely different directions. I went for the bare bones stock look focusing more on the tires and really gaining a control of the vehicle where he went more a more technical approach relying on something called a dig unit which helps to disengage the rear tires for tricky climbs. It's been a lot of fun, but there was this one time that can only be referred to as a death march.

He knew about this place near Milton that he had visited with his girlfriend. He suggested it and with my one friend in tow we drove up to Milton to check it out. We walked for about 20 minutes from parking the car, along the ledge of the escarpment while we looked for this perfect site he had mentioned. We found a few small climbs along the way that weren't too bad, but not what he was remembering. This was on a holiday Monday. I had received surgery on my foot the Friday before that. This was also on the same leg that was injured in the accident. We walked for four hours uphill and downhill looking for this site he remembered and we just couldn't find it. My back and leg were seriously messed up and I couldn't even feel my foot. We decided to head back to the car which was a nightmarish proposition in itself. It meant that the long walk we had just endured had to be repeated in reverse.

Near the very end of the trail, just a few hundred metres from where we had parked the car my brother noticed that the trail split off. From the direction we had come initially we must have missed it, but coming back it was as plain as day. We decided to check it out and there it was, not five minutes from the car. I was exhausted and as it turned out the rocks were far too large and smooth to be climbed on by us let alone the cars. The whole excursion turned out to be a bust and I feel a bit bad for my friend who trekked along with us, fruitlessly.

Since that day we have taken the cars out several more times, even buying a new chassis for mine as well as a new radio controller with a better signal. I don't think I'll ever be as gung-ho about the hobby as some people are, but it really is a nice way to bond with my older brother and it has gotten me out of the house several times, which is good. It's also been a great way to gauge the strength of my leg. With the rock courses being fairly extreme and with me having to go wherever the car goes means I've got to be in shape. Last time we went out I was able to hop along the rocks with relative ease. My leg was stiff and sore the next morning, but the fact that I was able to do it in the first place felt really good.

Sometimes all you need to do is jump dangerously from rock to rock down in a gorge near a river to find out your messed up leg is feeling better.