Hello, welcome to Fun Fact Friday. I'm Leila.
I'm David. Wow, you just jumped right into it on that one.
Yeah. We have a fat,
baby. Yep. And it's Friday,
and it's fun.
Well, we hope it's gonna be fun. Yeah. If you have any
Hello, I'm Ashlyn Speed. I've been racing for over a facts for us or a topic or you want to be a guest or you know anything like that hit us up mail FunFactFriday.com Fun Fact Friday one on x. If you prefer Twitter, I still call it Twitter. We have guests. Plural. We have Ashlin Speed and Greg Speed. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourselves. decade now started racing and competitive go karts and then think this is the third or fourth year I've been racing
cars. Last year I won the Southern Conference Championship in a formula Mazda. It's a Formula car with a RX seven engine in it. I also won job of the Year Award for SCCA in 2022. And this year, I'm hoping to raise an F six an F 1600. And try to race that and do really well.
That's awesome. Nice. And Greg,
and I'm dad, and this is really cool. I know that you guys said that. It's your only one of two. Daddy daughter podcasts when I heard that are really nice. Because Ashlyn is always a star and I want her to be the star. But this is gonna be really cool. Getting to jump in here and talk. My name is Greg Speed. My best thing that I'm known for is I was a Paralympian. I'm a paraplegic in a wheelchair. And when I got to
college, I got involved in wheelchair racing. And in 1990, I broke the national record and 100 meter, went to the World Games in England and won the open 100 meter there, and then was selected for the Team USA Paralympic team, and went on to compete at the Paralympics in Barcelona in 92. So that was my claim to fame. And I guess the funny thing is, our last name is Speed. And if you believe that we're living in a simulation, then that fits pretty well. It's good proof. Right? Right. Well,
I was I was fast. And now Ashland is fast in a car.
Yeah. When I heard about heard about Ashlyn. I figured that the Speed was just like branding, you know, because I heard of you as a racecar driver. And I was like, Oh, okay. Ashland Speed. That's like the name of the company or the nope, nope. That's the last name.
Yeah, so that's what I used to race. More than once, when I went to the registration table, that competition, they would say, what is that a stage name? Like? No, that's my real last name.
Yeah, my last name is meet us. And I have it on my hat. Because I was in Las Vegas. And they were like, What do you want monogrammed on your hat. And I was like, Oh, are embroidered I guess not monogram because that will be the initials. Leila. I saw I saw it in your head. You were about to be like, Oh my gosh, he said monogram when he meant embroidered? No.
I wanted to add something to the conversation.
Anyway, I'll just like I'll put my name up there. And it actually helps because like when we go to a hotel or something, and they're like, Can you spell your last name and I just like pointed the hat. And it's very handy. So Leila, did you have any questions? Or do you do you want me to jump into mind first? Did you not do I have it pulled up there?
Honey, hold up. Hold on,
I guess. Okay, so I have a quick question. So when you are or when you're when you're getting ready to start a race, right. Are you reluctantly crouched to the starting line?
We've used that song.
Oh my gosh, good. Luck, okay. Yeah. I'm glad y'all know that reference. Yes. It's so funny, right?
Yeah, we need to remake that song. Instead of saying him that needs to say her right. We'll let that slide.
I know that there's ways that you can get like, cover the rights to do a cover for something. And you know, change it up enough. And you just pay like one time or for every million downloads or something like that. It's like, I can't run what's called there's a service for it. But that's that's not why we're here. So you started you said you started at goke on go karts? Yes. Okay, good.
When I was seven, my dad took me to k one speed after school. After school. He asked me Do you know what a go kart is? I said, No. So we went to k one speed. And we bought a little pack of races. And I went out on the track for my first time ever. And what I was told is I kind of naturally just took to the racing line that you're supposed to take To be fastest, and so one of the desk workers said they noticed my talent and asked if I had any interest or knowledge about the league races
that they host. So we ended up joining those league races, and I did really well and I won the 2015 2016 Junior League Championship at k one speed. And then, since I was winning so much, it was time for more of a challenge. So we moved to outdoor gas powered competitive go karts. I won a couple championships, doing club races, a few podium races and regional races. And then I moved up to cars.
Yeah, the first time we went to k one. I had been a race fan my whole life. And so I was just looking at her going, man, that looks really smooth. And then after a couple of sessions, I'll just expand on what she said. The lady working at the front desk came up to us and said, How long have you been racing? You're doing really good. You've got one of the best lap times of the month. And we were like, This is our first time. And so yes, she said, Well, you need to get into
league racing. So you know, little did I know that was going to be an introduction to turn my life up until the point
right, like turn it into a whole thing. We have
a huge studio with scary looking spider right above me right
in front of her face. So we're gonna have to we're gonna hit pause for a second.
So Leila was sitting there. I was sitting there. And then the spider crawled into my computer, and It crawled out of theirs. And it bit Ashton's arm off. Yep. So
I head to the hospital. Sorry. Yeah. So thanks for coming. Outro Music All right. All right. Now push your laptop back because I'm getting feedback again. All right, there you go.
I pull it forward to kill the spider.
Right. So whoever we were worrying, oh, the go kart. So when you say you're 17 you started racing? Race cars at 14. Was that you said three years.
So started testing. You can see we started testing and kind of learning how to shift manual and learn manual gears. Heel toe. Yeah, heel toe. Right. You know, still trying to perfect that to this day. But yeah, I think I think 13 is when I first started my introduction into car racing. And my introduction into car racing was because of a guy named William Snyder, who, when we first started racing, competitive go
karts outside, we were teamed with him. We were on Team core carding, and, you know, we introduced ourselves to them. But seven or six or seven years later, he came up to me when I was practicing one day at the go kart track came up to me. He's like, you want to practice on my Spec Miata?
You said we need to get you in the Miata? Yeah,
we need to get you in the Miata. And she's like, Oh, okay. Yeah. Nice. Why would I say no. So then, after that weekend, we've soon later started testing in that Miata. So
since you probably didn't have a license at that point, so I guess, well, I guess it's on private property. And it's Yeah, you don't have to have a license. You don't
have to have a license. You don't have a license to race in SCCA. You have to go through a three day class, which involves classwork as well as on track construction, Passing Drills, all that sort of stuff. And then you get your SCCA license. So she got hers at 14, which I think is the youngest you can get I think somewhere around there.
That's really, Leila has driven one of our vehicles one time about 10 foot and I almost crashed into the tree. Yeah. Because I was just like, you should try it. And she's like, No. We're planning on heading up to the go kart, there's a go kart track in Raleigh, that we're we're looking to go into maybe for my birthday next month. So we found some pictures of back when she was a real small kid. I mean, like six or seven of us at the one down at Lake but it's like the real
small little, little things. And she was like, I was fine. Let's go do that again. So I'm we like to go karts. We just don't have any within they're like an hour away everywhere. Yeah. So we don't have any local. There's no home track.
At North Texas Carter's was at least an hour away. And you know, we were up there almost every weekend. That's the key really, to racing is seat time. They call it seek time. It's just being on the track. And that's the beautiful thing about go kart racing is the go kart racing. You're always going through tires, but with go kart tires, they do last a little bit longer. So you can Get a lot of seat time in. You just have to, you just have to get out there and do it and get the feel of
it. Really. It's just lap after lap after lap.
Yeah, the my brain went through like three questions I wanted to ask and I forgot all three of them. But the when we're watching the video, the driven video on YouTube that featured y'all, you said that that was somebody from your church that made that you said something that kind of is like it resonated with both of us because you know, father daughter relationship, and, you know, I want to I want her to do great things. I'm always trying to teach her, you know, life
skills and things like that. But one of the things that really got me that you said was that, like, I think it was after your wreck that you just gotta get up and press on. You just, you just keep going. Right? No matter what the adversity is, you just gotta keep going. And that's kind of like our family. Motto. For us three is like, Okay, well, that sucks. Let's, let's keep going. You know, what's next? No, that's
exactly how we are too good. No, I remember after or during my wreck. I was calm the entire time. And when I was sitting in the car, waiting for the all the safety crew on the track and the ambulance to get there. I was very calm. And all I did was just check my legs and make sure I could feel everything, which I mean, I thought I did. But I just kind of sat there, I knew I'd be safe. And once I got pulled out of a car and put into the ambulance. They then fell out on
me. And my whole entire left side was numb, which since it was something with my back, I guess got shocked or sprained. And they ended up having to care fly me to the hospital, because it's something dealing with my back. You don't want to run better be safe than sorry. But the whole time I was calm because I knew I was safe. And I knew God had a plan for me. And
that's a really good way to think.
Yeah, it was less than a week. Now an interesting part of that is when she was 11 years old, the Snyder's invited her out to the track and gave her a ride in that Spec Miata. And then when she was 14, that's the Miata that she tested in. And then in her second race is when she had the crash. And that was because two cars in front went off and kicked up a huge dust cloud with zero visibility. And like a real race or she kept it floored right into the dust cloud. But somebody in front of
her didn't. And so she just plowed into the back of them. So she totaled the car that she got to get to ride in an 11 and learn that and 14 got her license in and totaled it. And then what happened next?
After I got out of the hospital, Williams, I had been in there for I think, four hours. And William Snyder when I came out of the hospital, I came out with my mom and my dad, and he walked up to me and he had been sitting inside that parking lot the whole time.
He wasn't allowed in because of the COVID restrictions at the time.
And he came up to me and he was asking me if I was okay. And I was like, yeah, and he asked me if I was still willing to race and if I were if I were scared or just wanting to quit.
So do you want to get back on the horse I believe?
And I said yes, with no hesitation. And so went back home. And then he called us up and told us to come out to the track and we went to Team Mar what and we're just socializing in there. And then I hear a car pull up. And it's a new Spec Miata he was looking at in the car when he was waiting for me. And so it had my name on it and it had this had a little road runner, little black logo logo in the front where my crash was. So it was very personal. The car and it was for me to race for
that next year that can amazing. This fan. Yeah, it
was incredible. We were speechless. And I think what she said that her logo is the roadrunner with Ashlyn Speed on it. And so our crew chief Phil had had made a vinyl of the coyote splat gun. It was on the front of the car where he had hit. So the coyote splat was on the front of the car.
Nice. I love it. That's fantastic. That these
guys are just incredible. The Snyder's and all of the people that he's got around him are just amazing people and we couldn't have done the first two years of racing without them, period.
So Ashlyn Are you and you said in the video, I'll link the video in the show notes if anybody wants to go watch it. But you said in the video that you're you don't even like IndyCars like I love that. Yeah, I love that because like Lee La Is not she knows how to do all of the techy stuff involved with the podcast. She's not into it, but she is a very entertaining personality behind the mic. Thank you. And she has very good
mic skills. And it. It's natural to her. So like I kind of granite racing is a much more dangerous, lot more skillful. Takes a lot more courage, but I saw the parallel.
I don't know you had a spider in there. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, what
was the thing that we had to go kill it, it took us like 20 minutes. A horse was a horse,
terrified of it. I was more terrified of this horse plot and I wasn't the spider. We'll see.
You don't know what a horse fly is going to do. But on a racetrack you're only going one direction. So you got you got to feed.
But I just saw the parallel that like she's not into it, but she's naturally good at it. So she does it, you know, and but I'm, I'm there to do all the, the to do behind the scenes stuff and the nerd stuff.
But and I don't know, she's not into the car culture. Like if you come up and then say, Hey, isn't that a cool car? You know, she's not in that necessarily. But racing
is a whole different thing. There's so many like different components, then. I mean, obviously, I can't really speak about car culture and going to meats and everything. I don't know what all goes into that. But racing. There's like so many more components, like relationships, and then your team that you're with, I really enjoy the team aspect and being able to share your data and information with the team that you're at the race with that weekend. I like helping out and
prepping the car. I like helping the team making sure everything's running smoothly. But like he said, tires Yeah, I like working on race cars and I'm interested in race cars, but not just cool cars on streetcars. So coach
will a coach will sit down with her and go over the data you know the car you download data from the car it's got you know your throttle position, your brake position, your RPM, engine temperatures, all this sort of stuff and you have to you compare that with the other members of your team and go hey, you are faster in this corner. If you were to listen to her talk to a coach and break down every corner here was my throttle here was my brake which gear was I at which my RPM here
was the weight balance of the car? It would blow your way. That's that
I love the nerd stuff. Like I would love to see the data dump from this car.
If you've had to choose a car that you would like absolutely die to raisin motor be
well, my dream is IndyCar. But I also I really like the BMW Z Ford GT three. It's just completely random and I've never talked about it before but I love it.
She's She's googling it. W
z four, G T three. T T
three. Well, since you graced us with your presence we we we have purchased you this vehicle that's on its way so I like that car now we have no money. Oh wow, that's pretty. That is pretty
cool. Yeah, it
sounds really pretty. It's like very deep. It kind of sounds like a NASCAR
you know being that this is Fun Fact Friday they want facts. When you say IndyCar a lot of people probably don't know what that is. Yeah. To maybe tell them about the road to Indy and people who you know what the Indy 500
I genuinely do not know anything about it. Like I hear IndyCar. And I'm like, Oh, yep, Indy. I've heard that before. But I don't know what that means. Versus I know what NASCAR is. And I know what a Formula One car is. But I don't know like the differences. I have no idea what IndyCar means.
Indy car it. It looks like an f1 car. It has all the wings in the aerodynamic stuff. But it's basically like the USA version. f1 is like the European European version of open wheel cars and open wheel cars just means that it has nothing covering the wheels and you have all of that arrowhead and aerodynamic component to the car. And the sports cars is more like the NASCAR
the BMW Z four would would run as a sports car. A sports car is like one that you could buy at the store, but it's been souped up. But open wheel is what we really like. It's what she really likes. And unfortunately, it's the way more expensive of the two. But, you know, IndyCar? Everybody knows the Indy 500. It's in fact the most attended one day sporting event in the world. So it's the pinnacle of race. You know, people say f1 is the pinnacle, but they're really different. f1
currently has 10 teams in it two cars per each team. And each team designs that car, they make their own little changes to it. And so that's why you might have one team that's just incredibly dominant one year, but an IndyCar, it's more of what they call a spec racing, where they have very tight rules. Everybody uses, you know, one of two engine manufacturers. And it has to fall every car has to be almost exactly like they do
little things. But the racing is just so much closer and so much more competitive and entertain, you're not going to see one person just run away the whole season. Each race would you'll have I think last year, there's almost a different winner for each race. It's just crazy.
Yeah, and those, those aren't typically on like oval tracks. They're normally on the more windy roads, or is it on an oval track? Am I totally off base on this? Yeah,
most of the time, it's road course tracks. But sometimes they do the oval
circuit Formula One is all road what they call road courses. It's it's so close track, but they call it a road course. Whereas IndyCar is very unique in that they do both. Okay, they do ovals, and the Indy 500 is an oval. Although it's really four corners. It's not perfectly oval, but they run like they run Texas Motor Speedway near us, which is considered an oval track or a tribal. So that is unique to
IndyCar. And that open wheels are running those high speed and that those are dangerous, very dangerous, because they're so high speed.
Oh, yeah, I, I'm not really in that into NASCAR. But the ones that I will watch are the road courses, because like when it's when it's an oval, right, and they're doing 500 laps on it. I'm just, I'm just like, you know, it's just such a long process.
The only way to make that interesting is to listen to the radios. So whenever we go to those, we will rent the radios, and you can dial in and hear what the crew chiefs are telling, okay. Because if you don't know, the strategies that they're using, like their pit strategies, how their fuels, you know, all that sort of stuff. It Yeah, it just becomes monotonous. And they added the road courses, I think, maybe speaking out of school, but to make it more interesting for
people. And and I think they're continuing to add more.
Yeah, like, I like the road court. They just it seems more entertaining, when you're not only turning left. And there's a little bit of right turning in there. So I went and pulled up some some facts about speed itself. And essentially, so So speed is a measurement. Did you know that?
Engineering so? Yes, absolutely.
Speed is a measurement of how fast an object moves relative to a reference point. does not have a direction and is considered a magnitude, or scalar. Quantity. speed can be figured by the formula speed equals distance divided by time. So there you go. There's the definition of speed. Speed was, here's another one. Speed was invented in 1976. By Joseph speed, who decided to 19 Oh, sorry. It's it's blurry. I need new glasses. 1978 by Joseph speed who just started walking faster. Okay, whatever.
Speed was invented in 1970. Yes.
The definition of when walking was
running was invented in 1978. Also by Joseph running, who tried to walk twice at once. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We we do have a running gag on the show, whatever we're talking about Joseph, who whatever we're talking about, invented it in 1978. And then we have to improv a story on how it was done. Okay, so, like microphones were invented in 1978 by Joseph microphone, who had a a piece of paper hooked to a string and it vibrated. And then the end of the string vibe. I don't know. I
had a string. Yeah, yeah. Hold it up to someone's ear. And he talked into it. Yeah,
night. Hey, everything. Literally everything was invented in 1919 78. Yeah, by a guy named Joseph. So it's just but yeah, we always try and throw just a couple of little little fun facts in here. The top speed of a dolphin is 37 miles an hour. Sharks are 44 which is how they catch the dolphins. Let's see what else do we have in here? The first train reached a top speed of do want to guess on how fast the first train was first train the first train.
Most you take it
47 miles per hour.
I'm gonna go 48 $1 So
the very first train reached at a top speed of a whopping five miles per hour.
Okay, nice. Well, I mean, what do they define by a train? Is it just like a school car on some rails? Or is it like a fully like electricity FIDE cart? No, no,
this this side,
but it's the cart on Yeah, on rails.
That card on rails? Is that will be my guest. No more than one more than one car.
Do you know when the first car race was
1978
when the second car was built,
I imagine Yeah, it's like you gotta get two of them. Which one's faster? Alright, let's
see. Car and Joseph second car. Got on the road together on the road made by Joseph road. Of course. The car brothers. Yeah, the car.
But oh my gosh. But no, a lot of these sites. So when we look up our facts, we don't typically dig really deep. Because we do deep dives on stuff. The show's gonna be four hours long, because we'll get we'll get. We've done it before. And like, we get way too into things. So we kind of just find some fun facts. And we try not to dig too deep. Because when you say what was the first train, like the fine train? The site doesn't have that. Yeah, so it's more
fun if you just make it up anyway.
Right. And then also the, we will find Leila and I will both be looking on different sites and we will find contradictory facts. Yeah. And both of them claimed to be internet. Yeah, the internet sometimes. Some of the information on the internet is unreliable.
Well, I'm not using chat GPT it'll get it right every time
with us chat GBT for one episode. And it was fantastic. We let it we let it just run rampant over the show. And it was it was a mess. That thing is not what it's cracked up to be. It does some things kind of well, though. It's good for meal planning. Very, very narrow, focused things. Especially if you can find a good training model for the for the AI. I've dug into that and it's but it's still it's still it's not there
yet. It'll get there. Okay, sure. So let's see what what is the fastest fish in the sea?
Make the fat fastest. I love the debtor their
name Barracuda comes to mind.
You gotta get an answer. No reference.
Um, I'm gonna say 100 And no 102
Oh, you want this? You're going for the actual Oh,
yeah, no, I would say no. What species? Oh, I find a fish. And what's the thing? Yeah, and fish. Um, you can fight with it.
A sword fish a sword.
You got it. You got it without any any coaching. 168 miles an hour. Oh, dang. Yes, that aerodynamics? hydrodynamics. Oh, mermaid.
What's the name of the Little Mermaid Ariel Ariel Ariel.
Ariel is the fastest efficiency. Squirrels
can climb trees faster than they can run on the ground. I believe
I knew this was not fast when they crossed the street. No,
they're not and they stop they stop right in front of your tie. Anyway, like deers? Yeah. Oh, so deer. With a little a little before the show. Y'all had y'all had a cool little story before we actually started recording. Yeah, we had
good news. We were talking about good news. We're gonna skip it because of the 100 Good news. We weren't we weren't to talk about it.
Well, why don't we talk about your good news.
Our good news, y'all. I shot a deer and we had the timber. We met and we had deer steak for dinner tonight. And it was both of our first times having deer steak. It was very delicious. But to kill this deer, we met a guy named Caleb. And we met him at G G. G to Motorsports Park. And they were having a little opening ceremony and people got to bring their cars and race on the track for the first time. But we met this guy named Caleb and he's on a the lemons limit
would limit 24 hour of lemons. There's a I won't go too deep. If we start giving the backstory.
It's an endurance race and you have a very small budget to spend on it could only spend $500
on the car.
Oh nice.
That sounds great. And you have to run it for 24 hours. Wow.
So how much are you allowed to spend on fixing it up?
But well, you have to put a roll cage and all that stuff. So you end up
in it. The initial car has to be fine. Okay, yeah, the
car is what it is. And the people decorate them. They wear matching costumes. I mean, it's a whole they have costume contests for the race. It's hilarious. So we're gonna hopefully get to ride or drive for them in one of these races this year, but they were out there with their Miata. And it's just, you know, it. It's hilarious looking, but they let her drive it on the track.
Yeah. So Caleb is one of the guys that was out there that races that car. And I had mentioned, I liked hunting a lot. And that I really wanted to again, and he said that he has some land, and he would let me shoot a deer. And I was like, oh, okay, yeah, I will do that. So we scheduled a time and I went out. And we went in the deer and the deer blind for a few hours, and it was starting to get really dark, and we're let down. But then right as we were about to step out of the
blind, we're talking about me and him. I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned very slowly, and I just pointed over to where I saw the deer and it was three deer that walked out of some shrubbery. And he was like, No way. So I loaded the gun and I want to take a shot at the biggest of the three dough. And I pulled the trigger and clicked because it was not loaded. Oh, no. I didn't know this. Oh, no. We reloaded it really fast. My shot one of the dough and it was like 75
yards out, I think. And we ran out over there. It was freezing cold. I bet we ran over there and we drug it to the truck. And then he gutted it and skinned it right at his house in his garage. And we took the meat to get it processed with we had a whole carcass inside of the back of our Honda CRV.
You gotta do what you got to do. Right? Yeah.
So I I invested some money into it. And I got the head mounted. Nice. So that'll be done in December. And then we got the meat processed. And we got that back last week. And this was the first time I've seen the steak and it was very delicious. We
I'm not a fan of just a venison steak. Because typically it's a little more than so long, a little more lenient. But like when we do venison burgers or venison jerky, venison stew, something where you add the fat. You will go buy some fat from the butcher and it's good stuff. Good stuff. But Leila has a dear story. I'm not great at telling stories. You want me to tell the story? Yes. Okay. I will butcher and it's been a while. We need
the sound. sad trombone, please. So we were at Sam's, which is a membership club store at Costco kind of like a Costco if that if that's what you got where you're at. Okay. Oh, lucky. So we're in Sam's and I'm looking at the olive oil. We tell the story about every 20 or 30 episodes. And we're looking at the olive oil, you know, the gallons of olive oil and like what's going on? So I'm looking at Phaedra and Leila, this is my wife and Leila. And all of a sudden Phaedra goes dear, and I'm like
yes honey. No, she she points behind me and says Dear, and I turn around right is this was 12 point buck 1010 point buck. Come is barreling at us like just full bore running down the aisle at Sam's. And it's not doing a great job because the floor is all slick. But my wife grabs Leila and yanks her out of the way and throws her into the palate of olive oil. Right as the book just right where Leila just was oh my god, it was about to just plow over her it didn't even care. And then right after
it passed her. I kid you not it face planted isn't really part that I remember into a pallet of deerpark water puncturing stations. And it punctured a few of the bottles. And anyway, it fell to the ground. And it gets back up and looks at us. And I don't know if it's going to charge us like if it's mad or if it's scared. I don't know what's going on. So I put my hand on my pistol, and then it turns and starts to run away from us. Well, a couple of the employees a bystander and then me
afterwards. We all got our carts and like corralled it back into the warehouse where the trucks load the stuff and they opened up the bay door and we like got it back outside. It had come in through the tire center. The tire department. Yeah, yeah, there. You know where the cars come in to get their tires changed it There's some woods backed up against the SAMS and it just wandered in and then got got stuck in there. And I was
freaking out. It was it was really interesting that actually happens here about once every two years a deer will get into one of the major retail places. My buddy was here. Yeah, my buddy was in Walmart one time they had a subway at the back. And he's just walking past the subway. He had heard a commotion earlier, but he's walking past the subway and there's a doe just like laying there and, you know, like, like, it's resting in the middle of the subway risk. Oh, my God. Oh my gosh.
But we have lots of deer here. It's actually really dangerous. It's a problem. Whitetail. And though, some, some years they're just like, You know what? Don't even count just get as many as you can get, because they overpopulate here. Right and cause a lot of damage and spread a lot of disease. So well,
it's it's the the wild boar down here.
Oh, yeah. I've heard about that. I'm from I'm from Lubbock, originally. Yeah, so y'all know where that's at? And I'm Leila wants to go to Texas. I'm sure the sky. I want to show her what the sky looks like without trees. Yeah, she sees trees everywhere. She's seen it on a cruise. But yeah, when it's over the over the land, and you got the you know,
so you have so many trees where you are that it's hard to get a clear view.
Yeah, there's there's a lot of really tall like pine trees and stuff like that. And there's just, I mean, if you get to see like the horizon, right at all, it just kind of like shrinks the sky. Yeah. You'll get a good a good, long view. If there's like a huge field. Like there's a couple of places here where you got to really big soybean farms used to be tobacco, but they've moved to soybean now, and you can get you can kind of get that but not like Lubbock, you know, it's on that plateau.
It's like perfectly flat. So like I grew up being able to see 10 miles, you know, it was like, it was amazing. And she's never experienced that. So we'll get out there one day out back out of West Texas.
Ashlyn likes to have us go out. You got to get out into West Texas to be able to see the stars. I mean, we live in the Dallas Fort Worth area, and it's just all light pollution, light pollution. Yeah.
We lived probably 15 miles outside of Lubbock. So it was desert. Like it was just there was nothing. And we could see I mean, you can see the Milky Way there was hardly any light pollution. We did have a military base nearby. But there was that wasn't a lot of light pollution. Not like Dallas Fort Worth.
If we go to Texas, I gotta condition myself because last time we went to like a desert in Nevada. I could not speak for a couple days. So dry my lungs. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, I've never been anywhere. Like a desert.
In the flat area. Like that works real open. And you can see the night sky. I feel like disoriented. I feel like I'm gonna fall up into space. It's It's wild. Yeah,
it's a very interesting. Another. Another interesting thing when I moved from there to here. The humidity is like zero. They're
all the humidity here is like 70
minimum that's the minimum ever gets. So when we moved like here, I didn't understand why people were so crazy about putting a coaster under your drink. Because there's no sweat. Like you don't get the sweat on the outside of the cup in Lubbock. Like I've done it never been a problem with us. Yeah, so like when we moved here, but he's like, put it on a coaster. And I'm like, What's a coaster? Like, I had genuine I was like eight I had no idea what a coaster was. And
they'll and I was like, oh, is our is my drink leaking? What's wrong with this cup? And I was like, I had never experienced humidity before. That was just an interesting thing. So she Leila had the opposite. When we went to Vegas, it was just so dry. And her body's used to the the moisture in her laryngitis.
And I couldn't speak because of how dry my throat was and everything.
Plus the oxygen they pumped into the casino. Yeah, because Leila just she just sat down to the slot machine for three days straight. And just 13 They don't let kids play the slot machines. Everybody knows I was joking. So, so what's next? What's next for you? What's what's on the horizon in the next year or so? Thinking of Lubbock?
Well, the team that I am signed for to race with this year, they are from Lubbock. They're the team is called Race dog. And we've done a couple of practice sessions or testing session sessions this year, but we really want to do the series called FRP, which would make make my first pro year racing, which would be very cool, but we just need funding to do that. But if not, we would do a few SCCA racing, which is races
which is what I have been doing previously. And we would do a certain amount of races of those races in order to make it to the SCCA Runoffs, which would give me some more exposure if we cannot do the FRP series until about the car that we're racing. And we're going to be racing the F 1600 that I mentioned earlier, what makes that unique? What makes it unique is it does not have any
wings. It's just It looks very weird. Weird. It's just like the center body of the car and then four wheels off to the side.
That's your
she raced the formula. Mazda, if anybody listening can just google these to see pictures of them. The formula Mazda looks like a Formula One car to most people that they would call, people call it a Formula One who don't know, the wings on a car, give it downforce. And so what that does is it allows you to take it gives you more grip in the tire
so you can take the corners faster. One of the interesting things about wing cars is when you're going into a corner and you're going to break, you can just slam on the brakes as hard as you can because you have so much downforce but as soon as the car starts to slow down, and the wind speed slows down over the wings, you lose downforce, you have to let off the brake quickly or you'll lock the tires up. So mastering all those
intricacies. She's already done that she won the Southern Conference Championship in SCCA last year in that our biggest race that she won was at Circuit of the Americas, which was really cool. But this car with no wings, it's all mechanical grip. So a lot of times they will use this car for kids that are coming out of Karting because it gives them an introduction to the formula open wheel cars without having to deal with that extra complication of the downforce.
So this will be a walk in the park for her.
So you just said a term karting. What's that? karting
is what we call kart race go kart racing? Oh, yeah. And they're spelled with a K. They spell it K AR T?
Like Mario Kart? Yeah.
Harding. Yeah. Thank you for calling attention to that. Because we'll just throw out words that we know secondhand.
We try real hard to nature with you because like I genuinely didn't know. I thought you said card being like car D right ing. And they said karting and Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. But yeah, that's that's one of the things when we bring people on, we always have to be like, hold on, you're using lingo? No, know, it's tough. Like you said, you you build
websites. You start talking with nerds about computer stuff. And you start talking about you know, DNS and, you know, things and people are like, whoa, you know, so you gotta you got to make sure you let folks know who don't
actually has their their little language.
It's a so did you have anything else you wanted to any fun stories or like, like, what's the funniest thing that's happened to you in a race has anything like funny happened where you were just
spinning out?
Oh. So this is when I was racing the Spec Miata, and we had a race in Hallett, which is an Oklahoma and qualifying is whoever gets the fastest time, it's based on whoever gets the best time. And from that, then, if you get if you get the fastest time, then you'll start first place in the race starting, so you want to get the fastest time in qualifying. We pulled up to the grid, which is where everyone lines up before they release you to go onto the track to start your qualifying or your race.
And it had started sprinkling, and everyone had slicks on which is the tires that have no treading through it. And why that is bad when it rains is because once it starts raining, and you have that slick tire, there is no traction between the car and the ground. So that's why you have rain tires and why in racing, sometimes you see people pit when it starts to rain, so they can put on those rain tires. They have little grooves so the water can move through the tire and have you
make oh my goodness, allow you to have contact to the track. So it started sprinkling and everyone was on slicks. And this was also my first time ever Racing in the Rain in cars, so I went out and it was the first corner and I was being very cautious. And the very first corner I wasn't even going full speed I was going maybe 10 miles an hour, first corner I spin out and I just ended up not qualifying
so like the very first corner It's just like, alright, this is the first one get this one good. And I spun out
over the radio I said Ashlyn. Don't worry about your first time in the car racing. In the rain, she goes, Dad, this is my first time driving in the race.
And it's always like, Okay, what's the what's the worst thing? Oh, there it is. I just did the worst thing.
But then there was a time when we were racing go karts, when she was younger, and it was raining off and on during the race weekend, and this was a regional competition. So the stakes are high. And we were watching the race before hers and trying to decide, okay, is the track dry enough to put on slicks I mean, you have to make the decision. And so everybody was on the grid getting ready to go out. And all of the dads went and grabbed the slicks, and changed from the rain tires to
the slicks on the grid, just before we go out. And ask them looks up to me, and she's probably 10 years old at this time. And she looks at me and she goes, Dad, Dad, go, go get the Go get the slicks go to the slicks, and I'm looking at my weather app. And I looked down at her, I said, Ashlyn. I think we're going to win this race. And I've got the GoPro and it
starts pouring just before the green flag. You should put some Benny Hill music with this thing or that dunk that the cars are just going around in circles around her and she just goes right through mu boo boo boo boo wins the race. Actually, red flagged the race before the end of it and she was in first. That's cool.
That's, that's so the um, the or the slicks, like, like, why wouldn't you just always leave on one or the other. I mean, obviously, if it's raining, you want to have the rangelands, but like, are the slicks faster.
If it's dry, yeah, if it's dry, they're faster made of a different material, okay, and also, not having grooves it gives you more contact to the track and allows you to have more grip, you
want as much contact as possible. But the rains have grooves in it to allow the water just to get out of the way. But also the rains are super soft. If you run rains, and it's not raining, they'll get so hot, they'll just melt.
They'll look like they'll look like slicks at the end of however many laps, it usually takes just a couple of laps if you're running rain tires, on a dry surface,
so the tread would just melt. So the materials they're made out of as well as the surface surface area touching the road, why not just put, I don't know how to put like more tires. Just like what have you had like 12 tires on the front? That would be more surface area. Right? I can just, that's
a lot of money. A set of tires will last us about one race weekend and low cost about what 12?
I mean, it depends on the car. Yeah, right. They always limit they with the levels that we're racing at which is considered amateur. They limit the number of tires and the tire compounds that they specify you to use are hard enough or they don't wear out over the weekend. Because you know, then the richest people would win all the time. So they limit it to where you're you only use one set of tires over a weekend. But like
on the Miata they were 150 for a set that last one weekend. The the formula Mazda was 14 No 1600 Yes. 1600 for a weekend, it gets up there. It's crazy.
I can see why you need sponsors for that sort of thing, man. I didn't know. I mean, I knew like NASCAR would wear out. And you know, you gotta change the tires multiple times during one race. Yeah,
that's part of the race. You know, the way they race? Right? You know, they do that. But for amateur racing, they specifically tell you to make you use tires that have a harder compound so they don't wear out as fast so they don't cost you as much.
Okay, so if you throw a banana peel behind you, with the the person behind you like, like, a circle and then go well their coin
flips five times and then explode. Yeah.
Raise my, my, you bring this thing of bananas. And you
know, I was gonna kill me for telling this story. She is gonna stab me in the face while I'm sleeping. She slipped on a banana peel. Like she was getting out of her car at work. And somebody had done a banana peel on the ground. And she slipped on it. Like, like in the old comedy cartoons. I didn't know that that would actually happen. She called me and she was very upset that nobody saw it. She was you just that just reminded me of that.
Well, it sounds like she's got a good sense of humor.
She does so and if she would actually like be mad about it. I wouldn't air that but I did. As you can all tell. No. What's funny is if I go back and edit it, make it very obvious That would also be funny. Oh, the comedy choices? Switch? Yeah. Yeah, we have, we found out that the, the hardware that we use for recording, it's got a sensor button that does the standard center beep to get
a mute for my trumpet. So I can do a warm, warm, warm, warm, warm, Charlie Brown,
right. But this sensor button, you can actually record a custom sensor word. So we have to decide what we want to say or what we want that to save when we want to, you know, censor something as a joke, or what sound we want. So it's, you know, like, when you're dealing with this high level of comedy, you just have to make sure that you're, you're making the right choices, you know? Did y'all have any questions for us at all?
How did you guys get started? And I heard and you tell me if I'm wrong, that you're one of two podcasts that are daddy daughter was always the one. And then when I heard this as I think you were the one that asked me, Do you want to both come on? I was like, Man, this would be a lot of fun. We've never got to do this before.
The we us being in one of two pod cat now. That's that's, there's so many dad and daughter podcast. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, I was joking around because, yeah, I said it was just a joke. I was talking to Reena, who was on an episode a couple episodes ago. She does a podcast with her dad, where she interviews somebody. And then the dad listens to the interview and add some words of wisdom at the end of the thing. So that's like their dad
daughter podcast. And we were talking about that. And I was just joking around I know of I know, of at least four or five other father daughter podcasts. And that's just the ones I know of, there's 4.2 million podcasts out there. Yeah. Only about 380,000 Give or take are actually active podcasts. But yeah, there's there's a lot of there. But we got started. Leila was 10. It was we got started a month or two into, you know, you know, the the bad times.
lock downs, I call them the long lock downs.
And but we would actually planned on starting before that. But the initial idea for the show was just to do a, like one minute podcast, of just a fun fact, like one or two fun facts on each topic, like something that you learned that day, right? That's what the show was gonna be. But then I was like that, let's make it at least like 10 minutes, and then turn
to this. And now it turns into we've had hour and a half episodes we've had, you know, it's it, it slowly turned into what it is now, over time, you know, receiving criticism, realizing we don't like editing. Yeah, so we just do it live now. And then we tried video, and we tried, you know, we tried different things. And some things work. Some things stick, some things don't.
But well, it's something that you'll always have. And you'll always look back on this. And this is something that, you know, with our racing, nobody else has shared this experience with us, like we had nobody, I mean, it's completely unique experience and completely unique for us. And we never, we didn't plan any of it. It just it just one foot after the next you know, one step after the next. And then here we are, it's It's wild. But I sometimes think about, you know, 20 years from
now, we're going to look back at pictures. We were over at my my parents house Sunday, and looking back at pictures of my racing, my wheelchair racing, and just thinking and I was getting to show her. And then I'm thinking well, 20 years from now we're gonna look back and go oh, remember that time that we were the only ones that went out on rain tires, and, you know, all these experiences that are just completely unique.
Yeah, and, and that was I just went to pod fest Expo down in Orlando. Talking about podcasting with other podcasters. Like a, it was a really good experience because I got to share what we do with people, a lot of people that appreciate that. Now, I have four years of conversations with my daughter in her in her formative years. And we talk about what we're doing in our daily lives. You know, we kind of give like most episodes, we do like a little recap of what
are we doing this week? I didn't do nothing this week, we're talking about but we have all these conversations and it's just something that I'll get to get to have forever, you know, and I get to teach her a lot of very useful skills through this. Public speaking being one of them she's not afraid to get up in front of people and talk. She knows how to use a microphone she knows proper interview etiquette, she knows you know,
the all of the recording stuff. So there's less I could talk for 30 minutes on all the stuff that I've taught her through Through this experience, and I'm sure you have not just the racing and staying on the on the line and all that, but like, responsibility for showing up things like that. I'm sure you all got, you know, all kinds of things that aren't directly part of the race that you've learned.
Yeah, one of the things that we've concentrated on is communications. And I've made sure that she's taken communications and speech classes in school. And like when she was, what comes to mind is, when we raised a circuit, the Americas and the formula Mazda last year, she was leading the race for almost the whole race. And she's in you know, you have to give the speech afterwards, they come up and interview you.
And we had worked on the speech ahead of time, and later, she told me that while she's driving, she just kept going through the speech while she's in first place. Just going over and over in her head, so she get it right, right. So sometimes
I think about or talk to myself or think about what I'm going to eat for dinner, or what I'm gonna do on my phone after the race.
You've got an internal monologue. At least you got that? Did you know, speaking about fun facts? Did you know that some people do not have an internal monologue?
Yes, we're just talking so weird to me.
It's so weird. But we're about to hit fit. We're just had 56 minutes on this episode. I think we're gonna we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up. Unless y'all had anything else y'all wanted to ask us or say or?
Well, your social media stuff. Yeah.
You can find me on Instagram or Twitter, Facebook and Tik Tok I AshlynSpeed. And
we will definitely Yeah,
and we try to put out a new reel. We try to every week but it's it's a lot of work. It is
content creation is no joke. But people pop in and think they're just going to make stuff gets it can get tedious. I will definitely link those in the show notes. Did you need Did you want anything else linked in there? Or is that just
be cool everybody go check that out. The guy who did it is a Emmy nominated video creator and just fantastic. And it's it's a good introduction to our story.
It was it was it was a really good show prep for us. So all right, well, I think we're gonna wrap it up. Oh wait value for value. We had one boost come in from somebody I met at pod fest. His name is Alan C. Paul, he is a musician. His music is on the on the value for value system. And you can check them out on the V for V music. If you just search that I believe I'm trying to remember ln beats like the letter L the letter in beats. You can go listen to Alan see Paul's music. He sent 777
Satoshis with the message. So interesting. Can't wait to hear that theme song talking about episode 175 beatboxing with Parker Kane. Parker is working on the beatbox rendition of our theme song. How fun. So he's working on that. And he also has another little surprise for us. And I can't say it because Lilo get too excited. So that's all we had for support this week. And then obviously, Dred Scott, with chapters Thank you drab and Christopher battles with his social media posts that he
always does as he listens. They're fun. Thank you, everybody who helped us out with value for value this week. And Alan, I've got some stuff. I'm gonna be emailing to you soon. If you're listening. Alright, well, I think thank you all for coming on the show. And if you'll stick around for a minute after we do the outro I got some info for you. Y'all have a fantastic weekend. You and say bye. Bye.
All right. Bye.
And we have our buddy Kyle here. He does our outro for us. Yeah. He should show up. He was up there. Yes.
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