The surest way to determine if a breakfast joint is any good is to order the Denver omelet. More often than not, if they can get that dish right, you can be pretty comfortable in ordering anything else off the menu.
For lunch, it’s the club sandwich. The toast on the bread will be just right, as is the cook on the bacon. The turkey breast is juicy, cut thinly and piled with care. The tomatoes are fresh and ripe and the iceberg lettuce is crisp and cool. If a restaurant can get that right, it is a bellwether for the rest of the menu. It’s like ordering meatballs from an Italian place. If the meatballs taste like they came off a Sysco Foods truck, you can assume much of the rest of the menu wasn’t made in house.
In automotive service, if repairs are done properly, on time and at the quoted price, and your car comes back clean — or even better, washed — you might have found a shop you can rely on.
For racing and track day organizations, the bellwether is safety, always and foremost. If an organization has driver safety covered as a primary concern, you can be assured that the rest of the operation is reliable.
I remember talking to a guy I was in HPDE with some years ago. I recall asking him if he was coming to the next NASA event, and he said something about going to a different organization’s event because it was cheaper.
At that time, I didn’t work for NASA, and I also had tried most of the other track day outfits in our area, and for me the low price was never worth the tradeoffs. One organization’s safety plan was to call 911. With NASA, 911 is already on site, with basic and advanced life support services at the ready.
You get what you pay for, and proper safety measures are not free. I always breathed a sigh of relief when I pulled into a NASA event and saw the ambulances, safety vehicles, firefighters and staffed corner worker stations.
Paying due attention to driver safety is what matters most, but it is also a bellwether for how the rest of an event is going to unfold.
NASA instructors are courteous and encouraging. Officials are welcoming and considerate. Tech officials are helpful and caring. When you are at a NASA event, the trains run on time. If there is a delay or a cleanup on aisle five, it will be communicated and be back on schedule as quickly as can be done.
It is understandable that once you have graduated from HPDE1 and can drive on your own, the temptation to save money on entry fees is real, but in that instance, the tradeoffs are not worth the risk.
Believe it or not, more accidents happen in the paddock at NASA events than on track, but either way, NASA provides the resources to deal with any incident. Safety is NASA’s foremost concern, and it should be yours, too. I have first-hand experience with advanced life support ambulances, and I can tell you the blanket of safety that NASA provides is worth the expense. It’s a topic worth thinking about.
That’s probably enough preaching for now. For some reason, I have a craving for a club sandwich.
