Welcome to Racer D! I’m Kathy Duryea, or Kat for short, or KatMax. I’ve also been called Katherine, Katie, Tweety, Katz, Cell, Duracell and Duryeace. My Sagittarius traits give me the desire to compete, explore and leave numerous piles, projects, or ideas in my path. The first half of my life (assuming I’ll live to be 103) has been driven by adventures. The second half of my life will be spent much the same, I hope.
Why Racer D? Well, there is John Doe and Jane Doe, fictitious names that are used in the case of somebody wishing or needing to remain anonymous. There is Racer X who either did all things right or all things wrong to win or lose the race. And then there is me, Racer D. I bought the domain a few years back thinking I could write anonymously about all my crazy adventures in life and in racing, as a quasi-professional athlete in sports where size D cups don’t really fit in for running or cycling (I mean, if you expect to win).
But why write anonymously? Not everything in my blog revolves around racing. It is about life, death, living, and loving in a world we are all trying to make sense of.
During and after college, I immersed myself in a sea of family, raising two boys, work, adventures, divorce, kids, work, racing, then professional racing and work, followed by retirement from professional racing, a new retirement sport to race, and then competitive racing again, kids, work, more adventures, a new marriage, and racing, work, kids, more adventures, and then divorce; but all the time I was compiling stories, and friendships, and memories, and boxes and hoarded boxes stacked on top of hoarded boxes of pictures and scrapbook items from kids, adventures and racing.
But then I found a new relationship with a woman and a love so deep I’ve never experienced. You may have guessed next came more racing, work, kids, a wedding, and now three grandkids, and adventures, lots of adventures, and now thousands of pictures. Wow, it is no wonder I adventured so far away from where I started—there was so much to do.
I wrote many stories over the years, but have many more to tell. They are all still in my possession in various places—journals, diaries, torn up diaries, word documents, in my notes on my phone, in the cloud, at my friends houses in their boxes, in letters I wrote to friends, in letters that were mailed back from friends that I wrote to friends, all of which I still have.
I’ve always wanted to write a book. I’ve read articles on how to write a book. I’ve sent texts and emails to friends who are writers for advice. I’ve searched the world wide web. I’ve mulled it over in my brain many times. Many of my friends say they would read that book—the book I might write someday. Even President Bush encouraged me to write a book not long after he finished his first book.
But for now I’ve come to this. A blog. A simple blog that makes so much sense that I wonder why I didn’t do it years ago. Oh yeah, we didn’t have the internet years ago.
So welcome, and I hope to slowly share my stories both past and present as they unravel here in my blog in no particular order.
Racer D 