As some may know I am currently a senior at Radford University and for my Social Media Marketing class I had the task of creating a blog. So, for this blog the purpose of it is to talk about a hobby of mine which is drag racing. For my first blog, I plan to go into how I got into drag racing and share my story.

 From a young age I have always been around cars since it just runs in the family. My family has also been into racing cars for generations starting with my grandfather who used to race circle track cars on dirt. When I was young, I always had a four-wheeler or dirt bike that I would ride. One day when I was about 8 years old my father and I went to an ATV park that was about 30 minutes from my house. At the ATV park they had a 300-foot sand drag where people could drag race their four-wheelers against one another. We went to this park a couple times that year to race on the sand drags and eventually my dad said that if we were going to keep doing drag racing we were going to start doing it on pavement.

 During the winter me and my dad were riding home from somewhere and we ended up stopping by a family friends house. When we got there, we walked into his shop and sitting in the shop was a Junior Dragster. A Junior Dragster is just a miniature dragster that is made for kids ages 6-18 to get into drag racing. The dragsters have a variety of different motor combinations that depend on how old you are. When you are only 6 years old you cannot exceed an elapsed time of 13.90 seconds but by time you reach the age limit of 18 years old you’re allowed to run an elapsed time as quick as 7.90 seconds.

My Dad and Uncle used to drag race together before I was born, mainly in the late 80s and early 90s. We have a dragstrip that is about 10 minutes from my house; this is where I got to make my first pass. Before making my first pass, I didn’t really know what to expect so I was kind of nervous. The motors in the dragsters are modeled after lawnmower motors but are far from stock. Most feature all aluminum blocks and run off alcohol to keep them cool. These dragsters also don’t have any exhaust, so they are loud and require you to wear a lot of safety equipment. When I made my first pass, I’ll never forget the sense of freedom that I get from driving a race car a feeling I still get to this day.  On my first pass I remember I didn’t even stay in the throttle the whole way since at the time I had never driven anything like this.

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Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.