Mind you, pushing a Jaguar at full throttle and then inflicting fast, hard braking on the car -- and getting faster  times with each lap -- does tend to push a driver's adrenaline up to supercharged levels.

And when Ontario Jaguar Owners' Association competitors came off their very first-ever Slalom lap at Mississauga's Hershey Centre recently -- at this club's inaugural JCNA-sanctioned slalom  -- drivers'  reactions were consistent:

"WOW!  WHAT A BLAST!!"

Then ...

"When's my next lap?"

And every single competitor was wearing the same badge -- a grin, a really   W --- I --- D --- E   grin.

OJOA's first JCNA-level Slalom  (the club did have earlier slaloms, but they were non-sanctioned and years ago) was championed by veteran contributor Ross Hamilton, who, with OJOA's Nelson Burkhart, brought their infectious enthusiasm for this particular motorsport to members.

Ross and Nelson were lucky enough to participate in the 2005 JCNA Challenge Championship, held in Atlanta, Georgia, in late September. Ross and Nelson gave an insightful PowerPoint presentation to OJOA members a few months later and discussion began about whether OJOA should, could or even "would" mount a Slalom.

Well, one thing led to another and Ross found himself knighted Slalom Chairman and things consistently built toward our very successful first JCNA slalom, on Labour Day weekend.

More than 20 competitors (at least one "unofficial") and a pile of supporters showed up bright and early that Saturday morning.  Well, perhaps not so bright that day because the skies were heavily overcast and threatening, presenting us with the northern remnants of what had once been Hurricane Ernesto. Temperatures were cool. Rain threatened.

Despite the weatherman's promise to rain on our parade, several OJOA types arrived at the still-dry site shortly after 7 a.m., to prepare for the 8:30 a.m. start to the day's agenda.

It's amazing how quickly a slalom course can be set up, when you have a knowledgeable nucleus there early.  (Ross, with the help of his Slalom Committee, had visited the site several days earlier and did a "dry run" setting up everything.)  Within an hour the Officials / Timing Tent was up, anchored by a Jaguar spare tire, a non-Jaguar spare tire, an electrical generator some other suitable tie-down point,  about 30 orange pylons had been set up and spacing double-checked with a 100-foot tape measure .... and hundreds and hundred and hundreds of feet of yellow caution tape had been tied around the entire site, to keep out curious spectators.

Then, as the official 8:30 a.m. start approached, novice "slalomeers" started to roll in. To the uninitiated, the course was just a confusion of cones. To Ross and Nelson it was three laps that -- to them -- represented "an hourglass, a figure 8 and a lap."  Taking the crowd of "how-am-I-ever-going-to-figure-this-out" novices onto the pylon-marked site, to literally "walk" the course, cleared up most of the cone confusion. That stroke of genius, one participant opined, "Was the Cat's meow."

Our newly acquired JCNA-approved timing equipment was tested and found to work perfectly. (Later, one competitor proved how indestructible it was when he drove over part of it.)

OJOA's gathering of Slalom drivers included everything from E-Types to full-sized sedans and a group of Z Class challengers, the non-Jaguars. Or, as one wag put it, "A lot of Japanese Jaguars." 

Regardless of what kind of car the Slalomeers were driving, they regularly commented on how different the whole Slalom experience is from anything else this club does. Yes we have a Concours, yes we have a Spring Blossom Run, sure there's a Summer Event and we have the time-challenging Fall Regularity Run. But nothing -- absolutely nothing -- comes anywhere close to the experience of driving a Jaguar as hard as you can, accelerator to the floor, then braking very hard, while 99 per cent of the time steering very, very aggressively and then, on top of all this, trying to think clearly about what you have to do in about one second -- because it's going to be different from everything else you've just done so far on this particular run.

Sure, it seems to get easier with subsequent runs through the course -- but if you're worth your salt, you challenge yourself throughout that entire next run. Challenge yourself to get out of the Starting Gate faster, to make all those turns tighter and to hit higher speeds in the straights and then to hit the brakes later and harder coming into the Stopping Box.

And, if you blow it, you only have yourself to blame.  Nobody else.  YOU  trip the first laser counter when you accelerate out of the Starting Box and then, at the end, YOU trip the last laser counter when you finally reach the topping Box. Everything that your car does on the course is a direct -- and immediate -- result of everything  YOU> do.  Do it right and you'll have a good run.   Make a mistake, and you have virtually no time to recover.

More than one person compared the whole experience to a four-lettered word. Golf.

Mind you, the big difference is that with golf you haven't got record-levels of adrenaline coursing through your arteries ... and you don't have your heart in your throat for the entire course when you're out duffing on the nearest links.

And that, essentially, is the biggest thrill of Slalom -- the sheer exhilaration of the combination of acceleration, deceleration, aggressive turns and all this fused together in a crucible of intensely focussed driver attention and anticipation of what's about to happen in the next fraction of a second.

Nothing else this club does compares to this.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Sure, the first run was (more or less) completed by everyone on dry asphalt. But, as the day progressed and the runs ran, there was at first the odd droplet of wet. Then the odd car had a bit of a problem getting good traction while accelerating hard. Then a gentle mist of precipitation. Then the umbrellas came out. Then a light rain. Then some cars started to fishtail on the course. Then, hours into the Slalom, steady light rain which collected on the low spots of the course and created puddles. And just about then, the official runs were completed.  Still, despite the gathering storm, nobody pulled out of the event.

Nobody dared. It was way too much fun. Some agreed that the wet took the level of challenge up a notch, making the course even more exciting.

Then, after all of the official runs had been made, organizers found we had some spare time before our expected arrival at a local roadhouse restaurant and declared that we could have some "play time" on the course, an opportunity which quickly saw a line-up of cars gather for more circuits. One of the last runs of the day was made when the course was very, very wet. Nelson Burkhart kindly made his last "play time" run in those conditions so we could take a digital video of what it looks like to manoeuvre the course. That near 60-second video clip is currently on this website.

To view the video, just click the jaguar's eyes:       

If you view that video, you'll see just how very wet the day became but, fortunately, the torrential downpours and fierce winds didn't take place until more than an hour later and , thankfully, not everywhere.

Several Slalom participants reported driving through extremely intense rain on their way home after the Slalom awards and also of seeing many branches and at least one large tree down.

Now, the bottom line here is that despite the fact that OJOA members (with two exceptions) had never Slalomed like this before, they turned in very respectable times and it's worth noting in particular that they did this despite the increasingly challenging weather and racing conditions. And -- even under these conditions -- times got faster and faster with each lap.  JCNA Vice President and Slalom Chair Steve Weinstein warned us about this, warned us about the "need for speed" that seems to overtake anyone competing in a Slalom.

Steve was right. 100 per cent.

Next year we'll prove him even more right -- and we'll beat all those already-respectable times we posted this year.