Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Lots of people have hobbies, but few people invest the kind of time and energy into their extracurricular activities that Hatteras residents Ted Midgett and Bill Ballance have dedicated to their favorite pastime of dirt-track racing.Every Friday afternoon, from mid-April until the end of August, Midgett and Ballance load up their car and make the nearly three-hour trek to Elizabeth City, where they compete against other enthusiasts on the Dixieland Speedway’s three-eighths- mile dirt track, not returning home until around 2:30 the next morning. And that’s just race day. They spend several hours each week painstakingly detailing their car—taking it down to the frame, cleaning it, replacing any banged up pieces of metal, repainting dings and scuffs, and hand-checking each nut and bolt on the vehicle. That’s right. Every nut. Every bolt. Every week. “You’ve got to love it,” says Ballance. “It’s stress relief for me. When I’m doing this, I’m in another world.”For Midgett, who has been at it for nearly 25 years, the love affair started early. “I always liked [racing],”he said, “even as a kid.”His dad, Stockton Midgett, used to race beach buggies, and even when he was just riding a bike, Midgett would put a racing number on it. So when the Dixieland Speedway opened in the early 1980s, Midgett couldn’t just sit in the stands. “Four of us from down here went up to watch the race, and we said, ‘Hey, we can do that.’”They came back and built two cars. “We thought it looked easy,” he said. “We found out it wasn’t.”After years of racing, it just got to be too much for Midgett, and he, along with most of the other Hatteras boys, decided to give it up. Then, about 10 years ago, Ballance, owner of Ballance Oil in Hatteras, found himself with a sponsored car, midway through the dirt-track season, and no one to drive it. So he contacted Midgett, who agreed to finish out the season. They’ve been partners ever since, and it seems they make a pretty good team. Over the years, they’ve won seven championships, and almost every year, they take home the title of best looking car. So far this year, the duo is in second place, trailing the leader by 12 points, and leading the third place contender by more than 35. Not bad for a couple of pentagenarians. Of course, Midgett and Balance get a lot of help from behind the scenes. “If you really want to know what goes on, talk to [our wives] Chris and Beth,” Ballance said. “If we didn’t have their support, neither one of us could do this.” In the off-season, Bill and Ted completely rebuild the car. “We take it right down to the frame,” says Ballance. “Ted and I can pick it up and carry it.”Then they start from scratch, cutting the sheet metal for the body, ordering new parts, carving treads into new tires and putting everything together, so that's when the season rolls around, the legendary red and black No. 1 car is ready to roll.

Reprinted from the Island Free Press www.islandfreepress.org