Westworld Alberta
Issue link: http://westworldmagazine.ama.ab.ca/i/245179
driving habits heySpeed F iPad readers: watch an interview with Forest Ohneck. Racer How a pink ticket changed a would-be street racer's life for the better by Annalise Klingbeil orest Ohneck holds a heavily creased slip of pink paper in his hands. It's a speeding ticket from five years ago. He keeps it in an old skigoggle box in his bedroom, along with coins, keys and memorabilia. Sitting in the living room of the southwest Edmonton home that he shares with his cousins, the 27-year-old slowly unfolds the paper and, extending a tattoo-covered forearm, lays it on the coffee table. "I've been meaning to get it laminated and I've actually been thinking about getting it framed," he says. Ohneck is a volunteer speaker and race-car driver for the Youth Initiatives & Education in Lifestyles & Driving Association (YIELD), a not-for-profit group of RCMP and civilians dedicated to road-safety education. He speaks about the dangers of speeding and street racing at high schools, car shows and community events around Alberta and spends his summers at Alberta 42 W e s t w o r l d a l b e r ta | S p r i n g 2 0 14 p40-50_WorstDriving.indd 42 tracks – often Castrol Raceway in Edmonton – driving a tricked-out 2000 Chevy Camaro owned by YIELD. But he's proud of what that ticket represents. He got it on a Thursday night back in November 2008. Ohneck, then 22, and a buddy had been driving from Spruce Grove to Stony Plain for a weekly game of pool with friends – Ohneck in his Honda Civic sedan and his friend in a Chevy pickup. They'd pulled up, side by side, at the last set of lights in Spruce Grove, on Parkland Highway, and decided to do something Ohneck had never done before. "Just like out of the movies, we looked over at each other and we decided on green we were going to go," he says. And go they did, ripping along five kilometres of two-lane rural highway. At one point, Ohneck remembers looking at his speedometer – it read 165 km/h. The limit was 80 km/h. They didn't stop until darren jacknisky 14-01-10 3:45 PM