As you all very well know by now, the highlight of this past weekend...and past week and probably past month...was going to the NASCAR race on Saturday. It has been a few years since I have been to a race and honestly, I haven't been following the sport all that much. However, when I found $35 tickets, I figured it was a good time to get back into what used to be one of my favorite sports to watch. I had forgotten how much fun those races truly are, and I am still on a "race-high" from the past weekend. (For example, I was walking to class today and ran into Naif and Tim from my class. Naif must have seen my pictures on facebook and asked me how the race was. I told him "AWESOME!!!" and must have sounded so enthusiastic that I made Tim jump.) I will most likely be trying to get tickets again for the race here in November.
I was able to convince some friends to go with me. My friend Liz seemed to really like it and already wants to go back with me in November. It seemed like everyone else enjoyed themselves, although a few admitted that it is not their ideal way to spend a Saturday evening. I appreciate their honesty and I'm really happy that they humored me and gave it a shot. I have pretty awesome friends.
We arrived at the track about 1:30 PM to tailgate. I was super excited about the tailgate, because that is just what you do at a NASCAR race. However, there are not ideal tailgating conditions in Phoenix, mostly because there is no grass. It is not the most fun to tailgate in a dirt parking lot, which is probably why there were fewer people tailgating in Phoenix than in Chicago. (Thankfully it was not a windy day so we were able to avoid a dust storm!) Nevertheless, we pulled out our table, chairs, grill, food, and box of wine and had ourselves a little party. I was in charge of the grilling, as evidenced by this photo. I am proud to report that no one got food poisoning. Score one for me!
The race started about 4:30 PM, so we then headed into the track to see the pre-race festivities. On the way in, by the merchandise trailers, we saw Digger the gopher, Fox's mascot for the "digger cam" view during their broadcast. Allison and Allie wanted a picture with him. Clearly they had no idea who he was, but we did it anyway. When else can you take a picture with a guy dressed up as a gopher?
I was pleasantly surprised by the proximity of our seats to all of the action. When we first walked up, they had the fence gates open to allow people with pit passes to walk onto the track and into the pits (which were SO close to the seats...unlike Chicago where a huge grass infield separates them from the track and the grandstands).
So I was able to get a really close picture of Kasey Kahne's car, which I thought was pretty cool. Our seats were also directly across from Ryan Newman's pit box. How often do you get to sit right in front of the winning pit crew? Anyway, they did the typical driver introductions, parachuting into the track, and flyover. I also enjoyed the national anthem because it was played by a trumpet player. He was crazy good and took the end up an entire octave like it was no big thing.
The race started. It went a little something like this...
Things were all good until stupid Kurt Busch decided to take out Kasey Kahne on lap 16. (On Kasey's birthday even! The nerve...) This was depressing because I had Kasey's name in the pool. Then, the second yellow flag was caused by another one of my pool drivers. And then the third yellow flag involved one of my pool drivers. I could not believe it! I thought for sure I had no hope of winning the pot. The Ryan Newman did something awesome during a green-white-checker and I won $30. I knew I always liked him. It was pretty neat to see a race at another track. Phoenix International Raceway is built right into the mountains. It is a smaller track (only 1 mile long), but it was a pretty neat place to take in a race.
Arizona does have it's own brand of rednecks...evidenced by this man wearing a hat made out of Coor's Light boxes and this other man with a wicked mullet and handlebar mustache. Even so, I enjoyed going to a different track. It was pretty neat to see a night race too. I kind of like them better since you don't have to sit in the hot sun all day and because the artificial lighting makes the cars look super shiny and that much faster. Since NASCAR has this new rule about night races having to start on the east coast at 7:30 PM their time, the race actually started in the afternoon for us. (I really like this picture of twilight at the track. You can tell it is getting dark, but the mountains are still visible in the background.)
As the race wore on, it was interesting to see the changes in the cars as the sun went down and how some drivers got better while others got worse. Also, it was nice to get a bit of relief from the heat. I even had to put on my hoodie because the cars made such a breeze that it got a bit chilly. After Newman won the race, there were fireworks and all sorts of hoopla. We decided to fight the crowds and head home because we were sunburned, hungry, tired, and had a full day of studying ahead of us.And there you have it folks. NASCAR update. Maybe next time I can get all my crazy family to come down for the race and we can do it like we used to...with Corona lime hats, baggo, and all sorts of craziness.
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