Arriving at our hotel, we checked in, and joy of joy, our package was waiting for us!!
Ripping it open, I gleefully reached inside….
And pulled out 2 tickets for the family area in turn 9. NOT what I had ordered, or what I THOUGHT I had ordered. I KNEW I should have called for more information before ordering..
A long phone call to the company later, I was told by the supposed boss-man that “I just called the track, and those are infield tickets, which include pit access….”
Well, maybe they did things differently on a road course, but I wasn’t convinced. I always get a pit voucher to take to a trailer at the track to pick up my pit passes, and this definitely was NOT a pit pass voucher.
I called the track, but got a voice mail that kept looping me back to the main menu, so since we were headed for the track now, I decided to talk directly to the people in the ticket office there.
Arriving at the track, we were absolutely flabbergasted to drive in the general parking gate, having been directed to the BACK of the property…and to start weaving around, over, everything except under these hills!! It was absolutely AMAZING…I have never had that kind of drive into a track. Then again, I’ve heard Bristol is pretty hilly, but this was a first for me…you couldn’t even see the track, just had to take their word that it was over that hill, from the Back 40 lot where we ended up parking.
Walking to the shuttle area at the top of the lot, we were informed that we just missed the shuttle, and the next would be along in 15 minutes or so…or we could just walk down. It’s only a 10 minute walk, he says, making it sound like a Sunday stroll in the park…Yeah, right!! We walked down hill, and across, and down hill again, then across again…zigzagging down the hill…it was the longest, hottest walk I’ve done in a while…by the time I got to the bottom, all I could think of was “BEER ME!!” and made a b-line for the nearest vendor.
Mind you, the views of the track on the way down were pretty awesome:
Then we headed down to the main grandstand and asked a security guard for directions to the ticket office. Having just completed the convoluted trip down the hill and around the track, I was not at all surprised when he said “I think I should just take you there” in lieu of trying to give us directions we would understand.
Long story short, we got dropped off at the front office to enquire if what this man had told me was true…and were told it was not, that these were just tickets. They were listed as “GenAdmis” meaning General admission, and a search through several ticket sales sites had shown “GenAdmis” listings in the same price range with descriptions indicating they were pit passes and driver intro passes, so logically, I assumed, these were too.
Should have bought the ones with the descriptions, but I was trying to contain my ticket buying to as few sites as possible, and they were sold out at the track except for a couple low in turn 9 that I wasn’t interested in.
Apparently, I was wrong. OR they decided to purposely gyp me and send tickets in place of the pit passes I had purchased.
NOT HAPPY!!!!
Of course, when I called the company that sold me the tickets back, I got the voicemail…so I left a scathing message indicating I wanted my money back. On Monday I would contact the company they sold them to me through, a company I have used in the past and trust, and report to them what happened. Hopefully I will be able to get some of our money back, because, believe me, these weren’t cheap, being last-minute, and sold in a state where you can legally resell tickets for whatever price you want to.
Anyway, shaking it off, we went to the souvenir hauler and said Hi to Mark. The gals apparently didn’t make the trip to Sonoma, as he was alone there with a couple of others all weekend I assumed were local help.
With the banner in hand, we headed back to the Trackside stage, 2 hours early…and no-one was there, but they started arriving about the time we did.
We had already been by and had seen the barber chair set up in the corner of the stage, so we immediately nabbed spots right in front of that spot.
We had to guard it a bit, because people would try to squeeze in beside us, and shift us down, but we knew if we shifted too far down we’d be looking at the back of Tom’s head, so we held our ground. Don’t push an Edhead around!
As we stood there through Nascar Live, we soon noticed activity in the Speed tent beside the stage…
First Tom showed up, and they were apparently briefing him on what the plan was…and looking at our pics, we realized that although he was pretty closely shorn by the time he came on stage, he had NOT been that closely shorn before coming on…we watched as they used long trimmers to even up what apparently had been hacked at all week, I guess they made it a little tidier for Tom’s TV appearance…
Then Carl walked by the opening to the back of the tent, where I assume they were getting him ready to go on-stage…
And suddenly it was Trackside time!! Tom came out first, and was set up in the barber chair…and he looked over at us, saw the Edhead banner, which we had hung over the side of the railing in front of us, not intending on putting it up and blocking all the people behind us, but just so that Tom and Carl would see it and know that the Edheads were there.
Then he looked at my shirt, grinned and waved…I gave him a thumbs up. It occurred to me afterwards that I must have seemed like an incognito Edhead, with the sunglasses and hat, but I doubt he would have recognized me anyway, having never met me before…however, he had seen the Shave Tom shirt before, at Dover, last September, in the crowd, at Carl’s signing…he gave me a thumbs up then, too, if I recall correctly.
Before we knew it, out came the Trackside guys, to hoots and hollers, and they brought Carl with them. Lots of hooting and hollering ensued, but Carl sat at the other side of the stage, probably on purpose so the cameras wouldn’t catch Tom sitting in the chair in the background while they interviewed Carl about his win.
Next thing I know, the gal running around with the portable TV camera was planted in front of me, with her camera aimed at my chest…show time!!! If you watched Trackside, you KNOW Justine’s work of art got fabulous airtime…along with me in my shades and goofy bucket hat with my “Are you an Edhead” pin on it. Hey, laugh at the hat, but my scalp along my part didn’t get NEARLY as sunburnt as it usually does. :D I’m just sad I couldn’t find my “Canada” bucket hat to wear…I KNOW it’s around my apartment somewhere, in a side pocket of a suitcase or something, where I packed it on one of my moves.
Finally the time came. We had seen the hedge trimmers and shears and the weed whacker behind the guys, so it wasn’t a surprise when they came out…what WAS a surprise was when, at commercial I believe, although I’ll have to watch and see if they show it, Hammond actually fired up the weed whacker….I’m not sure if I was taping at this time, but if I was, you’ll hear me: “WHO GAVE HAMMOND A WEAPON!!” followed by lots of laughter.
Finally Carl was up and walked across the stage…and saw us. That’s Anne’s fabulous pic of Carl waving at us, with our banner and t-shirt. The merged picture of our 2 pics, courtesy of Chrissi, is the best, and I do believe that will find a home on my desktop, if not on my cell phone. It’s too good to just sit in a file.
That pic is the one at the top right side of this blog.
The big moment…if you watched, you know the barber started tackling what remained of Tom’s beard during the commercial, and they came back to it partially done…
Carl of course was running the interview by this point…and we had the prime view. I wonder if Carl wore those baggy pants knowing that his butt would be on display to the crowd? LOL
Too quickly, it was all over, and with a final wave in the direction of the crowd, or us, whichever, Tom and Carl were gone, so we grabbed the banner and headed out of the crowd, letting someone else be up front..our mission was accomplished.
By the time we had worked our way over to the Speed Tent, Carl and Tom were gone, so I couldn’t get them to sign my shirt…so it will be traveling with me to future races in the hopes that I can accomplish that and fully retire the shirt, but it will not be worn again.
Returning the banner to the hauler, we told Mark of our adventures, and he laughed…he had the TV on in the hauler, so he saw parts of it, but obviously not all of it, because he seemed surprised when I told him I had been the opening shot.
Heading back over towards the stands, we ran into Dell, and told him how the shaving had gone, also….
Then we went up and sat for a bit and watched qualifying until after Carl made his run, then headed out, as we had left LA at 4am, and were pretty tired by now.
We were staying in Martinez, CA, a small town about 30 minutes from the track, so we headed downtown for dinner, and got to admire some cars set up for a car show, as many towns do…the owners just drive their babies in and put them on display. Lots of interesting cars, from the sporty, to the classic, to the absurd. Unfortunately, we had left our cameras in the hotel, and it still doesn’t occur to me that I have a camera phone, or I would have snapped a few, but it was fun.
After dinner, we pretty much crashed and burned, after checking out the board to post a few pics and some mention of our adventures. Tomorrow would be a big day, as rather than pay $40-50 to watch practice and another series’ race, when we didn’t have our pit passes to do the behind the scenes thing, we decided we’re going to go explore San Francisco. This should be great!!
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