Deflated dre...err, tires, Wandering Edheads, and Holy Hill!!
Finally, one of the races I’d been really looking forward to all week. The LAST Nationwide race I had attended, coincidentally with Jeff, Carl had won the race…would our luck hold?
After dropping the other 2 off at the seats, Jeff and I headed up to our seats in Earnhardt Terrace to watch Cup qualifying…nice seats, cupholder and all, and we and the Aflac ducks enjoyed seeing Carl FINALLY get a pole this season…YAY, now he’ll be in the Shootout next year!!.
We skipped Nationwide qualifying as we had to go find the registration booth for the NASCAR Foundation Track Walk to report in for our track walk the next day….you’d think that would be easy, but at first we had the directions “Outside the main grandstand” (just which side is the main grandstand at Bristol??? It’s basically a bowl!! LOL) and then we found a flyer with more specific instructions, which we proceeded to misread as sign up was at Gate 9 (turns out it was, but only right before the track walk Saturday morning). However, there IS no marked Gate 9. It was the track entrance (where the haulers drive in), and, we found out, no-one there knew anything about the Trackwalk sign-up. We were then directed back up the hill to the Bruton Smith building, which we had passed on the way there on the tram, to enquire there…and FINALLY got some good directions…but in the end we circled the track once on foot inside, then again via tram and golf cart on the outside to find it. Thank God this wasn’t Daytona or Talladega!! How about some clearer directions next time, folks!!! LOL
The plus side of this “adventure”, I’ll call it, for lack of a better term, is that I finally got the “lay of the land” at Bristol in my head…I mean, I saw EVERY square inch of it!! LOL Having never been at a track as small (yet massive!) as Bristol, and being used to tracks that you can look at from the outside and definitively say “That’s the main grandstand” or “that’s the backstretch” (I mean, the seats circle this sucker, unlike all the other tracks I’ve been at where part of the backstretch has no seats!!), I had been having difficulty developing a mental map in my head of where everything is in relation to what turn….no more, this cured me of that. I even remembered later where I saw a Radio Shack booth, from our travels. LOL
Finally, it was race time, and we returned to our seats to enjoy the action.
Carl looked good right off, but some bad luck ended his night prematurely. Apparently one weak spot on a tire, coupled with hot brakes, and Carl was in the garage with everything from a broken track bar to something broken in the steering, according to what they were saying on the scanner. Go figure.
It’s sad to watch your guy come back out on the track and just make laps, too far down to gain any points but not wanting a DNF on his record. I was blue for quite a while. Then I started rooting for Greg Biffle, the next nearest Roush guy to the front…but in the end, I was quite happy to see Brad Keslowski win it. ABS. Anyone But Shrub. LOL
ESPECIALLY since the “talking heads” were making a big deal again about Kyle Busch running all 3 races at Bristol, and the chance he had for doing the triple…go ahead and keep talking about Kyle Busch, focus on him, because while he’s leading the points, Carl Edwards is quietly making it a race!!
(I feel I should insert here that, although I share the same last name as the Shrub, and we MAY be distantly related, I am in NO WAY a fan of his. In case you didn’t already get that. LOL)
After the race, the other two were going to use the Raceway Ministries transportation to get back to the campsite, so Jeff and I decided, after having had 2 days of basically relaxing, we were energetic enough that we were going to attempt Holy Hill, the shortest route to our campground…and the longest, steepest hill on the track grounds. I had a little bit of trepidation about this (I mean, even one of the Raceway Ministries guys said “Just change one letter in ‘Holy Hill’ and the name is more accurate!!!”), but I was game to try it once. I mean, so what if we stopped a few times on the way up...
Yeah, right!! I have climbed hills at NASCAR tracks all over the country (Sears Point, err, Infineon Raceway, comes to mind…you just have no idea HOW hilly that track and area is until you’ve climbed the hills!), but NEVER before have I done it straight-shot, up the hill. We did it with 3 stops…this allowed us to catch our breath, and gave us a great view of the track. And visit with other fans doing the same thing. The next morning, I’d get some daytime pics of the track, coming DOWN the hill for the track walk, but the night-time view was spectacular, too.
We did, however, beat the other 2 members of our group, relying on transportation, back to the campsite by at least an hour. So there IS a benefit to tackling Holy Hill. I just don’t want to do it more than once or twice in a weekend. LOL
After some visiting around the campground, we showered (note to those who haven’t camped at a race track before….the showers are always emptier after midnight…and always bring flipflops…you never know what whoever was in front of you left behind. LOL) and hit the sack, storing energy for the BIG day of the weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment