I had a slighty hair-raising arrival in Vegas late Thursday, involving my plane coming in to the runway, only to pull up at the last second, just above roof level, and circle around for a second attempt at a landing, giving us a REALLY close view of the strip out the left-side windows in the process, and the pilot explaining over the PA system after a few minutes that a sudden wind gust had come up, causing a landing to be unsafe and necessitating the last-second maneuver.
Thanks for the info, my heart rate didn’t go back to normal for hours!! I’m not generally an uneasy flier, but that got me, and I didn’t uncross my fingers until we were safely on the ground.
Sadly, our arrival in town was too late to see the hauler parade up the strip…THAT would have kept my heart rate up for a while!!
Jeff and I took advantage of qualifying day to do a little sight-seeing. We took a tour, narrated by Nathan Lane (I SWEAR it was him) with a political bent (he had definite opinions of the state of the world today) to the Hoover Dam. The ducks had a GREAT time (aside from ONE slight misadventure on the wall, that made us worry we were going to hear a screamed “AFLAAAAC!!!” disappearing down the gorge
….we’re pretty sure one duck pushed the other, but they denied it (I suspect Jeff's duck pinched my duck's butt...)…..fortunately, we were quick enough to catch, and were spared that sad event!! Imagine someone down on the roof of the electrical plant at the base, coming along and finding an Aflac duck there, though. LOL), and we did too. It’s a great way to spend a day.
Upon returning to Las Vegas, we retired to the Dome sports bar at the Plaza hotel, and took over the TVs to watch qualifying with a bunch of other fans while awaiting Paige’s arrival. Later Friday night, Jamie Jo joined us, and our weekend LVMS group was complete.
11 “AFLAC”s, one “Where did you get that jacket?” and one offer to purchase it off my back.
Saturday dawned sunny and cool; this weekend looked to be perfect, weather-wise. Not to hot, but sunny. I debuted my Aflac jacket on Freemont Street Thursday night, and almost immediately, at the crosswalk to Freemont street, got an “AFLAC!!” LOL That would be the first of 11 “Aflac”’s I heard that weekend (and who knows how many I didn’t hear while listening to Carl on the scanner!!)…and at one point during the race weekend, while browsing throught the souvenir haulers, I was asked how much to buy the jacket off my back....turns out the 99 souvenir hauler sold out of them early, and this guy apparently gave it a shot, hoping I would be willing to sell it. Not likely!! Who knew how much fun you could have wearing a giant Aflac duck on your back!
We headed out to the track bright and early, encountering little traffic going up Las Vegas Blvd to the track…definitely better than taking the interstate, where current construction promised future trips to the track would be easier, but on this date, just made a mess of things.
Heading straight to the Neon Garage, we soon found Anne, posted at the 99 garage window. Hopeful of a chance of delivering it to Carl personally, she had the 2008 scrapbook with her, so we had a chance to browse through it…AWESOME job, Edheads!! It looks fantastic!! Sadly, despite her patience, staying at that window all though practice, the chance never arose to give it to Carl, he was busy, busy, busy, and didn’t sign autographs at the window due to lack of time.
One Dale Jr fan was also posted there all morning, and was apparently pretty vocal in her displeasure that Carl didn’t sign any autographs, but we all know how busy he is. Anne is patient, she’ll get a chance to give it to him.
We also got to meet one of our “across the big pond” board members, Sara Louis aka “rustygirl-saralouis”. It was great to meet another Roush board member in person, and it reinforced my feeling that we have a great group of people there.
Sadly, my trusty camera chose this morning to fitz out, just suddenly was all squiggly lines through the viewfinder and on screen, and took squiggly shots…one fan who seemed to know a bit about cameras said she thought it sounded like the sensor went. I have no idea how expensive that is to fix, but as the camera has worked well for me under high-use situations for years, I figure it’s just time to retire it….I’ve already got a new, smaller, bigger megapixel, bigger zoom (modern technology is wonderful!!) camera on pre-order, that hopefully I will have in time for Phoenix if I get to attend that race weekend, for a portable version camera,
and a line on a nice Rebel with long lens that will be a great camera to learn to use to take more professional and long-distance photos, through my boyfriend, so soon I will no longer be cameraless….but I’m amazed at the improvements in cell phone cameras. My new Razr took a few amazing shots throughout the rest of the weekend.
And thankfully I had Jeff and Jamie Jo and Page and Anne and Sara Louis to fall back on…Jeff makes a great “Point and shoot” photographer. I just pointed, and he shot, so I still have access to a lot of photographic memories of the weekend. All was not lost. Photos WILL be showing up here...eventually...after I get through the 400+ Jeff took, mostly at my command!
I DID feel naked, not having my camera around my neck on a race weekend, occasionally reaching for it and not finding it there, but I also felt remarkably lighter. LOL
The Nationwide race, as usual, was great, Carl finishing second to his teammate, Greg Biffle, and afterwards we headed back to the Plaza to find somewhere to eat. After some poking around, we ended up eating at the buffet right in the hotel….$7.77 all you can eat, including my favorite, roast beef. YUM!! Gotta love Vegas….
After a long day, we fizzled out rather early by Vegas standards, ready for the next day of race fun.
Track walking, Digger and Ducks on the loose.
Sunday morning dawned even earlier, as we wanted to get to the track in plenty of time to sign in for our 9am track walk, through the Nascar Foundation. I love doing these things, it goes to a good cause, and walking on the surface our favorites will be driving on later, seeing things a little bit from their point of view…too cool.
All signed up, we did a bit of shopping at the souvenir haulers, and then gathered with the large group doing the track walk. Once down on the track, we got to get some pics of people with Digger, then off we went. Oh, there were some speeches, and the winner of last seasons “The Big Loser” and his mother were there, but as I’m not a reality TV fan, I didn’t really know him. Jeff, of course, had to go up to him, introduce himself, and say “It’s nice to meet a bigger loser than me!”. Smartass. LOL
Wandering around the track, just enjoying the cool, sunny morning, we noticed that the 99 pit stall was right down near the exit of pit lane, so of course, without even asking, we headed down there for some crew chat and pics. I even signed the wall “Faster than a cheetah strapped to a bullet train! 99 in ’09!” with a borrowed sharpie. Heck, they’re just going to paint over it after the race is over, so why not??
Of course, this was AFTER the ducks violated the cardinal rule of track walks…they posed on the grass for pics. That was the one rule…stay off the grass!!
After chatting with the crew a bit, and getting some duck pics, we realized one of the track walk organizers was waiting for us, as we had become stragglers, so we proceeded on our walk.
The track is a little bigger than Bristol, the last track I did a walk on, but it was very enjoyable. As we approached turn 3, some of the organizers where there, rooting people on and getting people to cheer and all….when a guy in front of us yelled out “Go Jr!” in response to their rabble-rousing, we executed a quickly whispered plan, and turned as a group and yelled “AFLAC!!” at them. This apparently amused them to no end, as they all doubled over in laugher, saying “THAT is the FUNNIEST thing I’ve heard in a long time!”…one of those spontaneous things that you wish someone had caught on video, but that never is, because of it’s spontaneous nature.
Returning to the start/finish line, we then realized that after that almost 2 mile walk, we had to climb back up the 40 or so rows to the exit to the concourse…UGH!!
After that long climb, we grabbed some lunch and shade, before parting ways. Jeff and I were proceeding back down those 40 rows to the driver intros area on the track on the start/finish line, while Paige and Jamie Jo went off to explore. Jeff and I reclined on the asphalt, getting a little sun, and then enjoyed driver intros. Jeff also got his first real sunburn of the weekend. Stubborn man, not worrying about what that’s doing to his skin….sadly, men can go through life like that and still be thought of as attractive, wrinkles and all (Hello George Clooney, Sean Connery???)…we women have to take care of our skin, or we just get called OLD!!
The highlight of our Driver Intros time? The landing of the Flying Elvis’. Elvis IS alive, and jumping out of planes over Las Vegas!
Too soon, it was time to head to our seats, and before we knew it, the race was on.
The 99 crew has some new members again this season, and they had a couple of slow stops, but over-all, it was a decent race, even though Carl didn’t win. Carl was recorded after the Atlanta race as saying they’ve had some crewmen injured, and are using replacements, something we could really see by the time the Atlanta race rolled around. Seems to me they would equally train back-ups to help smooth the transition when a replacement has to be moved, but I guess that weekly on-track experience is the best experience they can have.
Sadly, we had to watch the Shrub win, and as none of us are really fans of his, we headed back to the car sooner than we had hoped to, had Carl won, and after a while in race traffic, we dropped Paige at her truck, then headed out to find something to eat before dropping Jamie Jo at the airport, and then Jeff and I headed to Harrahs to check in for our last couple of nights in Vegas.
Do you know how hard it is to find a regular restaurant on the Strip??? We finally left the strip, and came across one in a residential neighborhood. Yes, there IS more to Vegas than the Strip. People actually LIVE there in normal houses, in normal neighborhoods…LOL
All in all, a wonderful race weekend with good friends. You can’t ask for more than that.
Well, Carl could have won at least ONE of the races. LOL
