So Dad won tickets to the Pep Boys 500 race weekend, under Bari's name. You know it's bad when you win enough stuff on a radio station that it requires you to use other names in the family. The tickets included a ride around the track in the pace car, but the bad part is we had to be there extra early.Fast forward to race weekend. On Saturday morning… way earlier than I would ever wake up on the weekend, all of my friends met up at my place. I took a friend along who lost his wife about three weeks ago. He is a NASCAR fan so what better way to cheer him up? So we head
down there at the butt-crack of dawn (actually the sun hadn't come up yet) … in the indescribably horribly cold weather – an almighty 45 degrees. Ok, in GA this is cold! We get to the track, get through with the pit pass and head down to the pit area. Unfortunately, they delayed the pace car laps due to the track being wet and windy. So we took a chance to walk around the garage areas where the cars were being prepped. As the morning drug by, the pace car laps got cancelled due to time constraints. Damn, so we woke up early for absolutely no reason.
So we had about eleventy-billion hours to kill before race time. Luckily we knew someone who works for Speed Channel (Rutledge Wood, does pre-NASCAR shows on Speed). We met up with him and he took us around behind the scenes, introduced us to some people, including the hot Victory Lane chick.The race was rather boring… I mean, who the heck watches cars go around in circles for 130 laps. I was just about bored out of my mind. Then of course, you got these rednecks drinking $.50 a can beers and adding salt to them like it was a special Corona. We saw dudes with t-shirts… and no t-shirts. I think it was definitely mullets galore and the hillbilly inbred families came out in full force. I felt like I should've at least not shaved that day! Then you hear the occasional "TOYOTA, YOU SUCK!!!" comments. Toyota – NASCAR? Who would've thought! The ending of the race was actually pretty cool as the trucks started really duking for pole position.
Overall, it was a great experience. I do want to go for the real Pep Boys 500 with the Sprint/Nextel Cup cars.
