Sprint Car Racing

The husband and I went to lunch with our boss last week.  The restaurant had those TVs that are mounted to the ceiling, and at one point my husband and my boss were distracted by a NASCAR-type race.  Only instead of NASCAR cars racing around the track, it looked more like matchbox cars with trays mounted to the top of them.

We watched them for a bit, as they took a series of continual left turns, until I decided to ask a question.

"There aren't actually people in those cars, are there?"

I could tell immediately from the look on my husband and my boss's face, that this wasn't the most astute question I could have asked.

"What was the question?" my husband asked me.

Alarm bells were going off in my head, and I knew it was a bad idea to repeat the question, but I was already committed at this point.

"There aren't any people in those cars?" I asked again, trying to make it sound like I knew the question was ridiculous and was just testing them to see if they knew.

They weren't buying it.  Chris's eyebrows went up.  "Yes, there's people in them."

"Can you actually fit a person in those cars?  They look so tiny."

"How do you think they get around the track?"

"Um, remote control?"

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

There is this commercial on TV now... I think it's for a discount department store?  It features a group of people drinking wine, eating hors d'oeuvres, laughing and chatting in their cocktail-party clothes, while candles on the table gently illuminate the fancy place settings. 

And every time I see it, I think, "I WANT TO BE AT THAT PARTY!  It looks like fun and it doesn't even involve objects that must be thrown, driven really fast, or smashed into each other."


(I don't know who these people are -------------------->
but they look like they're having a good time, except for those really uncomfortable chairs they have to sit in)

Don't get me wrong: redneck stuff is fun.  Well, the redneck stuff that I've done anyway.  Which is actually pretty mild as far as redneck goes.  I mean, NASCAR and country music and beer does not a redneck make.  You need to add a few things, like a mullet haircut and a t-shirt with the arms cut off, and subtract a few things, like, um, teeth, and then you get a redneck.

But I did live in a 38-foot fifth wheel for almost two years.

Let me repeat that.  I LIVED in a TRAILER for almost two YEARS.



You know that old saying, "You can live in your car, but you can't drive your house?"  Nuh-uh.  I could live in my house and drive my house.  

My husband did some fancy number-crunching with the budget and all the money we'd save, and how we'd be spending our living allowance on something we would eventually own instead of pissing it away on rent, blah blah blah.  I agreed to 8 months.

1 year and 8 months later, we finally retired the fifth wheel and moved into a rented house with some roommates.  I prefer to think of the fifth-wheel time as the "marriage test."  Because if two people can live together in a trailer with a dog and a cat, and then get up and go to work every day (at the same place) where our offices are so close they literally share a wall, and the husband can learn to deal with a closet allotment the size of a toaster (because, let's face it, the closet wasn't big to begin with) and the wife learns to deal with banged shins (because, let's face it, she's not graceful in normal-sized rooms), and these two people don't kill each other?  Ah, marital bliss.

Race Day at the NASCARs

So, previously I mentioned that people-watching is one of my favorite pastimes at The Nascars. On Saturday night, A-Star, Fashion, Sassy, and I made our way to the “Speed Cantina”. For Fashion and Sassy, this was not only their first Nascar, but their first “wilderness” camping trip. Fashion wondered if she should bring a dress. Sassy brought her cowboy boots. Turns out, it didn’t matter what they wore, because the bar attire was anything-goes.

The bar party that night was 80’s themed -- but that translated into “wear any sort of costume because who really brings their leggings and hairspray to Nascar.”  Welcome to a NASCAR bar party:

• There was a man wearing a plastic Viking helmet with a balloon tied to one of the horns.
• There was a man in a giant fuzzy purple hat and pimp coat with a baseball-sized mardi gras bead necklace
• There was a man with a detective mustache, and a hairstyle that hadn’t changed since the 80s, who was NOT in costume
• And then…. There was a man in a giant, sparkly, turkey costume.

That’s right. I said GIANT SPARKLY TURKEY COSTUME.

Because, you know, when I’m packing for Nascar I think, hmmm, now what I am going to wear to the bar on Saturday night? Jeans? No. T-shirt? No. Something a little more unique… I KNOW! My giant sparkly turkey costume!!!

So we cut a rug on the dance floor, and I gave the DJ his first tip of the night. The girls leaned over to request a song, and the DJ says, “Okay, here’s to Krista, my first tipper of the night!” .....And then he played “Single Ladies” by Beyonce. The DJ had misunderstood the girls’ request, so the dedication was a little awkward, because none of us were single.

Our biggest competition on the dance floor was a Chad Kroeger look-alike (well, I should say the drunken redneck version of Nickleback’s lead singer). He kept stumbling into us and spilling his drink on us, and generally being obnoxious. He couldn’t figure out why Sassy kept giving him the death glare. At one point, he informed Sassy that “her hair was invading his dance space” which earned him another Death Glare. Later on, he pushed his way into the front of the dance floor, knocked us out of the way, and then proceeded to drop to the ground and do ten pushups.

Yes, PUSHUPS on the DANCE FLOOR.

A-star made fun of him by doing mock situps on the dance floor. The DJ thought it was hilarious, but I was afraid the giant sparkly turkey or the old man with glow-stick in his water bottle might accidentally step on her, so we quickly aborted her efforts at mockery.

Finally, our ears were ringing and we were tired, so we left the bar and walked back to camp. The next day was race day, after all, and we had GOALS to meet.

Krista
Goal: sneak two cans of beer into the track. (It’s expensive in there!).
Status: Goal attained.

A-star
Goal: watch the entire race
Status: Not accomplished.

Fashion
Goal: Fit in with the Nascar-folk
Status: Goal attained (mostly)

Sassy
Goal: Buy the tackiest, most redneck-hick t-shirt possible, preferably with camoflauge, the driver’s face, an American flag, AND an eagle on it
Status: Goal attained.

I enjoyed my two tasty beers, Fashion discovered that the only dresses that are acceptable to wear at Nascar are the type of dresses she is too classy to wear, Sassy noticed several fellows with her same shirt that further proved she did indeed choose the tackiest one, and A-star…. Well, A-star fell asleep for the last 20 laps of the race. Actually, A-Star and Sassy and Orange County fell asleep. At the noisiest sporting event known to man. It was so funny, that random passer-by going up the stairs stopped to point and laugh.

What can I say? All that dancing the night before… they were just plumb tuckered out.

Minor Details

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the small, teeny-tiny, almost-inconsequential snafu in our Nascar plans.  No big deal, really....

The flight out of our rural airport near LA was a little hurried.  In the space of an hour, the sky had darkened significantly, and the wind was picking up.  If it got much windier, we wouldn't be able to take off, so we hurried to get everything in order for flight.  We (or rather, Chris, I can't really take credit) made a smooth takeoff and were on our way to Phoenix.  We had a decent tail wind so the flight was going to be about 2 hours.

An hour passes.

Chris looks at me and asks in an offhand way, "You grabbed the Nascar tickets, right?"

The immediate look of complete and utter horror on my face was answer enough.

"YOU.  FORGOT.  THE.  NASCAR.  TICKETS?!!!"

I kept waiting for him to crack a smile, say, hey just kidding, I grabbed them on the way out but HAHA wasn't that a funny joke?

Unfortunately, he was not joking.  And neither was I.  The tickets were in California... and we were halfway to Arizona.  We couldn't exactly turn around, either, because the weather back in California was only supposed to get worse, so making it in and out of that airport a second time would be a difficult feat.

"Well," Chris said (he was surprisingly calm after his initial outburst), "YOU are responsible for figuring out how we are getting in to Nascar." 

You see the thing is, it wasn't just our tickets I forgot.  It was all the tickets for our entire group of 8.  And yes, I could have pointed out the fact that Chris, also, forgot to grab the tickets off the kitchen counter.  However since the tickets were originally mailed to Arizona and it was my brilliant self who decided to take them back to California (despite Chris's advice otherwise), it therefore became my responsibility to bring the tickets back to Arizona.  Also, it's never a good idea to aggravate the pilot who's keeping you aloft at 10,000 feet.

To be honest, I completely forgot about the tickets.  I may have mentioned this in my previous post, but I'm not really going to Nascar to watch the race.  The tickets are rather inconsequential if you think about it that way. You know, one of those minor details.

I picked up my phone and began texting furiously.

For the most part, everyone's reaction was, OMG DID YOU TELL CHRIS YET?!

Luckily, roommate Payson was also going to Arizona that weekend.  He couldn't get the Friday off, so he was driving back instead of flying with us.  After several minutes of nail-biting, I got a hold of Payson.  He would bring the tickets when he left the next day.

We picked up Chris's Iowa friends and family from the airport Friday morning, then drove around completing various errands... getting firewood, grocery shopping, filling the RV propane and water tanks... etc.  Then we headed out to the racetrack, about an hour's drive from our side of town.

And what do you know, Payson had PERFECT timing.  And by perfect, I mean he left California and drove east until he reached the racetrack exit, and we left Phoenix and drove west until we reached the racetrack exit AT THE EXACT SAME TIME.  Literally, we pulled off onto the exit and he pulled off, coming from the other direction, right behind us.

Sweeeet.  Saved by the bell.  Or rather, a very, very, nice roommate.

The NASCARs

My husband and I attended the NASCAR race last weekend.


So at this Nascar race thing, a bunch of guys get in cars with lots of advertisements painted on them, and they drive around in a circle about 300 times. It’s the big draw, apparently. But it is not why I go to The Nascars.

I go to The Nascars for the people-watching.

My husband’s sister, his cousin, his best friend, and his sister’s two friends flew out from the Midwest to join us at The Nascars. Two of our other friends who lived locally, Sleepy and Orange County, also joined us for a weekend of fun.  It was the first Nascar race for his sister’s friends, and unfortunately we forgot to lay out the ground rule to the newbies.

There is only one ground rule, and it is: Don’t Pay Attention to the Rif-Raf.

Camping at Nascar (and by “camping” I mean, parking our RV on a dirt parking lot) is as much a part of the event as the race itself. Hundreds of people spend the weekend or, for the hard core – the week –and it is essentially a giant party where no one has to worry about driving anywhere afterwards.

Due to the parking-lot arrangement, people are constantly walking by your campsite and, eventually, one of them will stumble in to your personal space. Since usually alcohol is involved, this stumbling is both figurative and literal.

You see, the thing is, most of the cool people have their own friends. That they are busy hanging out with. At their own campsite.

So you learn the art of deflection. You are polite (because it’s never a good idea to piss off a redneck), but impersonal (you don’t want them to feel welcome, either). In other words, don’t pay attention to the rif-raf.  Well since we forgot to debrief the newbies, Fashion and Sassy, they accidentally paid too much attention when our drunken neighbor wandered over to say hello.

“Hey,” he slurred, “can I hang out with you guys for a while? My friend had to go to the hospital so I don’t have anyone to hang out with.”

Fashion, in an attempt to be polite, feigned interest in his friend’s hospital story and -- just like that – he was perched on a camp chair telling us all about the many times he managed to catch himself on fire.  No, seriously. Rif-Raf has caught himself on fire not once – not twice – but THREE times. You see what I mean about the cool people having their own friends to hang out with.

“What, did you miss kindergarten through first grade?” Sassy interrupts. “You know, stop, drop, and roll?”

“Hey,” says Rif-Raf suddenly, “Does anyone have an iPhone charger? I need to call my friend in the hospital. He tripped and gashed his head open and he had to go to the ER.”

There was a pause, while the three of us with iPhone chargers fidgeted in silence. No one wanted to give the rif-raf an excuse to stay longer. Unfortunately, Chris’s sister, A-star, had never really gotten the debriefing either.

“Oh yeah,” she says helpfully, “I’ve got one!”

In between Rif-Raf's burn stories, we managed to pull Fashion and A-star aside and explain the cardinal rule of Nascar.  With Fashion there is no middle ground. She immediately began her campaign to rid us of Rif-Raf. A short while later, we went inside the RV to make ourselves some more... um... root beer floats... when Rif-Raf wandered in to check on his phone’s status.

“I don’t think it’s charging” he said, looking intently at his phone.

“Oh yeah, it’s charged.” Says Fashion in her best dismissive voice. She unplugs the phone and hands it to Rif-Raf. “Here you go.”

“But it’s not even turning on…” Even in his drunken state Rif-Raf could recognize that the phone hadn’t been plugged in long enough to charge.

“It’s charged.  Buh-bye.” And she all but shoved him out the door, phone in hand.

He went outside, looking confused. “I think they hate me,” he remarked to the guys sitting around the campfire, “and I didn’t even try to hit on them!”

Eveuntally Rif-Raf “got the hint” and wandered back to his own campsite. Later that night, his friend Stitches returned from the hospital.

Yes, that’s right. His friend WENT TO THE HOSPITAL and got SIX STITCHES on his forehead. And then RETURNED TO CAMP AT NASCAR.

Luckily, we did not see much of Rif-Raf and Stitches the rest of the weekend. I think it might have had something to do with “YourphoneischargedBUH-Bye.”

The History of NASCAR

During a recent car trip from Phoenix to L.A., I drove while Chris took a nap in the passenger seat. Since I was in command of the vehicle, this meant I had control of the iPod. I could force Chris to listen to NPR and various other "nerdy" podcasts while he was, essentially, trapped in our moving vehicle. I think this is partly why he fell asleep, because it was either slip into unconsciousness or jump out of the car a la 007 only to land in the middle of the desert next those signs that read, “State Prison. Do Not Pick Up Hitchikers.”

After I was tired of NPR, the next academic podcast that I forced my husband to listen to was “How Stuff Works,” from the “Stuff You Should Know” franchise. He had slept through most of NPR but he was staring to wake up at this point.

Today’s Stuff: How Moonshine Works (Click here for the full article by Ed Grabianowski)

It’s a fascinating enough enterprise, but one portion of the podcast really caught my attention.

Basically, it said that Bootleggers – the folks who smuggle(d) moonshine – became very mechanically adept in order to make their cars fast enough to outrun the police. This ability “created a culture of car lovers in the southern United States that eventually grew into the popular NASCAR racing series”.

I looked over at my husband. He was staring off into space, awake but drowsy enough that he apparently missed the significance of what we had just heard.

The hosts of the podcast continued: “In fact, the winner of the first ever NASCAR race had used the same car to make a bootleg run just a week earlier.”

And there you have it: INDISPUTABLE PROOF that NASCAR was founded by hillbillies and rednecks who love their booze.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m just sayin’.