These Are the Days

The Brickyard 400 has become a yearly tradition. I have been to every race held, & for the last few years, have gone done with one of my peeps. J decided to make it a trend & joined me for his 2^nd year.

Pretty much if you have been to a race, you get NASCAR. There are some rules you must follow though, to fully & authentically take in the experience. What I mean is, when in Rome, do as the Romans.

1. Sleep with your sister.
2. Knock out a few teeth.
3. Indulge in multiple forms of tobacco products.
4. Where a wife beater & have an abnormal amount of back hair (Maybe even shave your driver’s # in it).
5. Drink a Wisconsin amount of beer, warm, & all while screaming at the top of your lungs “DeeeeeeeeeeeJaaaaaaayyyyyyyy!”

Seriously, its absolutely amazing.

The plan for the drive down was to hop in the car at midnight & get in Indianapolis just as the track was opening. That was a good idea if we had gotten any sleep before we left. Friday night I had decided to have a few people over. It wouldn’t have been a bad idea except for the fact we drank until dawn & several people threw up all over my yard after a lot of entertaining drama. I ended up getting no sleep & then picking up 8 hours of hard time at work. To top it off we hit Miah’s little get together Saturday night just before we left. As we got in the car we were both dead tried. Undoubtedly this is a great way to embark on a 6 hour drive.

Everything went without a hitch as we rolled through Milwaukee, then Chicago, & into the plains of Indiana. An hour into Indiana is where things got a little funny. I suddenly jerked the wheel because I guy ran out in front of me leaving a construction zone. The problem, there was no guy. A little bit down the road in looked like a blue rocket cam shooting by the side of the car. I asked Jaren if he saw it. He did, but it was a car on the side of the road like 2 miles back. I pulled over at the next exit & Jaren took the wheel.

J didn’t fair much better than I did. Mentally he was fine, but as I napped in the passenger seat, he almost got railed by a drunk driver. Whee! Thank God I slept through that.

Parking & getting into the track was no problem at all & we soon found ourselves wondering around the track. Both beat, we made maybe the best decision of the trip. There is a golf course inside the track. As we walked by we decided to get out of the now overwhelming heat & camped out under a tree. We ended up napping under the tree for like 3 hours. Well rested, we made our way to our seats.

The race itself was awesome, you can read about it here on NASCAR.com. Tony Stewart won the race in dramatic fashion & celebrated by climbing the fence in front of us. He is from Indiana & the win was huge for him.

(Sign outside the Dairy Queen in Tony's hometown. Thanks Jayski.com)

After the race we got out to my car & got right out. Somehow we managed to beat out a ton of people. The highway wasn’t bad at all & we were soon in Chicago. This is were I got maybe the scare of my life. We were riding on some interchange just inside the Windy City & I laid back to put my foot up on the dash. All of a sudden something is about 2 inches from my head outside the car. It was a dude on a crotch rocket racing between cars. I literally could have touched the car next to me so I have no idea how dude made it between our cars. He proceeded to rip onto the apron & pass about 15 more cars before he left my line of sight. It was freaking nuts.

A little past this point Jaren began to hallucinate from his lack of sleep. It was pretty good & it provided a bit more entertainment for my ride. 1^st he claimed to not only see a woman on the road, but an Amish woman in full Amish attire. WTF? About an hour later we are headed into the small town of Kiel & Jaren freaks out, freaks out. He thought the city lights about 5 mile sin front of us were a neon sign directly in front of us.

We ended up getting home at exactly midnight & crashed till late Monday. Just another fun trip to Indy….

Currently Playing...
Fireflies
By Faith Hill & Tim McGraw
Like We Never Loved At All
(My current favorite country song, it rocks…)

Posted by D. Schwa on Tuesday, August 23, 2005 at 1:35 AM | Permalink