"RoseGarden" - - - - - - - from - nscave

Well of all the hotels we stayed in, this wasn’t one of the best. We awoke to little creatures marching across the counter – and across the bathroom ceiling tiles. If they were ants they were the funniest fastest fattest little demons I ever saw. Kind of like a Playa in a show. Fortunately we had made our arrangements through Hotwire, and they ensured our satisfaction 100% by making things right very quickly.

We are about 5 miles from Daytona International Speedway and our tickets included free parking at Lot 7. The GPS is programmed for Lot 7 and off we go. On the way we saw about a dozen cars or so. We were prepared for gridlock and this is all we got. It wasn’t Budwiser that said “You can’t get any better than this,” was it?

Buses deposit us the rest of the way and we are walking the arch of Daytona across the highway to the epicentre of racing. This is heaven, hundreds of truck vendor trailers lined up in the form of city streets selling their wares of racing. And the prices are not that bad, not cheap, but not outrageous either. Miles of walking leads you to more. Manufacturers have their displays and freebees. Speed TV has their area with a camera to play with and a couple stages that are idle at the moment.

Grizzley

The freebees are quite good including t-shirts, trinkets and the usual goodies. Many are actually worth something. My lady friend spotted a display that was a bit crowded and she thought she saw the word hersey. “Come on, come on,” she said, “Get some of this.” “I’m not getting in that line up,” I reply.

Finally since I am paying no attention to the urging, she gets in the line up and proceeds down the line, across and up the other side, filling out forms and answering questions. All the while I am off taking pictures of the many truck trailers. Finally she gets through the maze after fifteen minutes or so and claims her free prize at the end.

“What the heck is Grizzly?” she asks, proudly holding a transparent package with a pack of playing cards and a 5-pack of Grizzly chewing tobacco the size of a package of buns. My stomach is still sore from the convulsions of laughing.

It takes a long time to see everything, and legs begin to tell you that you won’t see everything. Have a burger at Daytona Experience, it is about six inches in diameter and an inch thick. Expensive, seventeen bucks for two and a couple sodas (that’s pop for you Canadians), but it will keep hunger away for most of the day.

Time to head for the stands, for qualifying time. After getting the old legs ups several flights of stairs and some ramps we arrived at level ‘M’. Our seats were close to perfect. One level above the flag man, slightly to his left, and directly across from the centre of the pits. We could see almost the entire track, including turns 1 & 2, 3 & 4, and the entire tri-oval straight stretch.

Initially I thought qualifying for the 500 would be on the dull side, but it proved to be quite interesting. The ARCA race followed and it too was good. I was surprised to see many women drivers in it, I believe eight. Seems Danica Patrick got all the media attention leading me to believe she was the only female in it. Several of the female drivers did very well as they battled for the front. Of course Danica proved her driving skills as she skidded across the entire grass infield in front of the stands, all the while keeping her car under control, to be driven immediately back on the track. This has been rerun many times on TV.

Darkness fell and so did the temperature. With a thick jacket it wasn’t uncomfortable for the Budwiser Shootout, but sitting on the metal seats would have been better had we brought along a couple of those little gel seat cushions. The shoot out was a great race, and you could easily see the difference that the experienced drivers brought to the days racing.

It was a wonderful day of racing for us, very well organized and little or no breaks between events. I was amazed how stages and TV gear were brought in for presentations by tractor trailers, and moments later they disappeared. At home on TV it looks like these items are permanent structures.

Great for people watching too. Being a Budwiser event, ample liquid was available and you could watch some individuals go back and forth for a pee and a beer, a pee and a beer, a repetition that continued for the entire day and evening.

Tomorrow: Where Be My SUV?

-=One Day At A Time=-

This work by NSCAVE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License