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I come from an automotive family. My dad could tell you any car’s model and year at a glance (probably because he owned pretty much every car in existence over the course of his life), both my mom and my brother are former stock car drivers (and pretty good ones at that), and my parents ran an automotive parts business for years.
And while I black-sheeped myself away from being a ‘car’ guy of any measure, by sheer osmosis I picked up a healthy enough appreciation for classic chunks of metal. Though I’m the only person in the family that can’t tell a cam shaft from a catalytic converter I never miss the opportunity to visit a car museum, and I was super-stoked for a chance to finally attend my first NASCAR race.
And February 20th, 2011 wasn’t just any NASCAR race, it was the Daytona 500! A funny thing about NASCAR, their biggest race of the year is the season opener in Daytona. Frankly, the fact that their Superbowl comes at the beginning of the year is one of the 500 or so reasons why I question whether or not NASCAR is even an actual sport, but I digress.
I had stayed in my dad’s motor home in the closest campground to the track, though it was still some ways away. I had stayed up way too late the night before and was shaken out of sleep when my brother arrived telling me the shuttle to the racetrack was leaving in fifteen minutes. After a flurry of disgruntled activity m’lady and I joined him and a family friend on the bus and off we went.
It’s possible I already had an open Budweiser in my hand. I do remember our shuttle bus employed an off-duty police officer who talked our way through every single roadblock and closure freeing the bus to make a virtual bee-line to the venue, passing snarled traffic along the way and dropping us as close to the gate as pavement would allow.
It turns out you are allowed to bring your own beer into the Daytona racetrack, but there is a limit. Guess how many beers per person are allowed into the venue? (answer below)
The security line was reasonably quick considering everyone who arrived with a soft-sided cooler (which was basically everyone) had to have it opened and inspected. The security people diligently counted to make sure nobody tried to bring in more than their personal allotment of beers.
Now, this will sound like a lie, but can you believe that each person over the age of twenty-one can bring in up to thirty-two beers into the Daytona 500? Yes, thirty-two beers per person.
And so I lugged my weighty cooler up to our excellent seats, and in no time the day began. Cracking a Budweiser and surveying the scene, I was surprised to see the track swarming with people. It looked like the end of a big football game. “Anyone is allowed to go on the track before the race,” my brother explained; another example of the backwards nature of this ‘sport’.
Soon the track was cleared of fans, the anthem was sung, the military jets did their flyby, the prayer was cast (the lord as my witness, they actually say a prayer before every race) and the gentlemen (and Danica Patrick) started their engines.
It felt like thunder.
Forty-three ultimate muscle cars circled the track following the pace car looking like so many bulls ready to burst out of their pens. These cars have a seething need for speed and they exude strength and power; it looked like it was all they could do to hold themselves back until finally the pace car pulled into the infield and set the beasts free.
When the cars roared past the start/finish line they sounded like a wall of Marshall double-stacks cranked to eleven. As they careened around the 2.5 mile track they mostly pulled into single file, and when the cars sped by individually at 170mph it sounded like a succession of big, fat E chords on a ’59 Les Paul, those Marshalls pounding out the speed-metal rhythm of racing: voom…voom voom…voom…voomvoomvoom…vooom…
It was powerful.
It was also really hot and the beers were going down fast and easy. A trip to the bathroom saw me join what seemed like half the 101,000 capacity crowd in the mens room where there were no urinals, just a single, massive trough. “This drains into a big keg marked ‘Coors Lite’” joked the guy beside me. I laughed pretty good at that one but no worries, it was a trough.
Back at the race the drivers kept turning left with remarkable precision while the crowd kept drinking and secretly hoping for crashes. We got a few, just enough to break up the monotony that grew exponentially as the hours went by. Somehow the race went into overtime – which shockingly added no excitement whatsoever – and a young first-timer won the race. He celebrated by liberally polluting the air with rubber burnt from his very expensive two back tires, spinning around and around and sputtering poisonous fumes. I finished the last of my Budweisers and we got out of there.
Outside I was disappointed to discover that our shuttle arrangements put us in a rush. I wanted to dally at the booths and among the crowd but we didn’t have time for that. A mad dash to the porta-potty (can’t bring all that beer home with me) and a few quick glances at the obligatory over-the-top merch and I was back on the bus, our on-board police officer clearing the way home.
(This race marked the end of my personally curated Rock & Roll Field Trip Through America, an eighteen-day extravaganza packed with interesting tales and telling photographs which you can experience in detail by clicking here.)
Todd Man Out 