September 28, 2007

Count down to Charlotte

T-minus 13 days

Well, we're only two weeks away from something my mom, aunt, and I have been looking forward to since October 15, 2006 -- our return to the 1.5 mile track at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

I remember getting moderately interested in NASCAR sometime during my junior year in college, and it grew during my senior year. I consider myself a New-Generation, Post-Dale Earnhardt fan. I can't remember watching many races before Dale Sr. died. ANd when I first started to watch, it was merely to have something on the tv for a long stretch of time without having to turn the channel while I played EverQuest on the computer. It was one of those tv programs that I didn't have to actively watch to know what was going on.

In the spring of 2003, I graduated from college and moved into an apartment with my college buddy who was originally from Arkansas and definitely had a bit more red on her neck than I did. Near the end of 2003, she said her dad and brother wanted to go to the Memorial Day weekend race at Charlotte, the 2004 Coca Cola 600, and asked if I wanted to order a ticket too. By this time my interested in NASCAR had risen to the point where actually being at the race would be really cool.

My first NASCAR race was awesome, even though Lowe's poster boy Jimmie Johnson (who is definitely not a favorite of mine even if he is Dale Jr.'s new teammate) won. The dirt, the drit, the grim, the smell, the sweaty-no-shirt-half-drunk rednecks, the overpowering roar of thousands of horses charging around the oval track. It was the best symphony I'd ever been too.

By this time, my mom and grandma had also gotten into watching the races and picking out their favorite drivers. My grandma has been a die-hard Jeff Gordon fan ever since she started watching. He drives the Dupont Chevrolet and her kids were all brought up on Dupont money. Grandpa retired from Dupont after over 40 years of working at the Kinston plant. Even I grew up on Dupont money. Mom worked there for 16 years. But I just don't like Jeff Gordon. Hehe.

In January of 2005, roomie and I went to a new NASCAR event in town. It was called the Fitness 500, and it was really neat. The event was sponsored by WFU Baptist Medical Center. It's main draw was a fitness competition between several teams of NASCAR folks. There were drivers and drivers' wives and crew members and other folks involved. And here is where we first met Carl Edwards. Bre and I were very enamored with the handsome new driver of the #99 Roush Ford. We even got our pictures taken with him and he signed not only our Fitness 500 posters we bought (I lost mine! How sad!), but also signed copies of his Craftsman Truck Series driver sheet from the 2004 season. That's when I picked my favorite driver.

I was tooling around the internet one day in the summer of 2005 and happened upon the Lowe's Motor Speedway site where I happened to learn that Busch series tickets are WAY cheaper than Nextel Cup series tickets. Mom and I went to her first race in October 2005. We just went to the Friday night Busch race (tickets were only $20!), but that got her hooked and before we left that night she said she wanted to do the entire weekend of races. By this time we had learned that our aunt Gloria was a dyed-in-the-wool Dale Junior fan and wanted to go to a race too. So, we all bought tickets for both the Busch and Nextel races for October 2006.

The October 2006 races were our first experience of being immersed in NASCAR for an entire weekend. We drove down to Charlotte on Thursday afternoon, and on the way down surprised Aunt Gloria with a stop at Dale Earnhardt, INC. DEI has the MOST AMAZING gift store I've ever seen. If they could put a #3 or a #8 on something, then they had it for sale. There were dog leashes and collars, tv remotes, glass bottles of fancy water, tire pressure gauges, scrap booking stuff, flags, coasters, earrings, wallets, not to mention t-shirts, hats, jackets, and glasses. We got great pictures of one of the #8 cars parked outside. On Friday morning, we headed off to Roush racing to see Carl related stuff. Roush's gift shop was nice, but had to represent more drivers and so just had standard stuff like shirts, hats, stickers, and lanyards. We stopped by the big Outdoor World, home to the Bass Pro Shop, on Saturday and even saw Kasey Kahne at an event in the big mall's parking lot. Plus, there's tons of stuff to see at the race track. Every driver has a merchandise hauler selling stuff outside the track. Even Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights had a hauler. On the way back to Winston-Salem, I realized I'd forgotten to stop back by there to pick up a Ricky Bobby shirt...they were just $5!

As soon as tickets for the 2007 Lowes races went on sale, I snapped up four tickets. This year Jamie is coming with us! He started to get interested in NASCAR while we were chatting online, since I usually talked about it on Sundays during races. Then when he flew over in November, he watched all the races with me. Now, he even has his favorite NASCAR websites that he likes to look out regularly. His favorite driver at the moment is Dale Junior (for Christmas last year I bought him a Junior shirt and toboggan), which puts him in Aunt Gloria's good graces. We'll have two Junior fans and two Edwards fans at the race this year. He also likes to pull for the Busch brothers and Juan Pablo Montoya just because it irks me. Hehe.

So, we're looking forward to this year's races. I hope their good. I'm really pulling for Junior to win, though I wouldn't be too bummed out if Carl won. :)