Start Your Engines

We have been driving for three hours. We drive into what looks like the woods. Then, all of a sudden, campers and tents extend as far as the eye can see. Beer cans and cigarette butts are everywhere. Beer guts and back hair are exposed on almost every man in sight. Flags proclaiming the supremacy of number three or number twenty-four wave proudly from cars, campers, and motorcycles. Teeth are missing and kids are wearing camo.

This is a NASCAR race.

I have never been to one of these resplendent events, and on this excursion I am accompanied by my fiancé, his father, and his sister. I was invited on this trip by my future father-in-law and he loves races. He loves the noise, the crashes, and the excitement of a checkered-flag finish.

I, however, am not excited by eardrum-bursting noises, the crashes that could be ten feet from me, and forty cars going too fast to be able to tell what color they are. We are sitting in a special section that is bleacher-seating and I can stand five feet from a fence on the wall right before turn number three. We are in the section reserved for the members of the Highway Patrol that work traffic for the event and their families. The people that we are sitting with are not your typical race fans. They do not show up three days before the race to camp out, get drunk, and fight people who call their favorite driver a wuss. This section is a safe haven from the rest of the race complex.

If you walk away from the Highway Patrol section to get a pretzel or look at racer paraphernalia, you have stepped into another world. No woman is wearing more than a tank top and jeans. Most are not wearing appropriate lingerie. The men are all spitting Skoal and drinking warm beer from plastic cups. It is not my kind of party.

I am told not to walk around alone, not because these are all bad people, but because if you get enough drunken rednecks together they can forget their manners. I hear some cat-calling and some lewd language, but it is nothing I have not heard walking around downtown Wilmington.

The race is 343 laps. The first ten are exciting, not much after that is. There are eleven cautions throughout the race. You would think that all these cautions would mean some crashes that would really make you hold your breath. No. These cautions are engine failures, debris on the track, or fender benders. The one crash happens on the straightaway right before our seats, but it was over in two seconds and it was not a serious wreck. Both cars are able to continue on in the race. Plus, I am not the type of person to be extremely excited by carnage.

I keep thinking, “Okay, just wait for the finish. There will be a push for the finish and that will be something worth watching.” It isn’t. The race ends under caution, so the rules say that the drivers go two more laps and the race is decided in those two final laps, another chance at a great finale. Nope. Jeff Gordon jumps ahead five car lengths and stays there the last two laps. There is no push for the finish. There is no bumping the lead man to force him out of their way. It is anticlimactic.

On the ride home, my future father-in-law asks me how I enjoyed the race. Curse my wonderful manners. I say that I enjoyed it a lot and thank him profusely for bringing me. His immediate response is that we should come back to the race in March. I cannot believe it but I nodded in agreement.

Now I have resigned myself to making up excuses every time a race comes up or submitting myself to four more hours of torture. We will see when March rolls around.