- These racecars go close to 200 miles per hour. I almost get tunnel vision going 100 miles per hour (Yes, my mom knows I have been 100 miles per hour in a car before, she has seen the speeding ticket.)
- No really, these cars go 200 miles an hour, it is insane. These guys make it around a 1.5 mile race track in less than 30 seconds. To compare, it would take someone jogging at least 10 minutes to get around one time.
- As long as your cooler is no bigger than 14 inches in width, length, or depth you can bring as much beer as you can fit into your cooler to drink during the race...... enough said.
- I am an avid people watcher, I get a kick out of looking for "gunslingers" and man, were there some characters at the race. Guys with mean mullets and mustaches, Confederate Flags, people falling asleep at the racetrack, and people who look like they came straight from the 80's. And then this guy, "Drink til you want me"
It is so loud at the race track that ear plugs are a must. You can't hardly hear yourself think during the race and if you want to talk to your friends, you better be screaming at them. I have never been in a bigger venue (Charlotte holds 140,000 people) and to top it off, the Charlotte Motor Speedway has the largest HD television screen in the world. Look it up, I swear it's true. As far as the tickets go, I bought them on an resale site online and bought the cheapest tickets. Somehow, they ended up to be great seats with a great view of the track and the big screen. In most sporting events, the best seats are nearest the track, this isn't the case for Nascar events. (See below)
Onto the race now. The Coca-Cola 600 is a 400 lap race that takes about 5 hours. It starts at about 6:30 and goes into the night under the lights. For Nascar events, you can literally feel little pieces of rubber from the tires hitting you each time the racecars pass if you stand near the track or have seats near it. (I even had tiny pieces in my hair this morning after the race.) It is hard to really tell what is going on during the race except if a caution comes out and all the cars get grouped backed together. Otherwise, it looks like a bunch of cars going really fast in a circle for hours, and someone wins the race by less than a second. If you have never been to a race before, I highly recommend going at least once in your life, just for the experience. Kevin Harvick ended up winning the race because Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran out of gas on the last lap. (And Junior is a fan favorite and there was a buzz in the stadium in hopes of him breaking his 100 plus losing streak.) Pretty exciting finish to a long race, I'm glad I stayed until the end. We camped about a mile from the race track in a grass camping site and left this morning (Monday) to come back to Raleigh. I was seriously jealous of the people with campers who had a nice bed to sleep in. Sleeping in my car, back seats laid down, feet in the trunk only works for a few hours. But hey, it was all part of the experience. Oh yeah, and if you're wondering, I will be attending next year. On a side note, I plan on posting pictures all the time but I accidentally donated my camera to the Charlotte Motor Speedway so all you get in this post is the quarter shirt guy.
Right now it is about 1:40 on Monday night/Tuesday and I am packing and gathering some last minute stuff for my trip to Asia. I have to be at the Raleigh Airport by 4:30 this morning. Luckily my roommate Alan F. is driving me so I don't have to leave my car there. I fly from Raleigh to Toronto and then from Toronto to Shanghai. The first flight is 2 hours and the second one is about 10 hours, ouch. I hope to sleep a decent amount during the flights because once we land in Shanghai at about 3:30 in the afternoon, we have activities planned once we get there. We were advised not to sleep before so we could sleep on the way there so I'm going for that one. The tally for the trip, 8 guys, 2 girls, and 1 instructor. I get back in 2 weeks and plan to go straight to the U.S. Open when I get home. Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, Bangkok, back to Shanghai to fly home and then back to Raleigh on June 14.
The Nascar event was trip 1 of many to come during my travels, and I will consider it the preface of my "wanderings". As always, a shout out to my dad for allowing me to travel the world and take some time off. To the crew who went to the race, wow, that was wild. The highlight of the first trip- a tie between the characters at the race and the speed of the cars. One day, one camera gone. But hey, I had a damn good time.
On to trip 2.... NC State Study Abroad Trip to Asia. Farewell for now
