Racing

Last night, Dad and David took the pavement winged sprint car out for the first time in a couple of years.  It was a TV Race for the Must See Racing Xtreme Sprint Series, so if you're a Comcast Sports Net viewer, you may see it cross your screen at 4 am sometime in the  near future.

Dano and I thought we arrived late, but because the ambulance wasn't on site yet, the practice session that was supposed to begin at 3 didn't get started until 5 pm.  Our first two hours looked like this, queued up with nowhere to go:

The ambulance arrived and practice was under way.

One thing I love about the Hoosier Outlaw Sprint Series is that their initials are HOSS and I'm a fan of them on Facebook, so once every couple of weeks, I get an email that says, "Jane, you have a new message from HOSS."

How many of YOU get regular communication from Hoss, huh?

It became obvious very quickly that David's prediction of a sub-10 second lap on the quarter mile track would be coming true, and it did.  During qualifying, three cars got under the 10 second lap officially, one unofficially (Jason Cox bobbled on his 2nd lap and ran a 3rd unofficial lap that was under 10 seconds, but didn't count for anything but pride).

I hereby declare that I will no longer be referring to a racer's "game face" or "race face".  It is now officially known as the Ray Face.  The kid means business, yo.  He may put his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us, but once his pants are on, he wins races.

Here is proof that Dano is some sort of ethereal extraterrestrial entity.  Or his head, burdened by being known only for that hair, has decided to emit light to attract attention.

One of the other divisions on the card was the mini cup cars, which are tiny tiny little NASCAR looking things where the driver crawls in a hatch on the roof.  They are tiny.  And walking around them always makes me feel like I'm totally high and have turned into a giant.  They also make the track look like a real superspeedway (a name that I reserve for 2+ mile tracks but Slinger uses to describe its 1/4 mile).

David started 12th in the A main and finished 7th after 60 quick quick laps.

Wags came up for the race and quickly joined the cult of people wearing this exact same shirt.

My real camera battery died and the last half of my night was taken with LLoyd the Droid.  Not obvious at all, huh?

One picture that I didn't get but wish I had is with reader/commenter Scott, who was there to announce the night, and gave me a couple of shout-outs on the PA, which cracked me up like crazy (and made the people sitting next to us in the stands give me the wary "who is THAT" stare).

Had a great time and can't wait to knock some more dust off of that sprint car wing!

There are some pretty basic lessons about life that I still haven't learned.

Number 4,972:  Keep track of your chihuahua on margarita night.

Number 4,973:  Trains don't have steering wheels.  But man, that joke never gets old!

This was just the start of my awesome weekend of being awesome and doing awesome things. 

I also have video of my experience in the engine of the train, but I'm hesitant to put it online, because there are Train People out there.  Not train people like me, who see trains as a fun Americana kind of experience, who enjoy them for their efficiency and that sort of thing.  No.  These are Train People who stand next to the tracks recording video of Metra passing by, which they post on YouTube and get all excited with other Train People about which engine number it was and they keep track of what they've seen.  Like bird watching.  But if the same bird was in the same place every day and the schedule was made available to the public.  And they get all excited about it.  And also I hesitate to put the video online because I feel like I'd have to edit out the part where my voice is saying "Dude!  I'm going to post this on YouTube so those train people can masturbate to it."  Because then they'd have the hot girl voice AND the hot train action and I would feel like a sex worker.  And also because I don't know what engine number it was, and in the interest of data collection, that should be included.

This train took me to Chicago with Dano, where we then hiked from Ogilvie to Lincoln Park to see the documentary about Jack Abramoff, Casino Jack and the United States of Money.  This adventure was even more fun than the Bataan Spice March I went on with BLC an Amy last summer.  Excellent movie, I highly recommend it.  Even if you have to walk 4 miles to see it.  Even if you have to stop at the Pocket Puppies store and buy your dog a $40 Ed Hardy shirt with a guitar on it that screams "Hey there, I'm a little douchebag puppy in an Ed Hardy shirt with a guitar on it" (I passed on this) or a $25 Yankee-pinstriped soft harness (which they didn't have in Wrecks' size boo hiss).  The documentary is really that good.

After walking so much in the city, I was not interested in taking one more step in the same shoes.  When we got back to Dano's house, the first thing I did was change into my VFFs, following his lead.  We walked a couple of blocks and had dinner at a great Thai place, followed by meeting up at a bar with a new pal, Jim, where I drank just enough to be so tipsy that I found my feet in those shoes to be the most HILARIOUS THING EVER.  And then Dano had to walk me home while I giggled and giggled and giggled at how funny my feet looked.

And to reward Dano for putting up with me through this?  I took him to the Rockford Speedway for pavement late model racing and a school bus jump.  We were joined by Boom, Mr. Martini, and their adorable little Sugarlips.

"School bus jump?" you ask?  WATCH THIS:

This was my first visit to the Rockford Speedway in years and years and years and it hasn't changed a bit.  My friend SCD, the Ginger Cowboy, finished 5th.  And then Dano asked him about the dents in his bonnet and SCD pondered "which side of the pond" Dano is on, if you know what I mean. 

Eh.  None of us know what I mean.

On Sunday morning at the crack of dawn, I found myself on the empty dead streets and sidewalks of downtown Rockford.  Dano ran his third marathon in as many weeks and I was there for the start, the finish, and a pretzel handoff at mile 13.  This left me with three plus hours of nothing to do in a town that seemed to have no clue the marathon was happening that day.

There were no businesses open.  None.  Nada.  Nothing.  I wandered the streets along with a few hundred other people, taking some pictures, watching confused motorists trying to figure out how to get around the marathon road closures.  Rockford didn't do anybody any favors in this regard - in one instance, a road was open to an intersection where the 3 choices presented to the driver were 1.) one-way street the wrong direction, 2.) one-way street the oncoming direction, 3.) bridge closed to function as marathon finish line.  A cop stood there to direct drivers to do a u-turn, the only choice.  I mean, the only choice besides closing the road that leads to nowhere a block or two before a u-turn is required.

A couple of people approached me to ask where I got my coffee, which came with me from a place near my house.  I directed them to a coffee stand that was set up in the Davis Park area, which wasn't selling food and wasn't open for business yet.  Another out-of-towner stopped and asked me if I knew of any restaurants open where she could grab breakfast while she waited for friends running the half-marathon.  At this point, I got frustrated and said "There has to be SOMETHING open" and grabbed my Google Knows Where I Am Machine and we took off walking.  Criss-crossing the streets and stopping and asking a police officer his opinion yielded only the knowledge that a McDonald's across the river would be the best bet.  My new friend declined the 8-block walk, so I gave her a quick little tour of Rockford - not nearly as fun as my downtown Chicago tour ("Here are some buildings that never burned down.  Here's the river that flows the right direction.  This is the street that used to be a mall area closed to traffic where I'm likely to get hit by a car because I keep forgetting it's a street again.")

I walked her back to the finish line to wait for her friends, and then I took off for the halfway point for the full marathon a few blocks away.  I spotted what I thought was a bar, with an OPEN neon sign in the window.  I walked in, and they had a box of donuts on the counter, purchased from elsewhere.  I bought a couple of donuts and walked back to my Foster Tourist in the bleachers, and gave her a donut.  Welcome to Rockford.  We have no interest in your money, visitor.  It was an incredibly sharp contrast with my experience a few weeks ago in Kenosha for the Wisconsin Marathon, where the local business owners were all standing in the doorways of their shops and restaurants to greet the visitors.

I ate my donut in the middle of the Jefferson Street bridge, waiting for Dano just before the halfway point in his 26.2 mile race.  He slowed to talk to me for a minute, looking not quite as awesome as he has in previous marathon passes, but I can only assume that the salty pretzels I lovingly handed him (after brushing off my donut crumbs) were what gave him the strength to continue.  He came in at his desired finish time, a couple of minutes faster than Kenosha but still within the "having fun" speed versus the "racing for time and want to die at the end" speed.

I waited out the last hour of the marathon with a friend, GC, who drove in from the suburbs for Rockford Marathon beer-drinking fun times.  We talked about boys and dating sites and work and all kinds of stuff and I laughed and laughed and laughed.  She is just awesome.  After Dano crossed the line, the three of us needed some beers, so I led them back to the bar where I'd bought the donuts.  Support the only place that was open today!  Thank them again for the donuts!!  Ummmm.  Closed.  Just in time for the marathon finishers to not celebrate their accomplishments over beer.  Yeah.

So we drove north to the Park, had lunch at the Backyard, designed Dano's dri-weave running kilt with built-in diaper, and then watched the Blackhawks win at Rascals.  Yeah.  I said kilt.  What's it to you?

MiniDanica models the marathon medal marvelously.

Here I am, Monday, sushi at my desk, writing about my weekend over lunch.  This has become my new routine, and I'm loving it.  Today, a deluxe (king crab, avocado, mango, tuna) and a Philly (which this place does with shrimp, my other place does with salmon).  Shoot.  I think I lost my racing audience already.

Spent the past weekend at Eldora Speedway, on the western edge of Ohio, for a World of Outlaws sprint car race.  It was my first WoO race of the season with my parents, who chose the St. Louis Supercross over the Pevely race I attended last month, a topic that came up repeatedly throughout both nights of racing this week as we discussed a serious issue we call Let's Move This Damn Show Along Now Already, something Supercross does exceedingly well and dirt tracks typically fail hard at.

So there was a complication to this weekend that I know I discussed on Facebook but I don't think I brought it up here.  A week and a couple of days ago, my father had a nasty altercation with a ladder while washing his motorhome.  (First world problems, we haz them.)  This incident left him with a seriously sprained ankle the color, size, and shape of Grimace.  He has been in an air cast and now owns crutches, though neither of those things have been used recently.

Dad is the only driver of the motorhome (also known as The Bus, which is a moniker we gave it because of our Canadian friends who drove several vehicles named The Bus before driving a real, actual bus to the Knoxville Nationals, but that's a story for another day, over toast.)  Dad's foot injury would not keep him from Eldora though, so we charged ahead.  And by "charged ahead", I mean that we left Roscoe at 6:30 pm and left Rockford at almost 9 pm.  Yeah, Dad doesn't road-trip quite like he used to.  This is not a complaint.  It just took some adjustment, the whole stopping thing.  I grew up in a family where Memphis to Yuma was a day trip.  A trip to Eldora that involved a rest stop or three was WEIRD.  But nice.  Especially for Wrecks, who was making his first long bus trip in a very long time.

We arrived at Eldora at 11ish on Friday morning, after burning up the motor on the wiper blades in the rain in the middle of Indiana.  We stopped in St. Henry for groceries, where the checker and bagger carried on a conversation about an unknown area person who poisons dog treats as they scanned and bagged our . . . dog treats.  Nice.

The wind was ridonkulous from the minute we arrived at the track.  Wrecks sprawled out to squint straight into the sun for a couple of hours while I tried to read Neil Peart's Roadshow.  The dog was way more successful in his endeavor. 

We limped to the track behind Dad, early as usual, because it just isn't a real race unless we watch them prepare the track.  Conversations overheard on the walk ranged from "100% chance of rain at 8 pm" to "we'll never get this show in" to "wow, look at them clouds over there".

So despite photographic evidence, morale was not high.  Oh wait.  Even the photographs prove it.  Technically, this one comes before the others in that series:

Grumpy mofo, that one. 

When 7:15 rolled around and the National Anthem hadn't been sung yet, confidence sunk to new lows.  We'd later find out that the advertised start of the event was 7:30, but that half hour stretch from 6:45 to 7:15, while we watched the radar darkening with nothing happening on the track, was pretty disheartening.

Even my pictures bum me out.  Oh man, did we feel that rain coming.

But recover, they did.  Once things got moving, they MOVED.  The parade lap was skipped, the lineup was called in breathless auctioneer style, the green flag dropped, and we got 25 of 30 laps completed before the sky opened up, just seconds too late to save Donny Schatz's 2nd place finish, as his tire exploded with just enough time for him to bring out a yellow that was immediately followed by a rain red, ending the night.  Joey Saldana won.  As always, better results on better websites than mine.

I waited for the rain to let up just enough to dash back to the motorhome to try to get Wrecks outside before it started pouring again.  The little dude has serious issues with water, part of the reason I spent years testing him to make sure he wasn't a cat (this involved dropping him a lot to see if he'd land on his feet), and I knew that if I didn't get him outside while it was merely sprinkling, he'd refuse to go at all.  I was almost successful.  Just as I unlocked the door on the bus, it got worse, and stayed worse all night.  My parents, slowly ambling back, were soaked.  Days like that are when I think maybe the bus needs a Rascal.

What followed was hockey on the satellite, Wrecksertainment, and an incident which lodged The Racers Prayer into my brain for the next 12 hours, when it was finally knocked loose by Al Green's "Let's Stay Together".  I spent much of Saturday morning and early afternoon sleeping, because that's what vacation is for, right?

Saturday's forecast was cold with a guarantee of bone-chilling wind.  My chosen outfit was jeans, motorcycle boots, sweater, hooded sweatshirt, winter coat, gloves.  While mom rocked the longjohns, I stuck with knee-and-then-some-high socks from the roller derby drawer.  I know my Twitter followers requested a pic of the socks, but this is as close as I got to documenting ANY of my ass-freezing on Saturday night.

The racing on Saturday night was damn good.  One of the heat races was worth the entire trip to me, a great reminder of why I love Eldora Speedway, winged sprint cars, and the World of Outlaws in particular as much as I do.  The end of the A main was fairly wild, with blown tires and caution-flag collisions and things of that nature.  I was very happy to see Paul McMahan take the win, and his victory lane interview was hella fun.  Better results on better websites, my friends. 

We made the call to get on the road immediately following the sprint car feature, to get a little bit down the highway before stopping again to sleep.  Wrecks was very wound up by all the last minute commotion to get The Bus road-ready, which is exactly what you want on a road trip - a wound up chihuahua/JRT mix.  We made it back to Columbia City, Indiana while I kept hitting refresh on the updates from the Hut Hundred, hoping to see DRay meet us at home with a big trophy.  Alas, it wasn't meant to be.

On Sunday morning, rolling down the highway again, my mother and I debated firing up the onboard generator to power an outlet long enough to make a pot of coffee, a decision that would have forced me to make a gallons-per-gallon calculation that likely would have resulted in Leilani Munter unfriending me.  OMG!  HERE is where the bus/toast story from earlier comes into play.  See, we have these crazy Canadian friends that we met at the Knoxville Nationals approximately 72 years ago, when we still camped at Red Rock.  Tony and Sheilaugh.  And Tony loves his toast.  So every morning, they would fire up the super loud generator on their wee little Winnebago so that Tony could make toast.  This is a much funnier story with the proper accents and hand gestures and American-flag shorts.  These are the people who taught me my favorite tourism motto ever.  Manitoba: Come for the bingo, stay because your car was stolen.  Anyway.  The moral of the story is that Dad pulled over at a gas station and Mom and I bought coffee instead of making it.

The rest of Sunday was reserved for Dell Rhea's Chicken Basket in Willowbrook, hockey, and delivery pizza.  Thanks, Blackhawks, for ruining Mother's Day.

And so, in conclusion . . . although I know I am a sinner, help me to believe that with God, I am always a winner.

You're welcome.

Hey friends.

So you know what kind of dick move leaves a person with a LOT of explaining to do?  The kind where the person posts an essay about suicide and then disappears for a week without posting anything other than a picture of her dog.  Yeah.  Sorry about that. 

Here's the funny thing.  You know what got in the way?  Life.  A really perfect stunningly beautiful weekend.  Quite the opposite of the way that I left things here when I went on my little walkabout.

I haven't pulled the photos off of my camera yet, and I didn't really take that many anyway, so the few here are all from Lloyd.  He's a sharp little photographer, for a phone.

On Friday night, in support of a friend, I participated in the very best thing that the long distance running world has to offer - pre-marathon carb loading.  It was baked mostaccioli and garlic bread.  And it was amazing. 

At the crack of dawn on Saturday morning, we were in Kenosha, WI, where the Wisconsin Marathon fired off on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Gorgeous, no?

Four hours later, after finish lines were crossed and free massages claimed, I was lolling in the grass with my happy, sweaty and accomplished pal, drinking beer and eating bratwurst and listening to a polka band (this was the Wisconsin Marathon, let me remind you).  And it was good.  It was very good.

After a brief nap, we headed to Beaver Dam, Wisconsin for an IRA sprint car/BMARA midget race at the smaller of the two dirt tracks in Beaver Dam, the one whose name changes annually, and therefore I will henceforth just refer to it as The Little Beaver.

Car counts for the midgets were disappointing but expectedly disappointing.  There were a couple of hard wrecks that took my breath away - it's been awhile since I've seen somebody really bust his ass quite like that.  All are fine, but what a reminder.

It was a fine night to reconnect with some people that I don't often see outside of racing despite being neighbors.  It was also a fine night to dodge a bumbling motorsports "journalist" who was hell-bent on meeting me but didn't recognize me enough to realize I was standing ten feet away from him while he grilled my friends and family on my whereabouts.  "She must be in the grandstands," they said, while I stood there, watching.  It's not often that a person goes from stranger to Facebook friend to Limited Profile to Blocked in less than a week.  Fine work, Uncle Creepy.  Fine work.

I started Sunday with lunch on the Fox River, a bacon cheeseburger that I defiled with peanut butter.  AND I WOULD DO IT AGAIN.

Sprint car fans, isn't this photo fun?  Look close.

After lunch, I had a lazy Sunday that included the Oceans movie, another nap, a trip to Starbucks, and ice cream.  Yes, somewhere in there was some ice cream.

This isn't a weekend picture, but I need to share it anyway.  This is the Worst Margarita in the Park.  The worst I've maybe ever tasted.  Let's not even call it a margarita.  Let's call it a Tequila Sno-Cone.

How are you guys doing?  Talk to me.

Do you guys remember when I used to be a planner?  When I used to know how I would get from Point A to Point B before I actually departed Point A?  When the calendar inside of Louise the Blackberry was useful because I actually followed through with the plans, unlike the calendar contained within Lloyd the Droid, which appears to be merely decorative?  When I used to have maps and I followed them, instead of having multiple phone conversations a week that start with "Janey, are you in Chemung again?"  Those days when I invested weeks of planning into meeting you Invisible People instead of just posting my current location as my Facebook/Twitter status?

If this weekend had happened a year ago, it wouldn't have happened at all. 

On Friday morning, I hopped in a truck headed south, carrying my parents and their pals to the Supercross event in St. Louis.  In Springfield, we stopped at D'arcy's Pint for horseshoes and brews.  This is a horseshoe:

Bread.  Meat.  Chili.  Fries.  Cheese.  I didn't eat it.  But I sure took pictures of it.  That shot is from Lloyd the Droid, and I'm pretty pleased with the quality.

By 5ish, we were unloading luggage in front of a hotel next to the arch.  Within 10 minutes, I was climbing into the passenger seat of a car driven by CowboyFetish, who handed me a Stella Artois and a bottle opener and THEN introduced herself.  Yes, this was the first time we'd ever met.  The internet is magic, my friends.  And I only got one text that night asking me to confirm that I hadn't been murdered yet!

Ms. Fetish and I chilled out at her place for a bit, then went to Mr. B.'s for the famous toasted ravioli I was not allowed to skip town without experiencing.  I also had a cheese infusion by way of the most decadent pasta dish I've ever consumed.  From there, we headed to Mamacita's to take in a show by the Bible Belt Sinners, a band containing my pal/racer/musician/verb Johnny Murdock.  This gig was booked when I was only about an hour outside of STL and I was invited by text message, so even though most of the trip was thrown together at the very last possible minute, the Bible Belt Sinners were the icing on the lack-of-planning cake.  And boy did they Johnny Murdock that show!

I spent Friday night with CowboyFetish, who was a fantastic hostess.  Her cats didn't even eat my face off while I slept!  This one was my favorite:

On Saturday morning-ish (I slept in!  face intact!), she asked what I had in mind for brunch and I said that I am a big fan of greasy spoon diners, and Courtesy Diner fit the bill perfectly.  We sat at the counter next to two men who smelled like mulch, I had an omelet and coffee served by a sweetheart with a Sookie Stackhouse accent, and "Free Bird" played over the radio.  Americana, baby!

From there, we took a stroll through the Soulard Farmer's Market, which was amazing.  I'm super jealous of those who get to shop there regularly.  Joanie's was the next stop, to meet Fef, another invisible person, for an impromptu beer/wine before she departed for the Cardinals Game That Just Wouldn't End.

I-55 Raceway in Pevely, MO was my next stop, and I was delivered to its doorstep by the (can I say this enough?) awesome-as-hell CowboyFetish, who wins some kind of Best F2F Ever prize from me.  Meeting me in real life should not be as difficult as I made it for her, and I'll always be grateful. 

Pevely and the World of Outlaws and I have a love-love-love relationship.  It is easily in my top 3 favorite race tracks ever, and throughout my WE WERE ON A BREAK from sprint car racing, Pevely passed through my thoughts often.  I missed it much.  I haven't been there since 1999 or 2000 and I barely recognized the joint when I walked in.  I've always said that one of my favorite races of my entire life was a dash there, at the U.S. Dirt Nationals, although the circumstances of the race have been disputed by both my dad and my buddy behind the mic, who both think that the dash took place at a regular WoO show and not the U.S. Dirt Nationals.  And they could be right. 

But in my memory, I am wearing my tie-dyed Levi button-fly jeans (oh shush you), my buddy Bill was there with a non-wing car, and Mindy took me to my first White Castle in the middle of the night.  Which would make it impossible to be any year but 1998 or any race but this one.  Which was won by Andy Hillenburg, further proving my theory.  So if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.  But I'm going to remember it my way, because Andy won, I looked damn fine in those jeans, I miss Bill, and that was the night I learned to never let Mindy pick where we are going to eat at 2 am.

I spent the first quarter of the night getting to know a new friend-of-friend, Suzy, and watching the modified heats, which were piled up at the beginning of the night before any sprint car action started.  I know there is bitching on some message boards about how this race was run and what a late night it ended up being, but holy crap, I loved it. 

I watched the sprint car heats from a different section each race, moving around the place until I felt like I'd sat in every single seat, getting dirrrrrtttty.  Walking from one section to another, I heard my real name shouted from within a crowd and turned around to see . . . a guy I didn't recognize at all.  And boy, did he know it.  He quickly identified himself as Mindy's little brother and I girl-squealed and gave him a hug.  It's been easily 10 years since I've seen Nick the Nemesis, and he was every bit as cool as I remember him then.  We chatted through the B-main Last Chance Showdown (I feel like that phrase should be in some kind of raunchy bold wild west font), when he admitted that he'd seen me walking around earlier in the night but had to text his sister to find out my real name because he didn't want to shout "HEY DUCHESS JANE" at me.  Note:  I will answer to "HEY DUCHESS JANE" in public.  You won't be the first or last stranger to shout it.

While the track was getting overhauled in preparation of the mains, Nick and his coworker and I wandered the pits, stopping first to visit a modified customer in the infield.  Of course, the first thing I spotted was the Claim Area sign, because I am a dork, and I grew up attending International Motor Claiming Association modified races, and I still make motor claiming jokes to my stock car friend(s) whenever possible.

Later, I'd realize that I took so few pictures at the track that my claim sign is 33% of my total photos from this race despite carrying my DSLR around all night.  Ooops.

We walked back into the grandstands area during the modified main, just in time to see Tim Hancock take out track owner Ken Schrader under yellow right in front of us.  It's a mad, mad house, boys and girls.

The World of Outlaws A main was really great.  Joey Saldana won with a broken hand, and you'll get better results at better websites than this one.  Keeping with tradition whenever we aren't at a race together, my dad and I each claimed to be watching the greatest race we'd ever seen, but Saturday night's neener neener took place over Twitter. 

After watching the track empty and go dark, a real day-after-Christmas-type feeling, I caught a ride back to St. Louis with the man who makes his living with his mouth (who should have known better than to ever say that to a person who has a filter as inoperable as mine).  With maybe 3 hours of sleep logged, I was back in the truck, Starbucks in hand, riding towards destinations devoid of the phrase "fixin' to".

Thanks much to everyone who was part of my transportation Rube Goldberg, and to all of the invisible and partially visible people that I met or got reacquainted with this weekend.  I had an absolute blast and can't wait for the next one, which might be Saturday, POWRi midgets, Macon.  I'll update my plans for the weekend in Thursday's Take No Prisoners post.  That is, if I actually make a plan . . .

Friends, I'm fixin' to see a lot of races this year.