Let's go RACING! um, freezing!

 Friday morning we headed to the NASCAR pits! First, we saw Hermie Sadler, but I was too star struck to yell out "Hey Hermie", so I just took a picture of his backside.

the inspection point, where the officials make sure the car fits inside the templates

 Then John recognized Sam Hornish, Jr. I saw Matt Crafton pass us in a golf cart, but by the time I realized who he was, he was gone.

John and I in Victory Lane!

 We saw Bill Elliott (aka "Awesome Bill from Dawsonville"). His son Chase races in the K & N series.

While we were close to pit road, Justin Allgaier drove by!

"Rattlesnake Hill"

Brendan Gaughan is another of my favorite drivers

Our view!

When it was race time, we realized that we should have worn more clothes. The wind was coming right at us from behind. Being in the wheelchair section, there were no seats behind us to block it, and we were COLD!

  This guy's shirt just reminded us of what track we were supposed to be at.

While we were enjoying the festivities at the SPEED stage, I got to see Rutledge Wood, my favorite SPEED TV personality. He's talking to Ryan Newman here.

Saturday morning we dressed in layers, but before we went to the track, we went to the local quick care, as the Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) symptoms I had been having since Wednesday night were not improving, although I’d drank 2 bottles of cranberry juice. Fortunately the quick care was not packed, and within an hour I had a diagnosis of a “bad” UTI (which made me feel better, that we were not wasting our time), and two prescriptions. Even better, there was an Express Pharmacy nearby, and the prescriptions had been sent electronically, so we only had about a 5 minute wait time, and we were out the door. Everyone we dealt with was friendly and made the experience as pleasant as possible. Unfortunately, we forfeited our time in the pits for that day. We went straight to our seats where we realized we still did not have enough clothes on!

The cold wind penetrated all of our layers and went right to our bones. Being the race fans that we are, we stayed through the Nationwide series race. Being the intelligent individuals that we are, we left before the K & N series began. We came back to the rig and watched it on TV while we thawed out.

Sunday morning, we headed back to the track decked out in our layers again. We had considered thermals, but since the wind forecast was “light and variable”, we decided to fore go them. John brought his down parka, which he wore the entire time and was cozy warm, while I believed the weather forecast and once again was cold.

Most of the race was boring, so I read some of my school book. I stopped reading with 50 laps to go, because that’s usually when they really start racing. In case you missed it on the news, there was a fight before the end of the race. Once that was broken up, they continued racing, and once Kevin Harvick took the checkered flag, we didn’t even stick around to see all the insanity of “the big one”, the multiple car crash caused by the fluid leaking out of Danica’s car after she smacked the wall with less than 2 laps to go. We dashed for the elevator and out of the track. Being in a wheelchair does have its benefits. We were given priority and able to skip the long, winding line for the tram, and go to the front.

We got back to the rig and relaxed a little, waiting for the crowd to clear before heading out that night to park at ‘Camp Cummins’, for our early morning appointment to get the radiator checked. We enjoyed the racetrack campground and our neighbors – all 24,000 of them, but the Cummins’ facility offered 50 amp electric. That meant we didn’t have to run our generator, and Candy (our cat) and I could sleep with the electric blanket on all night! We had really been roughing it! 

Monday morning we checked in and waited while they evaluated the rig. We felt right at home in their customer lounge area. John had a TV (notice the remote control!), and I sat in their office behind him and did my school work.

Once the estimate came in, it was almost $4000.00! We approved since we were already here and the repair needs to be done. After breakfast, we drove to Surprise, AZ to visit my sister-in-law’s aunt and uncle, who adopted me as well when my brother married their niece. It was so great seeing them, and I apologized when we hugged, since I was going on 8 days without a shower. It didn’t matter, I still got a tight squeeze. We arrived in time to watch “my” uncle play baseball.

His team won, and we celebrated by letting him take us to lunch! We even had dessert, thanks to John’s contribution to our country. Since John was a Veteran, each of us received a free slice of pie! Hooray for Coco’s restaurant and their appreciation for our Veterans!

Tuesday was another early morning, and it took me nearly all day to wake up. We enjoyed a Waffle House breakfast, and then drove to Luke AFB where John used the fitness center sauna and showers. I did not feel that I could stand up long enough to shower, so I continued to stink. In my defense, I have been using rinseless body wash every night, so I am not extremely stinky.

The rest of the week has come and gone and we are still at ‘Camp Cummins’. It’s not bad, their customer lounge has wifi, and they feed us lunch from Jimmy Johns everyday! We are able to sleep in the rig at night and they hook us up to 50 amp power, but no water, so Wednesday evening John went to the laundromat to wash 10+ days of clothes. Yesterday was the first day this week that we did not have to get up at o’dark early for them to start working on our rig. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we are still here! The radiator has been re-cored and the rig is back in the shop with re-installation underway. That sounds promising, but it did not come out easy, so we’re betting it won’t go back in easy.

My new class is turning out to be pretty enjoyable! The instructor is easy going, and trusts us to be responsible graduate students, while still letting us have fun. This week I was not the most responsible because of the race, but I did complete my 1500-2000 word paper on how ontology (being) comes before epistemology (knowing) in a worldview. Furthermore, I learned the answer to the age old question, Which came first, the chicken or the egg. The logic of my professor is that the chicken came first because an orderly God would not create an egg to be hatched and left to defend itself without a mother.