Bristol was Awesome!!!

If you have never been to a Nascar race, you should definitely give it a try. I never dreamed in the spring that I would love it this much, but now I’m hooked.

Cristi and I drove up on Thursday night so we could beat some of the traffic and then spent the night at my parents house.

Friday we headed toward the track about 10am, stopped for Subway sandwiches and headed to my aunt’s campsite. We hung out there a while and then headed out for the track to site see a bit.

We spent part of the day shopping through all the vendors that come to the races. It’s amazing all the things you can see. There are trucks with strictly driver paraphernalia, general Nascar merchandise, Bristol raceway merchandise, radio and headset vendors, and then your random advertisers. We got freebies from Old Spice, Armour (beanie weenies), Duke’s mayonnaise, Sharpie, Heineken, M&M’s, and so many more I can’t even remember. Cristi, momma, and I all got matching Dale Jr. shirts with glitter.

The Nationwide (formerly Busch) race was Friday night. We went over at about 3pm to watch the drivers qualify and practice for both races. This was a bit long and boring, but worth going to at least one time. The most exciting part of this race was the Grand Marshall. It was none other than Paula Dean! She spoke for a bit and then got the race started with a super cute “Gentleman, Ya’ll start your engines!!!”” Then they were off! The “little boy” race is 250 laps. The winner was Brad Keselowski driving Dale Jr’s Navy car! Even more exciting was that he started 18th and then finished first.

Saturday we started out about the same time. Headed to pick up some lunch and then over to the campsite. We did even more shopping and then headed our separate ways. Cristi and I had seats in turn 4 that night and so we hiked to our seats. It seemed like a lost cause pretty early on as Kyle Busch took the lead for most of the race. However, Carl Edwards managed to get by him after the last caution and pulled it out.

The only downside of the whole weekend was that my big cooler got stolen. It seems there was a major underage drinking problem that weekend and some punks thought they had hit the morther load when they stumbled upon our camper. The cooler had been filled with ice and many beverages on Friday morning and then we just kept adding ice and drinks to it. When the thieves took it (during the cup race) I’m sure they thought they had found a cooler full of beer. In all actuality. It might have had 10 beers, 10 soft drinks, and two days worth of ice water. J