I don’t think my Dad has a bucket list. Or at least it isn’t, in his mind, a bucket list. Maybe a list of sporting events that he views as important events that everybody should try to make it to before they die. He’s been to the Winter Olympics (76′ Montreal for those of you keeping score at home), the World Series (87′ and 91′, Go Twins!), The Belmont (multiple occasions including 1998 when I went with him and witnessed
Real Quiet come the closest in 30+ years of winning the Triple Crown), the U.S. Open for golf (91′) and many others. Thus, when he started talking about going to
Talladega Superspeedway (herewith to be called either Dega’ or “The Big One” only) a few weeks ago, I figured this was one more big time sporting event to mark of the list. An “experience” to be had because neither my father nor I have more than a passing interest in NASCAR. And by “passing interest” I mean “don’t give a shit”.
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| Dega’: 2.66 miles of ass tearing kick assery |
Dega’ is only about an hour from my parents house and tickets are pretty reasonable nowadays as NASCAR has been on a decade long slide in popularity. To whit, Dega’ has a seating capacity of 175,000 but NASCAR now lists it as 112,000 because they cover over large chunks of the stands with advertising rather than have all those seats not filled with beer slugging slack jawed yokels. Even with closed sections, there were plenty of seats available. We got tickets and loaded up a couple of personal coolers because you can bring in your own beers to Dega’.
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| Lunch. |
This is the deep south and it’s roughly as red neck and stereotypical as you would expect. You walk around San Diego you expect to see a lot of Affliction gear and a lot of Mexicans. You walk around Dega’, you expect to see a lot of fat white people with aggressive mustaches and Marb Reds. Or a guy wearing suspenders sans shirt.
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| Suspenders-yes; shirt-no. |
I tried to get a better shot of him because in addition to the no shirt suspenders look, those extra four straps you see are for some souped up binoculars. I think he could have seen the moon from where he was sitting.
NASCAR races start off with drivers being wheeled around on the back of pickups so that the crowd can do a reverse shit talking drive-by. With the exception of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. (universally referred to as “Junior” or “Little E”) and Carl Edwards (your guess is as good as mine), the drivers were berated as they whisked by giving the crowd a parade float wave. The kid next to me was about 6 years old and was straight out of Talladega Nights. Novelty southern accent. No shirt. He told most of the drivers that came by that they sucked and at least two of them he said he hated (Jeff Burton and Kyle Busch-whom most everyone in the stands despised for reasons I could not ascertain). He flew the bird a couple of times as drivers came by. His Dad chuckled. There was a lot of gesturing to the drivers by people in the stands.
After prayer (like I said, deep South), two aerialists parachuted into the middle of the track with huge American flag and a POW-M.I.A flags flying from their parachutes. Then a couple of F-15′s buzzed the tower multiple times. Say what you will about defense overspending and the appropriateness of military aircraft burning thousands of pounds of jet fuel for no purpose, you could do worse with your tax dollars than a fighter jet. Those things are impressive as shit up close. Roll, Tide!
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| The Long John Silver’s Car because well, why the hell not? |
Finally the race started and like baseball, you are initially fooled into thinking this will be interesting. Something is happening. It’s loud. The crowd is screaming and the cars come by incredibly fast and incredibly loud. Your seat vibrates when the pack comes by. Then at about lap 10, you realize nothing much is happening. No crashes. The lead changes never happen during the 3 seconds the cars are in front of you. You get bored. Your mind wanders off and you start day-dreaming about the open seats in front of you being filled by NASCAR skanks (there were bunches) or whether or not the security guard tooling along the fence line on a moped would wipe out showing off for the fans (he came close while pretending to do a wheelie). The sun starts to go down. The cowboy looking guy with a leather belt that has the name Rusty carved into it (a custom job, natch) drinks an entire can of Mich Ultra in one swig, a line of watery beer forming on his cheek. You look up to see how many laps have been run. It’s lap 26. 162 more to go. The good thing is that since you can bring your own booze there isn’t that 7th inning panic where you have to sprint to get one more beer. In fact the workers at the beer stands seemed mildly bored every time I went by.
This race was almost exciting at the end. They had a crash late, so they did a full restart with 4 laps which seemed like it should have made for some excitement. Everybody bunched up, rubbin’. But it wasn’t. The two guys that had led for the last 20 or so laps kept their lead. They pulled away and there weren’t any real crazy crashes. In fact only 4 cars got taken out during the race. This included Kurt Busch, brother of the hated Kyle. Most of the crowd cheered when they showed him wheeling his busted up car into the garage after a wreck. Eventually some dude named Clint Bowyer won and took home $260,000 which seemed kind of paltry. Dega’s a big race, one of the races for the Sprint Cup. I assumed they paid big bucks. 260 large is nothing to sniff at but for comparison, 3rd place at the McGladrey Classic a couple of weeks ago paid $272,000. Raise your hand if you have no idea what sport one would have to play in order to come in 3rd at the McGladrey Classic. I rest my case.
It’s golf by the way.
So, after not all that much money being won and nobody really getting rip roaring drunk (or at least nobody in our section) we were left to walk back out to the parking lot. Luckily I saw this ol’ NASCAR sum bitch trudging back to the parking lot as well:
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| Shirt reads: In Loving Memory Of The Intimidator |
My Dad pointed him out as we were walking and asked me if I wanted a shirt like that. I said asked him why in the hell would he think I would want a Dale Earnhardt, Sr. memorial t-shirt?
He said, “I don’t know. Why the hell did we just pay $55 bucks to watch cars drive in circles?”
“I thought it was on your bucket list.”
“My bucket list? I figured it’d be an interesting way to kill a Sunday afternoon, ya morbid son of a bitch. Bucket list? What kind of sorry sap has a bucket list? It’s a goddamn movie for Christ sakes!”
“All right, all right! I’ll get a commemorative Earnhardt t-shirt if it will make you feel better.”
“That’s better. And let’s get one of those Intimidator decorative plate sets for your Mom. It’ll be friggin hilarious at Christmas.”
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